collage by Mira Wittman

Also attending the dedication were consuls from the U.S., U.K. and Israel; Rabbi Mark Winer, spiritual leader of WLS who led a 22-member delegation from his synagogue; and the heads of most of St. Petersburg’s Jewish organizations.

“Today’s celebration,” said Sha’arei Shalom’s rabbi, Michael Farbman, “is a dream come true for many people. Today is our chance to pause and think of how far we have come. Today is also our chance to offer our gratitude to people whose vision, commitment and generosity have enabled us to live to see our dreams come alive.”

The dedication ceremony began with a welcoming address and prayer by Farbman, and the presentation of a new Torah scroll – a gift from West London Synagogue – made under a chuppah borne by members of the St. Petersburg congregation. The Ten Commandments were read from the Torah scroll in Hebrew, English and Russian.

During the dedication, Farbman expressed deep gratitude to Raymond and Arnold Burton and to Kirk Lazarus for their invaluable support of the Sha’arei Shalom community, which currently serves 300 members. He also thanked the entire congregation at West London Synagogue, which he called “one of our strongest supporters from the very beginning of our existence” and where he served as assistant rabbi after being ordained at the city’s Leo Baeck College.

Winer of WLS, along with Rabbi Uri Regev, president of the World Union, Leslie Bergman, its senior vice chairman, and Ruth Cohen, its immediate past president, were instrumental in obtaining the donations. Regev called the occasion “momentous and historic – an inspiring example of the universal support the global Reform community provides to nurture the renewal and growth of Jewish life, particularly in places where it was almost eliminated.”

The dedication ceremony and Kabbalat Shabbat service concluded with the baby naming of Eva Podolnaya, the 10-day-old baby girl of Sha’arei Shalom’s executive director, Yuri Podolny, and were followed by a festive kiddush and champagne reception.

For photos of this momentous occasion, please click on the link below!

Öåðåìîíèÿ Îñâÿùåíèÿ Ñèíàãîãè

As always, please enjoy the pictures:

In addition to the three aliyot, other children read their drashot - each had to prepare one for the weekly portion according to their birthday. The mood was extraordinary and the kiddush at the end was just wonderful - organised jointly by the parents of the 7th graders and by our congregation. In the end Rabbi Farbman presented all the children with a huge 5 kg cake - which certainly was a hit!

Please follow this link to enjoy photos from the event!

Enjoy!

May this Festival of Freedom bring you joy and hope. It's a chance to celebrate our freedom and incredible achievements - both as individuals and as a community - but it is also a chance to let go of some of the pain and frustration that so many of us face daily. The message of Passover is not just to look back at the glorious redemption of the past, but to hope and pray for incredible blessings that await us in the future. As a community, we celebrate the fact that we have been able to make our huge and unexpected move so swiftly - with almost no losses in the process! But just as we celebrate getting used to our temporary home, our eyes are set on the magnificent synagogue and community centre that has been purchased last year and is currently being rebuilt.

Last year we had 93 people at our First Seder and we were aiming at 100 this year, but we were somewhat concerned that because of the move we may not have enough people... As I am writing this at 2pm, we have over 130 people confirmed for tonight and we had to close the list! (well, almost, as I can hardly see us turning anyone away on such a special night - but we may run out of food at this rate!). So far we have 15 seders that we shall be officiating at this week - I have not yet attempted to add the number of people expected at those. I will make sure you get to see the pictures and hear how it all went, I promise!

With that, I wish you all a chag sameach! b'vracha,

Rabbi Michael Farbman.

Due to an internal disagreement between the landlords of the property that we have occupied for the last three years (nearly!), we were made the scapegoats. First they tried to force us to make illegal payments, and when we refused, they simply pulled the plug – quite literally – and left us with no electricity! The first weekend it was even romantic – candle-lit Shabbat services and all – but after two weeks of suffering we had to face the facts: we were quickly getting nowhere and had no means of getting the power back on. The only possible solution was to move to a new location. Our wonderful new synagogue is being totally rebuilt inside, so we will not be able to move there for quite some time yet. A temporary solution had to be found, the one that would allow us to transition as smoothly and as painlessly as possible.

