Minsk Jewish Campus: a view from a five years distance

For the elder part of the Jewish community Minsk Jewish Campus is a dream come true; for juniors it is a wonderful reality, with a touch of magic here and there. It took exactly five years to make out of the modest piece of real–estate in the downtown Minsk a warm and cozy and caring heaven for some twenty thousand local Jews, that at least once a year come here looking for company and entertainment, if not already involved in the operations of 18 organizations that the MJC shelters. War vets and ghetto survivors, moms with toddlers, students and young professionals, sports addicts and disabled persons are equally welcomed on the MJC premises, to benefit from recreational, athletic, educative, artistic and welfare activities. They form clubs and circles upon interests and affinities; they assimilate Jewish knowledge and rites; they perceive the delights and the constraints of Jewish life in the Jewish environment.

In five years, names like Hesed-Rachamim, Emuna, Mazl Tov, Raduga (Rainbow), acronyms like JFOS have all acquired that special sound related to brilliant achievements such as success of Jewish disabled athletes at the eliminatory tour of 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Shanghai, as well as to everyday assiduous work to assist the lonely, the helpless and the needy. Hot meals and food packs being the best visible, the most tangible and rather uniform part of social welfare, its background offers multiple options to fill human life with meaning and dignity. Pre–School education programs and Day Care Center for elder persons are in fact only two faces of the self–imposed assignment Jewish organizations are striving to comply with.

The MJC houses the Institute of Social and Community Workers too, which seems only logic, for teachers, professionals and lay leaders more than often mix to draft plans for training sessions and field actions.

Five years ago, efforts to pay a professional tribute to the history of Byelorussian Jewry were fed on pure enthusiasm. Since then, the Museum of Jewish Heritage has truly become “the–jewel–of-the–Crown” of the MJC, known all around the world with its numerous exhibitions, guided tours, research studies and publications.

The humble office at the first floor is the HQ of the Union of Jewish Associations and Communities of Belarus. It has all characteristic attributes — look and sound — of an average public office: keyboards clicking, phones ringing, visitors in turnover. Perhaps, those very “bureaucratic” SOPs have contributed to the fact that the Union has become one of the most influential public associations in Belarus.

The MJC is a lively place. That is what people say — Jews or gentiles — happy to make that amazing discovery that somehow will from now on make part of their lives. And vice–versa: meant as a home: four walls and a roof, Minsk Jewish Campus has become in five years of its existence a living body animated by thousand lives of its patrons, offering them solace and help and quite often a purpose in life.