September 23, 2008

By Debra Rubin
NJJN Bureau Chief/Middlesex

Idan Peysahovich of the Jewish Agency for Israel, left, speaks to 
Jack and Sylvia Kirshner of South River following a Sept. 10 appearance
at the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County
Photo by Debra Rubin 

When Idan Peysahovich arrived in Georgia shortly after the Russian invasion early last month, he found devastation and fear.

In Gori, a city near the disputed South Ossetia province that is home to several hundred Jews, he found homes and businesses in ruins and streets pocked with potholes from the Russian barrage.

“Jews, like their neighbors, were hiding in basements,” said Peysahovich, who visited the former Soviet republic as a representative of the Jewish Agency for Israel. “The city was under heavy siege. I heard reports of pillaging and looting.”

Peysahovich spoke to a group of listeners at the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County in South River on Sept. 10 during the last stop on a month-long speaking tour of the United States.

Earlier that day Peysahovich spoke to students at the Solomon Schechter Day School of Raritan Valley in East Brunswick.

Many of Gori’s Jews heeded warnings and fled to the safety of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, where most of the country’s 12,000 Jews live and which was untouched by fighting.

The Jewish Agency brought the first 150 Georgian Jews to Israel within days of the outbreak of fighting.

Peysahovich, who is with JAFI’s aliya and absorption department, said most of Gori’s Jews have lost everything and have immigrated or will immigrate to Israel. He said there were no reports of any Jews killed in the Russian assault, although an Israeli journalist was wounded while covering the fighting in Gori.

“We sent several planes to Georgia when the fighting started to airlift people,” Peysahovich said. “We have several hundred applications for aliya already filed.”

Many of Tbilisi’s Jews, however, have chosen to stay put in Georgia, where they have a vibrant Jewish life, including youth clubs, religious school, and Birthright Israel programs.

“The Georgian community is very Jewish,” said Peysahovich. “They have a very tight connection to Judaism. It is not like Russia, where the connection is very loose. They have been there for 2,000 years and, unlike much of the Soviet Union, they have had no problems with anti-Semitism. They have never had a history of this.”

Despite that, since 1989, 23,287 Georgian Jews have immigrated to Israel, 324 last year.

Peysahovich is a frequent visitor to many parts of the former Soviet Union. As a native of Siberia, he said, he can communicate with residents and has an understanding of their troubles and fears.

“As a 14-year-old in a small town in Siberia, I was beaten up for being Jewish,” said Peysahovich, who made aliya to Israel with his family and had a brit mila and bar mitzva at age 16.

A former flight attendant with El Al airlines, the 33-year-old Peysahovich said he left that job to work for JAFI because he felt the need to give back.

“I don’t see this as a job. I see it as a mission,” he said.

He said it was only because the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and JAFI always have shlihim, or emissaries, on the ground in Georgia that it was possible for the evacuation and other efforts to be implemented so quickly.

Plans are now under way to help the Jews remaining in Georgia, including bringing teens exposed to the fighting to camp or schools in Israel. Psychological and counseling services are also being provided for those traumatized by the conflict.

“The JDC is helping Jews with food and medical assistance and supplies,” he said. “No one knows what will be in the future.”

The JDC is a beneficiary of United Jewish Communities, the umbrella agency for Jewish federations in North America.

Everything done by the Jewish Agency, Peysahovich said, is a result of support from federations. “It is amazing that this help comes from the other side of the ocean from people we don’t know. My life was changed by being brought over by the Jewish Agency. I have come full circle, and now I feel I am closing that circle.”