Project Judaica: Selected Portraits of Graduates

Ekaterina Broitman (class of 2004) is one of the leaders of the Moscow Hillel organization. She coordinates Hillel's Shabbat Project, teaching college students how to conduct Shabbat services and rituals. She travels widely across Russia on weekends, conducting local seminars and Shabbatonim.

Matvei Chlenov (class of 1996) is director of the Moscow office of the World Congress of Russian Jews. Having returned to Moscow after several years as a graduate student of Jewish history at University College, London, Chlenov is writing his doctoral dissertation on the cultural wing of the Soviet Jewish movement of the 1970s.

Maria Kaspina (class of 1998) teaches midrash, rabbinic literature, and Jewish folklore for Project Judaica. She completed her doctorate at RSUH in 2001 with a thesis on Adam and Eve in the Jewish and Russian traditions. She recently returned from a semester at Hebrew University in Israel to assume her responsibilities as the assistant director of Academic Affairs of Project Judaica.

Artur Klempert (class of 2001) is instructor of Jewish History at the Lipman Jewish Day School inMoscow. He constructed a three-year Jewish history curriculum, the first such curriculum for Russian Jewish schools. Klempert also directs the school's much-acclaimed museum, The History of My People through the History of My Family. In his free time, he serves on the staff of the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia.

Sonya Kopelyan (class of 2004) spent the fall 2003 semester at The Jewish Theological Seminary where she is beginning work on her master's thesis, "Miracles in Medieval Jewish Thought."

Lev Krichevsky (class of 1996) heads the Moscow Bureau of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Ivan Pichugin (class of 1996) is an archivist with the Jewish Archival Survey of Project Judaica.

Larissa Privalskaya (class of 1999) is completing her doctorate in Yiddish studies at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Anya Shternshis (class of 1996) received her doctorate in Yiddish folklore from Oxford University in 2001 and is currently an assistant professor of Yiddish at the University of Toronto.

Anya Simonova (class of 1996) earned her doctorate in 1999 from the RSUH. She is currently the executive director of the Russian Friends of Hebrew University.

Alexei Sivertsev (class of 1996) received his doctorate in Ancient Jewish History in 2001 from New York University and is an assistant professor of Jewish Studies at DePaul University in Chicago.

Anna Sorokina (class of 1999) teaches Yiddish for Project Judaica and is pursuing a doctorate in Yiddish linguistics at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. An abridged version of her master's thesis on Soviet Yiddish periodicals for children was published in Judaica Rossica, vol. 2 (2002). She is also the director of the Yiddish Center of Moscow Hillel, which attracts thirty to fifty young people to its weekly programs on Yiddish culture.

Maria Zavorokhina (class of 2004) is the Judaica librarian at the Russian State University Library.