This initiative aims at elucidation of real needs - first of all of the needs of small Jewish communities of Russia, which basically are out of scope of interest of Jewish Agency (even in the framework of its "Jewish Self-identification" program, newly adopted at the end of 2001). The JDC activity scope is much wider - and we are deeply grateful for that. We must acknowledge, however, that JDC support is confined to the certain fixed programs that do not cover a big stratum of necessary work. First of all, we mean composite, multifaceted organization of the cultural-educational activity which draws a significant part of the Jewish population living in a town or district into the life of the Jewish community. Such an organization of the work requires special support, in particular financial donations aimed at covering personal payments to a small staff of teachers, tutors etc. The First Part of this Collection is dedicated to the description of such work in the Jewish community "Shalom" of the town of Borovichy of the Novgorod Region; we will be glad to include in the Collection the description of your own Know-How. The Second Part of the Collection is for those who have problems in receiving permit for exit from Russia; please do not hesitate to contact us if you are refused the Russian foreign passport. The Third Part begins with the Israel "Law of Return", accompanied by the list (certainly not an exhaustive one) of publications about repatriation and absorption, or describing life in Israel. The publishing of these books and booklets is an important part of work of the the Jewish Agency, of Israel's Ministry of Absorption etc.; however, we know well that these vital materials are practically inaccessible for Jews living in Russian provinces. The Fourth Part - "Jewish World. Quotations" - is a non-pragmatic one, and for this reason it is perhaps the most important and interesting.

The Collection will be distributed free of charge. Please inform us if you are interested in receiving this Collection.

In the immediate future we plan to send "Sohnut", JDC, other potential sponsors in Russia and abroad the Inquiry-Letters where needs of small Jewish communities of Russia for establishment or coordination of the "Jewish self-identification" cultural-educational work, Hebrew studies etc. will be described. We will be glad to include your needs in these Inquiry-Letters.

March 14, 2002

"Movement without Frontiers", Moscow

Jewish community "Shalom", Borovichy, Novgorod Region.

ATTACHMENTS:

1) Introduction & Summary of the Collection "Haverim. Russia - Israel".

2) To the memory of Professor Kristoffer Gjotterud.

3) "TANAKH TORAH. Nevi'im/Prophets. Ketuvim/Writings" (from "Jewish

Literacy" by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin).

4) About the authors of the Collection "Haverim. Russia-Israel".

Note: In the Russian Announcement of the Collection distributed among over 100 Jewish communities of Russia, the following pieces are also attached:

- a Press-release of the Foreign Ministry of Israel dedicated to the 10 years anniversary since the restoration of diplomatic relations between Russia and Israel (October 2001).

- List of certain books and booklets dedicated to Jewish traditions, repatriation, absorption, and about Israel.

- "One who saves a person - he saves the Universe..." (from "Jewish Literacy" by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin).

The creation (the restoration) of State of Israel in 1948 ended the 2000 years of a tragic epoch in the history of Jews, marked with persecution, discrimination, auto-da-fe's of The Inquisition, pogroms and the Holocaust, and established a new situation for all Jews in the world. Because now every Jew may Return to the Promised Land (we include in this Collection Israel's "Law of Return"), and because now Israel is in fact a guarantor of safety for all the Jews wherever they live. The struggle of Soviet Jews for their right to Return became a new historical landmark. "They flee like rats from a sinking ship!", - a frightened secretary of the Communist Party Cell of Moscow State University shouted "prophetically" at the meeting where they condemned Academician Veniamin Levich, who applied for an exit visa to Israel in 1971. The wheel of history turned, 20 years later the "ship" really "sank", and a million of Jews of the former USSR moved to Israel. On 18 October 1991 the diplomatic relations between the State of Israel and the Russian Federation were restored. Since then the relations between the two countries have developed and gradually overcome a heavy heritage of the long years of Soviet leadership's anti-Israel politics. (We include in the Collection the Press-release of the Foreign Ministry of Israel dedicated to 10 years of restored diplomatic relations between Russia and Israel).

