In a continuous effort to offer Russian-speaking Jews the same informal education opportunities as their peers enjoy worldwide, FJC’s youth programs platform Yahad launched a training course for lecturers this year. The course, named “Lamed”, consists of four seminars throughout the year, and the latest seminar took place last week on the outskirts of Moscow.

Each of the seminars is devoted to a separate topic: formal education, informal education, mass events and group development. The learning program is developed by Yahad staff who also invite top educational professionals of various fields for specific lectures, from ‘Empathy and the Theory of Mind’ to ‘Body Language and Speaking Skills’.

The objective of the course is to develop participants into top-notch lecturers, who can engage and captivate audiences.”There are so many interesting topics to discuss within Judaism, ” said Rabbi Mendy Willansky, Yahad’s director. “That’s why we wanted to make sure that our speakers really know and use the available modern techniques to connect to their audience and get their message across.”

The course is also closely tied with another Yahad initiative: “Magid – the traveling storyteller”, which sends speakers on lecture tours to FSU communities. Some of them go to small Jewish population towns and villages without a rabbi or a structured community, where their lecture becomes the social event of the week. There are about a 100 of such towns throughout Russia, Willansky said.

“I was impressed that a lecture about Judaism could be so relevant and understandable to young people,” wrote a student from Krasnoyarsk on the community’s website after this week’s Magid-series lecture. “The event was very warm and open, the group asked a lot of questions and did not shy away from discussion, so this was a success!” she said.

Another Magid lecture by a Lamed participant about the holiday of Chanukah will take place in Omsk, Siberia this coming Sunday.