Euroasian Jewish News

Graduates of the NaUKMA MA program in Jewish Studies

Letter to EAJC President from NaUKMA Jewish Studies Program Head

Dear Mr. Mikhail Mirilashvili!

The development of academic Jewish Studies is an EAJC priority.  In general, the role of education in the formation of Jewish spirituality and in the life of Jewish community is hard to overestimate.

Currently, Jewish Studies at the National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” (NaUKMA), a leading Ukrainian (and in post-Soviet countries generally) university, are represented by two project: an MA program and a Certificate program.

The certificate program has been in operation since 2013, and the MA since 2012. In this time, we have prepared dozens of experts who currently work in various Jewish communities and organiations both in Ukraine itself and beyond its borders. Both programs are conducted in close cooperation with community leaders, including religious Jewish communities. For their part, some of the professors and students in both programs are active participants in certain Jewish communities - for example, the Traditional Jewish community.

The EAJC’s long-time support is part of its reputation. For all of these years, the EAJC has actively and seriously supported the implementation of both programs through its Kyiv office, partially financing their implementation. Moreover, in the early days of the programs, the EAJC completely funded each of them for a year (2003 and 2012 respectively). It would not be an overstatement to say that these educational projects, both the MA and the Certificate program, do more than merely disseminate knowledge about the history, culture, and traditions of the Jewish people, which in itself helps fight everyday anti-Semitism. They also significantly bolster the EAJC’s reputation as an international non-profit organization.

Thus, the financial support of these educational projects by the EAJC is an important part of its successful public activity, and it also improves its ratings as an organization and boosts the authority of its leadership. Additionally, as we are right now in February, the second month of the current year, both projects require continued financial support from the EAJC, as without this support it’s impossible to see how the curriculae will be completed, and thus it is also hard to imagine how academic Jewish Studies will develop in the region at all.

Naturally, these projects also secure financing from other sources than the EAJC, such as grants from the Temerty Family Foundation (Canada), the Nadav Foundation, VAAD Ukraine, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the Dutch Jewish Humanitarian Fund. However, EAJC financing is a necessary and indispensible part of the programs’ budget, without which their full-scale imlementation becomes threatened.

Both projects were presented to the EAJC Program Commission and approved at a Commission meeting in 2017.

We very much hope that you will support our programs!

Respectfully,

Professor Alexey Khamray,