However, regardless of mass repatriation of Russian Jews to Israel, the number of Jews in Russia remains quite significant. In this Russia differs from smaller countries of Eastern Europe or Former USSR, where Jewish population is now close to zero. In Russia, the paradoxical formula "The more go - the more remain" somehow makes sense. This joke reflects the objective process of de-assimilation of Russian Jews assimilated in Soviet Union over the decades. This process of de-assimilation needs to be kept alive and helped; and it also creates cultural, organizational, informational, educational needs: the teaching of Jewish traditions, customs, history, information about Israel, study of Hebrew etc. In Moscow and other big centers, these needs may be easily satisfied by everybody who wants it. However, even in these centers the crucial problem is to broaden the number of the Jews who want national self-identification. And in small Jewish communities scattered all over Russia we observe a most acute "informational and educational hunger".

This Collection does not claim to answer all questions. We hope that the information presented here will be useful and interesting to some people. We also hope that this initiative may draw the attention of JDC, of the Jewish Agency, of Russian and foreign organizations to the problems of small Jewish communities of Russia.

Part 1: Principle of "universality". The description of the work of Jewish community "Shalom" in Borovichy, Novgorod Region and of its cultural-educational Center "Haverim". The main Know-How of this work (which helped draw most of Jewish population of the town into the life of the community) may be defined by the word "universality": the community meets and satisfies ALL demands of the Jewish people living in the town: those who need help, or just mutual contacts, or organized spare time for children go to the community, those who want to make Alia, or just to

study Hebrew or Yiddish go to the community; those who want to pray go to the community as well, etc.

Part 2: Right to Leave. Russian laws and rules about exiting the country, and legal ways to overcome possible problems and difficulties. - On the basis of the experience of 10 years of work of "Movement without Frontiers" and "Public Council of Refuseniks on Secrecy".

Part 3: Repatriation, Absorption, about Israel. The publication of the "Law of Return" followed by the List of some books and booklets about life in Israel, conditions and practice of repatriation, published by the Jewish Agency, Ministry of Absorption, Israel Information Center, Department on Affairs of Students, Association of Assistance to Jews in Diaspora. Of course we do not plan to duplicate all the work of the "Sohnut", of the Israeli Embassy and other great organizations. But if you fail to find these remarkable materials in the nearest office of "Sohnut" or in the Israeli Cultural Center - do inform us about it. We shall try to satisfy your need (to the extent of our limited possibilities), or we shall do our best to make the responsible bodies and personalities satisfy your requests.

Part 4: Jewish world. Quotations. Excerpts from "Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People and Its History" by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin (USA). "Jewish Literacy" consists of 350 short essays about different aspects of Jewish history, religion, life - from ancient times till today.

Kristoffer Gjotterud was a person of fantastic kindness and of inexhaustible humor. With all his human rights work he demonstrated and realized in practice the main wisdom of the world human rights movement - the "non-statistical approach", the acknowledgement of the invaluable importance of every concrete personality. This wisdom can be traced back to the ancient Jewish tradition (see "One who saves a person - he saves the Universe..." - in the Part 4 of the Collection). Kristoffer Gjotterud passed away on December 30, 2001, after 3 years of struggle with incurable

disease. Hundreds of people came to his funeral service. Elena Bonner's Farewell Word read at the service says: "... It is a real pain that such a pure and compassionate person passed away. We did not often meet, but every time I met him I was strongly impressed by his deep understanding of our problems. One may think: where is Norway and where are we? And what do our troubles and problems matter to Norway? However, the future of our children and grandchildren is in fact in the hands of such universally not indifferent people as Kristoffer Gjotterud...".

The name of Kristoffer Gjotterud is now written in the Golden Book of Jerusalem.