I am delighted to inform you that we were invited to transfer all our programs (but not our office) to the recently built JCC Yesod. We shall be renting a room at this splendid Jewish address in St. Petersburg, which will house our library, our resource centre and our program coordinator Masha Frolova, as well as our Netzer coordinator Zhanna Zlotnik. They will be very happy to see everyone who finds time to pop in and say hello! We shall miss our centre on Vasil’evsky island – it was our home for nearly three years and there are many happy memories that connect us to the place – but we are looking forward with excitement and enthusiasm.

Our new telephone number is 946 2883 if you dial locally (or +7 921 946 2883 if you dial from elsewhere). All our programs remain the same – we may even be able to expand some of them, as we now have access to a lot more space when we need it!

The Yesod centre is conveniently located close to Chkalovskaya metro station and the address is ul. Bolshaya Raznochinnaya, 25a. We look forward to seeing you all in our new, temporary home! We hope we don’t lose any of our friends in the process and look forward to gaining new ones along the way!

Wishing you all a very happy Purim indeed! If you are in town – please come join us this Friday for a final Kabbalat Shabbat at our old centre (it should be rather special), and then of course to our Purim celebrations at Yesod on Saturday, March 3! Children of all ages with parents should come at 16.30, and we look forward to seeing you all at 17.45 for an unforgettable evening of drinking, megillah reading and fun, not to mention the Purimspiel! Don’t forget your costume!

Yours b’vracha,

Rabbi Michael Farbman.

This week I was planning to update the site with stories of Tu biShvat and various special programs that took place since Hanukah - but I guess that was not meant to happen just yet... On Friday, in the middle of somewhat strange negotiations with our current landlord, our electricity was cut off! It is Thursday afternoon, and there's no sign of improvement yet. No electricity means no light, no computers, no fax, no copier, no internet, even no phones for the first few days! But where there's a will, there's a way - and our programs have continued running 'in the dark'! Well, almost in the dark - the candle-lit Shabbat service was very special indeed, as was our Tuesday night Basic Judaism course and Talmud class. I thought you may want to see what it all looks like:

So, life goes on even without the electricity - but if it continues this way for a little longer, we will have to look for another temporary home. Watch this space for updates!

No matter what happens, this Shabbat we shall be celebrating the Bar Mitzvah of our gabbai, Dmitry Shubov - those of you who have visited us in the past will no doubt remember this remarkably dedicated member of our community, and we all very much look forward to celebrating with him on this very special occasion!

To see this amazing collection of nine meaningful portraits and their brief description, please follow this link:

http://www.freewebs.com/shaareishalompictures/facesofshaareishalom.htm

Enjoy the wonderful show - and Happy Chanukah, everyone!

In addition to writing mezuzot herself, she has agreed to teach us all the basics of Jewish calligraphy, hoping that she may have a few partners as a result! The session was a huge success and will now be repeated for the students of the Basic Judaism course in the next few weeks.

This event once again left all those present absolutely awed by the experience. Rabbi Farbman gave a small talk on various parts of the Torah, as we progressed with the rolling, pointing out the most obvious places and texts, such as Shema, the Ten Commandments, the Song of the Sea and others. And there was plenty of dancing too!

We have celebrated our Chatan Torah, Dmitry Shubov, and Kallot Breishit - Mira Wittman and Raisa Sokolova. All three have made an incredible impact on the life of Sha'arei Shalom over the past year (and in the case of Dmitry, from our inception).  It was very moving indeed to see Raisa read the blessings for reading the Torah - and she was over the moon from the fact that she was being honoured!

Over a hundred kids aged 7-10 turned up - and they were not satisfied with just seeing the scroll from afar! So Rabbi Farbman allowed them to 'stroke' the scroll on the outside - to feel the parchment without damaging the scroll. The kids were ecstatic!

Rabbi Farbman, with the help of some assistants from his Bnei Mitzvah class, carefully opened up the scroll for all to see - for most children there, this was their first time ever seeing the scroll, especially so close! Needless to say, the memory will stay with everyone for a long time.

The Bnei Mitzvah class then had their personal 'Torah Tour' - as well as a little reassuring talk from the Rabbi, as many of them are anxious that preparing to their personal ceremony will be too difficult.

photo by Zhanna Zlotnik

Chag Simchat Torah Sameach!

photo by Sasha Gluz

Lulav shaking at our synagogue was done in style - the morning service was very exciting indeed.

On Sunday morning the school was buzzing with kids, parents and indeed excitement! The culmination of the day was a visit to our sukkah, where everyone had a go at shaking lulav! It rained, but no-one noticed!!!

