110 years after the first Yiddishist symposium, academics reconvene in Ukraine to preserve a language that saw half its native speakers die in the Holocaust.

Oleksiy Khamrai, Doctor of Philology, Head of Master’s Program in Jewish Studies at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy speaks on the Jewish Studies program recently opened in NaUKMA.

From the editor: the political spectrum of the Jewish organizations that emerged in Poland between the two wars became to a large degree the main factor in forming the range of views and opinions of the future of the Jewish life not only in the Diaspora but even in the yishuv. Therefore, we thought the political life of the Polish Jews in the above-mentioned years is of more than just regional significance and would be of interest to our readers.

The number of several thousand Jews living in India is incommensurable with the almost 1.5 billion population of this country. One could assume that Jewish people remained unnoticed in the life of such a big South Asian sub-continent but let us assure you that such conclusion is at odds with reality. The Jews of India did not only create several unique versions of the Jewish religious and cultural model that developed in the unusual for the Jewish history Hindu-Muslim environment, but they also claimed their right to be fully-fledged element of the Indian society, at least, in the states of Maharashtra and Kerala.

''I believe that intelligent people of good will are unlikely to argue against the above formulated principles. I am sure that their sincere acceptance will help solve many difficult problems – the integration between Jewish people, the integration between the Jewish people and the world, and the finding of peace for the State of Israel. ''

Although in the last 20 years significant results in Hebrew education were achieved, the part of the Jewish population with access to quality services in this field remains extremely mall. There is also a very small percentage of Jews interested in receiving this kind of services. In order to break this tendency and to make the “symbol of belonging to the Jewish world” become familiar to most Jews, local and Israeli organizations, both professional and public, must take coordinated proactive measures.