April 15, 2008 / 10 Nissan 5768

Brody, Mezhibozh, Berdichev… just a few of the names that are redolent of the Jewish life of Eastern Europe that was destroyed during the Holocaust and that were recently visited by 450 high school students from the Heftziba network of Jewish high schools in the former Soviet Union as part of their Roots study program. The network is a joint program of the Jewish Agency and Israel’s Education Ministry; the Roots study program is funded by the Claims Conference.

Led by specially-trained Russian-speaking guides from Israel and from among the ranks of the schools’ locally-based Jewish studies teachers, the students saw an indent in the stone where a mezuza once hung at the entrance to the Jews’ shops in the marketplace of Zhovkva. They explored the Jewish cemetery of Brody, learning about the symbols that Jews traditionally carved into gravestones, and carefully made out the words they recognized in the stones’ Hebrew texts. They saw synagogues in various stages of disrepair, collapse and reconstruction, the house in Buchach where Israel’s literature Nobel prize laureate Shmuel Yosef Agnon was born and brought up, and the tomb of the Baal Shem Tov in Mezhibozh. They learned about how the Jews were murdered by the Nazis and the remnants of the communities destroyed by Soviet anti-Semitism. They conducted memorial ceremonies on the sites of forced labor camps and mass murders of the region’s Jewish communities.

The tour culminated in a visit to the Jewish sites of Kiev, where the students were guided by their fellow students from the city’s Jewish schools, and a ceremony at Kiev’s notorious Babi Yar.

The eight-day program left the students visibly moved by all they had seen and learned, and immensely appreciative of having been selected for the program – only serious students are allowed to travel. “More students should be given this opportunity,” said Yanna from Moscow; “It helps us learn about what being Jewish means,” said Christina from Kazan; “My grandparents came from here; I am visiting my past,” said Roza from Moscow.

“Why do we need to study the past?” asked Mikhail, one of the local educators, of his group provocatively. “Perhaps we should just focus on the future.” His students vehemently disagreed. “How can we know who we are if we don’t know where we come from?” asked Sasha from Moscow, displaying a wisdom that belied his youth.

*Only low resolution photos available.