Adoption of the Zvenigorodka Shtetl

Temple Shalom

215 South Hillside Avenue
Succasunna, New Jersey 07876
973-584-5666
Temple Shalom's website
e-mail Temple Shalom

Over Memorial Day weekend 2000, ten members of Temple Shalom, Succasunna, New Jersey, traveled to Ukraine to bring a Torah scroll to the Zvenigorodka Jewish community and to participate in a B'nai Mitzvah ceremony there for 17 young people and one adult.

Zvenigorodka is a small town southeast of Kiev, a journey of some four and a half hours by bus. The Reform/Progressive congregation there is one of approximately 34 burgeoning congregations throughout Ukraine. Just before the Temple Shalom visitors arrived, the congregation had successfully petitioned the government for the return of its synagogue.

Among the congregation was a thirteen year old girl who joined the B'nai Mitzvah service, a newly-accepted rabbinical student, and an amateur Jewish genealogist. In addition to the Torah scroll, a gift to the entire Jewish community, the travelers from Succasunna brought a tallit and a kiddush cup for each Zvenigorodka Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Each set of these items was donated by an up-coming Bar/Bat Mitzvah family from the congregation.

The travelers found it truly inspiring to dance in the streets of Zvenigorodka with the congregants and their new Torah, especially since, less than ten years earlier, being a Jew, let alone openly practicing Judaism, was dangerous. The B'nai Mitzvah ceremony which followed was equally inspiring and had a decidedly international flavor with rabbis from Kiev, England and New Jersey conducting the ceremony in Hebrew, English, Russian and Ukrainian.

Determined to aid in the continued growth of the Zvenigorodka Jewish community, in the days following the ceremony the Temple Shalom delegation entered into detailed discussions with local, regional and national leaders. As a result of those discussions, the group committed to:

• Raise $10,000 to restore the synagogue building (which had been used as a hospital and which was in great disrepair);

   

• Raise up to $4,000 to restore the Jewish cemetery, which has been in use since the nineteenth century (to mark the boundaries, record the names of those buried there and hire a caretaker);

   

• Contribute up to $400, through tzedakah contributions from religious school students, to enhance the religious school programs and subsidize the transportation expenses of the children of the shtetl; and

   

• Double the pensions of the 40 poorest elderly Jews in the shtetl by enabling forty families at Temple Shalom to adopt them.

In response to the efforts of the members of Temple Shalom in New Jersey, the Zvenigorodka community has named its synagogue Temple Shalom.