The children present joined our President, Maria Tsudikman, in lighting the candles and saying the blessings.

They then received a special Shabbat blessing themselves in a short but moving ceremony

At the kiddush that followed there was plenty of food and wonderful music, so people rejoiced and celebrated together - there was lots of dancing!

In the morning we gathered back at our synagogue - a smaller but very committed group of Sha'arei Shalom members. The service included three aliyot to the Torah, two of them were read by Dina Podolnaya (recent graduate of Carmel Progressive Programme in Israel) and Mira Wittman (our recent adult bat mitzvah, see below).

The main mitzvah of the day, the hearing of the shofar, was performed not just by those present, but by the entire neighbourhood!

Sunday, 17th September, 10.45

Bring you friends and family members!

It does have a few minor inaccuracies, but it's great to see that we got a nice mention on the front page! For those of you who are interested, the attendance in the last 6 months had rarely dropped below 55 on a Friday night.

I cannot possibly do it any justice by writing a few words, so instead I will do two things: first, I will post here a picture of our madrichim (camp councellors) taken on the last day of the camp - those happy faces mean a lot to me!

The second, most incredible story, is of a young girl who turned 12 during the camp, and decided she wanted to celebrate her Bat Mitzvah there and then. She came from a very far northern city of Severodvinsk, so I had to do something for her. She was amazing! From barely knowing Hebrew alphabet, within less than a week she learnt to read basic Hebrew, studied 5 verses from the Torah portion very carefully and read it in front of the entire camp! It really was very special and moving and I felt honoured and privileged to present her with a proper certificate of her achievement, as well as the tallit she was so excited to receive and proudly wear!

All that's left to say is that we cannot wait to see everyone again at our Netzer youth club in September, as well as start working on making the next year's camp even more wonderful and exciting!

Rabbi Farbman spoke briefly about the message of Shavuot and about the tradition of tikkun leyl shavuot, the all-night study.

All those attending were then invited to choose one of 9 sessions with leading Jewish teachers and scholars of St. Petersburg community, to study and discuss various texts and even to learn to cook pancakes! 3 out of 9 presenters were drawn from our community - Rabbi Farbman, Olga Markus and Mira Wittman - this invitation has been widely seen as a great sign of better understanding of the importance of our community on the city Jewish scene.

The celebration continued in the morning at our centre, with some 30 people of all ages attending the shacharit service and celebrating the bat mitzvah of Mira Wittman, one of our most active members and a teacher in our religion school (as well as the teacher of Jewish history and traditions at one of the city's Jewish Day Schools). Everyone rose and gathered round the bimah to hear and to see the Ten Commandments as they were read from the scroll.

After the service people celebrated the event with a special festive kiddush and Mira walked away with lots of special and meaningful presents, including a very special colourful tallit that she really wanted to have and which was especially brought from Israel and presented to Mira in the morning by Rabbi Farbman.

The rest of the morning was spent making one's own tzitzit, which everyone now proudly wears! At the end of the morning Rabbi Farbman presented all the students, as well as all the teachers, with their certificates, recognising the successful completion of the year. What a great achievement! Here's the photo so that you can join in with the simcha too!

Rabbi Farbman presented them with their certificates and everyone wished them a hearty 'Mazal Tov!'

The highlight of the day was the Torah service, with two of their peers reading from the scroll, namely from Parashat Bechukkotai - Dina Mankevich and Misha Chayenko were the real bnei mitzvah!

After they successfully completed their task, Rabbi Farbman presented them with their bnei mitzvah certificates and then invited all those present to come and study the scroll closely.

This incredible event will no doubt continue to inspire all those who were present - and the bnei mitzvah boy and girl will be doing it again this coming Shabbat at our synagogue, this time in the presence of their parents and indeed all the members of our community. Mazal Tov!

Maksim reading from the scroll, as Rabbi Farbman makes sure there are no mistakes.

Rabbi Farbman presents Maksim with his Bar Mitzvah certificate. Smile!

Student-Rabbi Danny Burkeman maintained a daily blog of his trip - a truly exceptional source of inforamtion on the project and our community. You can read it and enjoy Danny's insights into our life here if you follow this link:

 http://russianpesach.tripod.com/programme.htm

Rabbi Winer pictured above with Maria Tsudikman and Rabbi Farbman

An official report carried by St. Petersburg times can be read here:

http://www.sptimesrussia.com/archive/times/1085/top/t_16253.htm