I'm uploading more stamps, and I find this other one, above.
Basically, unbeknown to most, Russia has tons of little 'republics' inside of it. I'm sure most of you heard of Tatarstan and Chechnya, but have you ever heard of Mordovia, Mari El, Ingushetia, Chuvashia, Evenkia, Bashkoristan and many others?
Russia is huge, and there are many nationalities in there.... many republics. In the 1920s (or maybe the 30s), Stalin planned to make a Jewish republic. He set it up in an area of Russia that's beyond Siberia, in a city called Birobidzhan. It's above Mongolia, and there is nothing there except lots of snow.
He sent around 50000 Jews there before he gave up on the plan. Still, early on there was a huge Yiddish theatre and Shul.
Anyway, for some reason they never stopped calling it the 'Yevreiski Avtonomy Okrug' or the 'Jewish Republic' and this is a stamp I found from there. Actually a mini sheet set.
Cool, huh?
4 comments:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Autonomous_Oblast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_and_Judaism_in_the_Jewish_Autonomous_Oblast
but you probably knew that already
Yeah, and you should meet Rabbi Motti Scheiner, the chief Rabbi of the place today.
What an awesome Shliach!
He literally lives in the middle of nowhere. 8 hour drive to closest shliach in Khabarovsk. He has a TV show 'Yiddishkeit' that's been going on for over 5 years already...
He rocks!
(In Stavropol there was one Jew originally from Birobidzhan, but I forget who it was...)
It's people like him that make me scared to be a shliach. How could I ever live up to that?
He's probably saying the same thing about some other shliach who has life harder than him...
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