The photo exhibition “Five Square Meters of Jewish Life” has opened in the Jewish Community Center of Saint Petersburg with the informational aid of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress PR Department. Approximately 40 works of EAJC's own press service photographer Andrei Yashin are exhibited – photos of Jewish community activists, rabbis, Israeli politicians, patrons, and public figures.

The exhibition prospect reads as follows: “Five and a half square meters – this is the space the exhibited photos would take up, should someone have wanted to cover a flat surface for some reason. This was also the size of Andrei Yashin's kitchen in his old apartment – the kind of kitchen where Russian Jewish life was being thought up – in dreams when it was forbidden, in plans to be implemented when it finally became allowed. It was from these meetings in small kitchens reeking of smoke and alcohol, of cheap and easily cooked food, that current varied and unconquerable Jewish life burst forth from. It is this Jewish life that is depicted on these photos...

...This is Rabbi Shayevich and the advocate Mirzoyev, at the opening of a high-profile exhibition on Jewish history in Moscow. And here is the playwright Gelman, judging a photo competition timed to the 20th anniversary of the Jewish renaissance in Russia. And here is the film director Levenbuk. Laughing. He's in a meeting that is trying to work out a general Jewish stance towards the Russian presidential elections... In short, the photos presented at the exhibition cover so much more in history and events than their geometry would seem to allow – about four years of full-blooded Jewish life, though mostly in Moscow and mostly connected with the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress.”

The opening of the exhibition was timed to the beginning of the Chanukah celebration. The author was presented by Alexander Frenkel, the director of the Jewish Community Center. Andrei Yashin was born in Moscow, and graduated from a medical college under the Sklifosovsky Research Institute, as well as from the First National Television school of the Moscow State University of Design and Technology. He worked in an ambulance, as well as in forensic examinations. From the mid-1990s he also worked with the International Jewish Newspaper. From 2002 to 2008 he was a designer and photographer for the weekly newspaper Jewish News, published by the Russian Jewish Congress. He has been working for the EAJC since 2010.
 
The exhibition is taking place in the Jewish Community Center of Saint-Petersburg (Rubinstein Street 3), and will continue up to January 15. Working hours are 12:00 to 21:00.