Dr. Mordehay Yushkovsky on behalf of WJC Yiddish center delivered lectures, which were perceived by the participantswith great interest: "Yiddish in the 21st century" and "Love and intimate relationship in Yiddish literature and folklore".
Knafaim young leadership program seeks to equip young Jews with skills that can further community building and development. The session included a host of leadership workshops, with skills developed through role-play, team-building exercises, Jewish history and especially of Yiddish culture learning sessions, and other tools. Within the seminar, main coach Nirit Kreiman prepared interesting trainings and classes for the students, Knafaim student Eugenia Kukanova held a floral master-class and the students hardly had any time to be bored. Knafaim gathers 4 times a year and that was their first meeting on 2016. Such seminars take place in all FSU countries. They have different names though, Knafaim is for Moscow, Lahava – for St. Petersburg, Metzuda – Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. We entered into agreement with the Young Leadership program management that Yiddish component will be included in every program of theirs.
Yulia Karchevskaya, Director of Jewish Community Development Department JOINT wrote:
"A seminar of youth leadership KNAFAIM program, which brought together 26 young people age of 20-30 took place on January 20-24 in Moscow.
This program gathered a variety of representatives of the Jewish community of Moscow - religious and secular, orthodox and reformist, graduates of Jewish schools and people who have recently for the first time learned about their Jewish roots, examining the papers of their grandmother. At the first glance, these people have a lot more differences than similarities. But only at first glance.
Of course, there are topics that unite them. And, of course, there is something more than a common interest. This is a common genetic memory. That memory speaks Yiddish.
This is one of the reasons why the students listened to Dr. Yushkovsky and were not distracted for a moment. During the break they did not allow him to step aside, asked questions, shared their stories. Mordehay's lectures on KNAFAIM seminar became a serious intellectual trigger: the participants wrote down the names of authors, titles of books, historical facts.
Topics raised in lectures offered a look at the recent history of the Jewish people in a slightly different angle to many participants. And for some it became the starting point for their own family histories. In their feedback students said that they were not aware what a layer of culture is practically in their families. One of the students said that these lectures helped to get the key to the door of his house, of which existence he did not know of, but behind which the unexplored horizons are."
