Beautiful Picturs of Kiev (more to come!)

The Future of Jewish Communities

During the past year I had a pleasure of attending s two leadership seminars, Metsuda, fortress from Hebrew. This seminar recruits young adults from all over Ukraine, and this year Georgia and Belarus joined as well. The group of young adults meets four times a year for a week long seminar. During the seminars the students attend workshops, lectures on community building, marketing, fundraising, etc., to help them start a project. All participants launch a project in their communities during their leadership seminar year.

The participants of the program are very talented and creative young Jewish leaders in their communities. Most of them are college students, who care about their communities, and want to make a difference.  One of the projects started by last years’ Kiev’s Metsuda participants is “Долг живых” or “Duty of the Living.”  The project focuses on cleaning Jewish cemeteries in Kiev, making a database of all Jewish graves and eventually making it public. This is only one of the projects that were born from the 2009 year of Metsuda.  

The 2010 year of Metsuda began in the beginning of March, in Odessa. I helped during the 1^st session, the selection round. Right now, the 2^nd session is in full swing in Kiev, (unfortunately, I am not there because my parents are visiting). I am excited to see what projects this group of young leaders is going to come up with, and what their visions are of the Jewish communities in Ukraine.