Subbotniks: Personal Stories

The story of the Katz family characterizes the history of Vissoky Jews and the way in which their community was involved in the lives of the other neighboring Jews in the area. [caption id="attachment_171995" align="alignleft" width="285"] Yevgeny & Svetlana at a Voronezh synagogue [/caption] In the Great Synagogue...

We're excited that past Shavei Israel emissary Eldad (Artem) Fedorchuk will be reprising his role as emissary for the Subbotnik Jews in Russia!   The Subbotniks were peasants in southern Russia who embraced Jewish practice and converted to Judaism more than 200 years ago under the Czarist...

Anna Lazarevna Bocharnikova, one of the community leaders of Vysoki, Russia who came to Israel to make aliyah (formal immigration to Israel) almost 9 months ago, will mark July 4th, 2019 as one of the most special days in her life. This was the day...

Shavei Israel: Here’s the latest installment of our historical and ethnographic report about the history of Vysoki, Russia’s biggest location of the community of the Subbotnik Jews who embraced Judaism several centuries ago and continued to keep their Jewish identity during all these years in the...

Tuesday, August 22 is a date that Tamara Sobyleva will never forget. That’s the day she received her teudat zehut – her Israeli identification card – ending a decade-long process that has been both joyous and bittersweet for the 57-year-old former resident of Vysoki, Russia....

Perhaps more than any other holiday on the Jewish calendar, Hanukah celebrates the determined survival of the Jewish people. Over two millennia ago a small band of fighters, led by Judah the Maccabee, fought against the Hellenist rulers of ancient Israel who sought to assimilate...