Searching For Kosher Food Where The Soviets Made A Jewish State

Image by Russiatrek.org

By Daniel J. Solomon February 27, 2017

Observant Jews in far-flung locales face difficulty in getting kosher food, but perhaps nowhere is the challenge more acute than in Siberia’s Birobidzhan region, where a community of a few thousand — the remnant of a failed Soviet experiment in creating a Jewish mini-state – is trying to procure a steady supply of kosher meat and cheese.

“Once we get kosher food, it will be Jewish heaven,” Rabbi Eli Riss, the Chabad-affiliated rabbi who helms the Birobidzhan community, told the Wall Street Journal. “A cold one but heaven all the same.” Under the rabbi’s plan, kosher products will soon be transported via train from Moscow to the frozen enclave, to be sold in a butcher shop to be set up by a local Jewish businesswoman.

Birodbidzhan was established as a Jewish proto-state, with Yiddish as its official language, in the 1930’s’ as part of the Soviet Union’s policy then of encouraging national minorities to express their culture. The Jewish population peaked in the tends of thousands, before declining, as a result of the harsh climate and government persecution.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at solomon@forward.com or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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