Euroasian Jewish News

Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC) Secretary General, Dean of the Philology Department of the Maimonides State Classic Academy, professor Michael Chlenov (Photo by sefer.ru)

Spring Jewish Studies School in Moscow Oblast

On March 22–27, the “Way of the Earth” Spring Jewish Studies School for high schoolers took place near Moscow. The School was organized by the scholarly and creative community “Sambation” together with the MSU Institute of Asian and African Studies (MSU IAAS), with the support of the Genesis Philanthropy Group, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and JAFI.

The school involved participants from senior high school students of general education schools, both Jewish and regular, from different CIS countries, who are interested in Jewish culture and oriented towards a liberal arts higher education. The goal of the school was to give the participants a general understanding of Jewish studies as a part of the humanities and of their place in the system of modern knowledge. For this the participants were presented with different plenary lectures given by famous scholars and professors, and mini-courses given by professors from different universities, both from CIS and Israel, and devoted to different aspects of Jewish history, ethnography, literature, and religion, as well as the State of Israel. The program also included presentations of Jewish Studies universities, departments, and programs in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kyiv, and other cities.

The plenary lecture, dedicated to the variety of Jewish languages, was given by the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC) Secretary General, Dean of the Philology Department of the Maimonides State Classic Academy, professor Michael Chlenov. A plenary lecture was also read by the head of the Jewish Studies department of MSU IAAS, Arkady Kovelman. Mini-courses were given by Vitaly Tyhyi, Vitaly Epstein, Irina Baulina, Ilya Barkussky, Konstantin Bondar, Ilya Dvorkin, Andrei Psehnitsky, Mihail Vogman, Semen Parizhsky, Aleksandr Lvov, Katerina Malahova. EAJC General Council member Vyacheslav Likhachev was also among the lecturers, and gave a course on Jewish ethnography, the problem of historic self-awareness, and the formation process of a modern political nation in Israel.