Food supplies were a topic of discussion as Alexandr Baron, center, president of Mitsva, the Kazakhstani Jewish organization, was shown around the JFS Kosher Food Pantry, accompanied by, from left, David and Sharon Halpern, Pnina and Anatol Hiller, Tom Beck, Stanley Stone, Ruth Bilenker, and Toby Goldberger.
Photos by Elaine Durbach
Kazakhstan at a glance
Kazakhstan is the second-largest republic of the former Soviet Union, with a population that is approximately 47 percent native Muslim and 44 percent Russian.
Stalin’s purges of the late 1930s injected large numbers of Jews into Kazakhstan. Before that, the few Jews there were either descendants of Russian-Jewish soldiers who settled in the area in the 19th century or of Bukharan Jews who traded along the Silk Road.
A disproportionate segment of the Jewish population of some 15,000 to 20,000 is elderly (nearly 18,000 Jews made aliya after the collapse of communism). Families — whether by choice or by circumstance — live in more than 140 locales across the country today.
Since the early 1990s, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee has been working with local Jewish leaders to create relief and identity programs in 13 cities.
— Sources: JDC, JTA
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May 7, 2009
At a meeting in Elizabeth last Wednesday, April 29, Anatol Hiller served as a living bridge between two Jewish communities half a world apart.
The New Jersey-based real estate developer and philanthropist introduced leaders from the local Jewish community to one of the major figures in the Jewish community of Kazakhstan, Alexandr Baron, president of Mitsva, the umbrella association of Kazakhstani Jewish institutions.
Baron, a medical doctor, has been instrumental in the creation of Jewish cultural and welfare centers across his country. He currently serves on the boards of the World Congress of Russian Jewry and of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress and is a Jewish representative in the lower house of the Kazakhstani legislature.
In a meeting at the offices of Jewish Family Service of Central New Jersey, Baron described the assistance his similar organization provides to about 5,000 people — around one-10th of the official Jewish population of Kazakhstan — including many who receive basic food staples.
“We are able to help only about 40 percent of those who are in need, and as time goes by, we are finding more and more needy people,” he said.
Baron was in the United States for meetings with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a major funder of Jewish programs in Kazakhstan, and to attend the annual conference of the American Jewish Committee in Washington, DC.
Hiller, who lives now in Warren, grew up in Amaty in Kazakhstan. Last year, for the first time since leaving there with his family 49 years ago, he went back to visit, accompanied by his wife, Pnina, and their son, Jeffrey. Baron and his associates gave them a warm welcome, and showed them around the city and its Jewish programs, a number of which Hiller has helped finance.
Also attending the meeting at JFS were philanthropists David and Sharon Halpern, who went with the Hillers to Kazakhstan last year; JFS board members Toby Goldberger and Ruth Bilenker, JFS executive director Tom Beck; and Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey executive vice president Stanley Stone.
Baron was accompanied by Eliot Goldstein, senior international relations officer for the JDC, and Margo Klein, a JDC staff member who served as his translator.
A personal account of JFS services was provided by Moshe Rosenthal and Lillian Tobin, who joined the group to tell Baron about Cafe Europa, the social program run by the agency to provide social contact and support for Holocaust survivors.
Baron was shown around the JFS headquarters building, named for the Halpern family, and the garage that serves as storage depot for the agency’s kosher food pantry.
Baron and his hosts swapped notes on the help they both provide to the needy and children at risk, and their efforts to provide Jewish education and strengthen Jewish identity.
But similarities also gave way to a broad divergence.
Where the Central NJ community of around 37,000 Jews funds both local and overseas programs, Baron said that his organization is largely dependent on outside assistance. He said Mitsva is deeply indebted to American donors and organizations like the JDC, which those donors help finance through gifts to the federation movement.
Goldstein added that every dollar provided that way is matched by $4 or $5 from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (which also provides some funding for Cafe Europa).
Baron said the recent drop in the price of oil, one of his country’s primary resources, has further deepened the country’s financial woes. “Prices have skyrocketed, unemployment is huge, and our clients are in terrible shape,” he said.
Holocaust survivors Lillian Tobin and Moshe Rosenthal joined a meeting at JFS to tell a visitor from Kazakhstan about their wartime experience and the role JFS-run Cafe Europa plays in helping them deal with those memories.
Despite years of trying to change attitudes, giving to charity is not yet a part of the mindset of Kazakhstani Jews. “We don’t have any wealthy Jews who are willing to give money to the Jewish community,” he said. “But we are a relatively new community, and we’re hoping this will change.”
On the other hand, he said, in the past 18 years the Mitsva institutions have been able to train a cadre of Jewish professionals, people equipped to work with the elderly and with children and to help bring Jews back to Judaism. The community is growing.
Hiller said that on his visit last summer, he saw an enormous change since his youth there. Then, while Jews were not victimized, they kept a very low profile. Now, though the country is an Islamic state and in the upper echelons many still do not openly acknowledge their Jewish roots, the community as a whole is classified as a “valued minority.”
Baron said, “There is always a risk for Jews, but for now things are all right. This is an Islamic republic where Jews feel welcome. We are encouraged to practice our Judaism.”
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