Boris Altshuler

and all the staff of the "Movement without Frontiers" and of the "Right of Child"

The Bible influences the thought patterns of nonreligious, as well as religious, people. The idea that human beings are responsible for each other, crystallized by *Cain's infamous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Genesis 4:9), has become part of the backbone of Western civilization. Our values in every area of life, even if we have never seen the inside of a synagogue or a church, are suffused with biblical concepts and images."

Head of MWF (who also chairs the "Right of Child" NGO, a Russian research center for human rights) participated in a number of OSCE Meetings on Human Dimension: in Budapest (1994), Warsaw (1998), Vienna (1999). These visits were supported by special grants of the Royal Foreign Ministry of Norway and by Norwegian Committee for Jews in CIS. The Head of the "Right of Child" and MWF also participated in "Russian" Sessions of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (1999), and represented the Russian non-profit, non-political sector and human rights community at the European Economic Summit-2001, organized by the World Economic Forum (Salzburg, 1-3 July, 2001). In connection with 100th anniversary of the Nobel Peace Prize celebrated in October 2001, "Right of Child" and "Movement without Frontiers" issued a Statement "Children of Palestine: we must protect their rights from the "care" of 1994 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mr. Yasser Arafat". This Statement was also distributed at the International Conference "Children, torture and other forms of violence: Facing the facts, forging the future" (Tampere, Finland, 27 November - 02 December, 2001), where Boris Altshuler was an invited speaker representing the Russian Federation, and where he spoke out about the inadmissibility of using children for the purposes of terror by authorities of Palestine Autonomy. The above-mentioned Statement "Children of Palestine..." was handed at this Conference personally to Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

For more detail see the Web-page: www.openweb.ru/p_z/

Contacts: 11, Novyi Arbat, rooms 19-18, 19-20;

tel. (7-095) 291-5872; tel/fax: (7-095) 291-9176;

e-mail: right-child@mtu-net.ru & leo@ints.ru

The Jewish community "Shalom" (Borovichy, Novgorod Region, North-West of Russia) was registered in 1992. The Head of "Shalom" is Edward Alexeev, a member of the "Movement without Frontiers" and of the children's rights NGO "Ray of Hope" (Veliki Novgorod), a participant of the program "Climate of Trust" - on prevention of chauvinism and on education of tolerance among youth (program is organized by the "G. and S. Light Center", human rights NGO, St.-Petersburg). Edward Alexeev chairs the Group on investigation of Holocaust and mass extermination of Jews in the Novgorod Region during World War II. In 1994 Edward Alexeev studied in Israel in the framework of the program "Buncher" organized by JDC for leaders of Jewish communities.

In 1999 the Administration of Borovichy issued a Decree giving to the community "Shalom", for 50 years, a rent-free building for a synagogue and for a Jewish Center. The Synagogue in Borovichy is not a prayer room, but is really a new Synagogue in the classical sense, possessing a scroll of TORAH, Aron Kodesh, Bima - precious gifts from the Jewish Community Temple Bet Tora of the town of Freemont, California.

Jewish Cultural-Educational Center "Haverim" was organized at the end of 2000 as a joint project of "Movement without Frontiers" and community "Shalom". The work of the community and of "Haverim" includes many programs: Children's Program, a video-club, a library, Hebrew studies (ulpan), weekly lectures on Jewish traditions, a club "We Speak Yiddish" for old age people, Jewish music (there is a professional Music Ensemble).

There are 70 active members of community "Shalom". About 150 persons participate in Jewish celebrations, which is more than half of the Jewish population of Borovichy. The work of the community is supported by JDC and the Bay Area Council (California); the project "Haverim" was realized thanks to the support of Norwegian organization "Help the Jews Home".

Contacts: 27/25, Sovetskaya st., Borovichy, Nobgorod Region, 174400, Russia.

Tel./fax: (7-8162) 138-024; e-mail: shalom@novgorod.net