“Ethnos of the Millennia”:
on questions to memory, G-d, and the being of the Jewish people
In 2023, the Institute’s founder, Yonatan Widgop, published the book Ethnos of the Millennia. It includes a presentation of the concept of the mission of the Jewish people, developed through years of interdisciplinary research, as well as an introduction to the latest discoveries made in this field by Israel’s Am HaZikaron Institute. This collection of philosophical essays is a definite challenge to the perception of the contemporary well-being of Jewish history. The foundations of the scientific existence of modernity are organically considered by the author in unity with the notions of “soul” and “mission” of the individual Jew and his clan, which are conventional for this system.
What is this mission? First of all, in the realization of the global concept of memory and human choice. In qualitatively analyzing the tatistical results of research on the mission of the Jewish people, Yonatan Widgop touches upon such phenomena as the impetus for the creation of the State of Israel, the concept of the essence of the hero and the ideal in Judaism, the reconciliation of symbol and reality in the modern world, and the reconciliation of the concepts of chaos and progress in history.
The given fragments of dialogues, born in the process of lectures, quotations of great Jewish sages and Kabbalists allow the reader to comprehend in a new way the judgment that a person, in essence, is unchangeable, and his life at any moment of history is determined by the quality of memory about the past, his personal choice and critical attitude to people who are heroes of his present. It is the knowledge of the mission of the Jewish people and its embodiment in the lives of our ancestors that determines the possibility of preserving and developing Jewish civilization.
“Modern society…in which the practical arguments of reason have long since superseded the arguments of the heart, sees the existing real world as the only manifestation of reality”
The full version of the book is available to read on the author’s website at https://www.vidgop.co.il/
Russia. Three-year pogrom
Let the ashes of the slaughtered, burned, sunk, raped – all the murdered – resound always in our hearts, in the hearts of our children, their children’s children – and so in all generations… It was a continuous endless disaster, not random tragedies, but a three-year relentless “pogrom movement”. everyone took part in the Jewish pogroms – Whites and Reds, atamans and Polish soldiers, Petliurovtsy and partisans, peasants and city dwellers. Murderers of all nations and armies, united by a common hatred, contributed their share – Russians and Ukrainians, Belarusians and Poles, Chechens and Moldavians.
The only thing they all had in common was a frenzied inhuman rage and an unquenchable desire to exterminate the Jews. Frenzied mobs, under the banner of various political ideas, broke into towns and cities, slaughtering Jews. Three hundred thousand murdered, hundreds of thousands raped, a quarter of a million orphans and countless cripples were left behind.
Inhuman torment fell upon the people guilty only of having had the misfortune to be born Jews in Russia. Hate, hatred, hatred that rushed over the edge in a merciless lava flowed out onto the localities frozen in horror. From the Polish Czestochowa and Kielce through all of Ukraine and Belorussia, Tambov Province and Yekaterinburg to Mongolian Urga, where Baron Ungern ordered his division to “destroy all the Jews of the town together with their families.
Of course, there were fewer pogroms in the European part of Russia, but this is due not to the special love of the Russian people for Jews, but to the fact that the overwhelming majority of them lived in the territory of the “sedentary line”. Jews during the Civil War were killed just for being Jews, regardless of gender, age and beliefs, and it is this that allows these pogroms to be called a grand rehearsal for the Holocaust. Unfortunately for those who carried out the pogroms, they did not have the punctuality of the Germans, nor did they have the tools for the total extermination of the people they hated. Therefore, they killed as they could…
No more than 19 years would pass and 6 million Jews would be exterminated in the same places, by the same hands, under the leadership of the Nazis, and more often on their own initiative.
The full version of the book is available to read on the author’s website at https://www.vidgop.co.il/
“Generations.”
“The Book of Fates.”
On October 20, 2024 the Union of Russian-speaking Writers of Israel (SRWI) together with the Institute of Jewish Heritage “Am haZikaron” announced an international memoir contest “The Book of Destinies: 50 Stories of Jewish Families”. This is the first attempt to gather stories from the private lives of ordinary people into one big encyclopedia of national memory. A professional panel of SRCPI judges selected the top 50 entries and provided literary editing of the memoirs to ensure that they reached the reader in perfect literary form. A Facebook community has been created for project participants to post and discuss their stories. To purchase the book, email here: itzhak8@gmail.com
Eretz Israel Magazine
Eretz Israel Magazine is a popular print publication about Israel for Russian-speaking Jews living outside the country. The magazine tells about the origins and history of Jewish families, Israel and traditions.
It is a non-profit quarterly magazine.
Major Themes:
- Origin and history of Russian-speaking Jews
- Jewish life in the past
- Jewish life in Israel today
- The Role of Russian Jewry in the Creation of the State of Israel
- Life in Russian-speaking Jewish communities around the world
The magazine is distributed free of charge in the Israeli Cultural Center, Jewish Agency for Israel, representations of the Ministry of Integration and Immigration in Israel, Jewish communities working in the CIS countries.
The journal is published by Am HaZikaron, a non-profit Israeli institute.