As Jewish organizations across the country have found out through a stream of emails during the past couple months, the Jewish Federation’s Jewish Community Hero Award competition is in its final round. Out of hundreds of nominees ranging from Chabad rabbis to social justice workers, judges have picked five finalists, one of which will win $25,000 for his organization.
All the finalists are male, but more striking than that is that three of the five focus their efforts on the Russian Jewish community in both America and the former Soviet Union: Dmitriy Salita, an observant Jewish Russian immigrant boxer, is “particularly dedicated to promoting Jewish learning among Russian Jewish immigrants and has founded the Dmitriy Salita Youth Center to help bring the community together and promote Jewish learning,” according to a press release.
Mordechai Tokarsky, one of the first Russian Jewish immigrants to receive rabbinic ordination following the collapse of the USSR, “has dedicated himself to educating young Russian Jewish immigrants about their common history and shared culture,” says the press release. He also leads a trip for young adults to Europe and Israel.
Stephen Kutner, meanwhile, founded Jewish Healthcare International, whose first mission was to help Jewish communities in post-Soviet countries.
The other finalists are Jay Feinberg, who’s working to expand the bone marrow donor base in the Jewish community, and Tzvi Gluck, who, according to his blurb, seems like he’s helped every widow and orphan in the world, though his page doesn’t cite any specific initiatives.
Either way, it seems like the real winners of this competition are the Soviet Jews. I’m not sure why this work is getting such attention now, but perhaps it’s because we were all once immigrants to this country and now that most of the community is affluent, we want to focus on those Jews who are newer here.
It’s also interesting how these Russian-Jewish initiatives differ. One is focused on religious outreach, another is focused on making Russian Jews more cognizant of their history and a third provides health services to the Jews who are still in the FSU. It seems like these three approaches each represent larger approaches to how we represent Jewish community. Do we engage each other through religion, culture, or by taking care of the community’s basic needs? How the Russian-Jewish-American community develops will shed light on that question.
