Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein (with guitar), president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, conducts a Havdalah ceremony on March 29 at the Limmud FSU conference in Parsippany, NJ. Photo: Yossi Aloni.

JNS.org – The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) and Limmud FSU (former Soviet Union) have formed a new partnership to expand efforts to connect Russian-speaking Jews around the world.

According to the groups’ three-year agreement—announced in conjunction with the March 28-30 Limmud FSU conference in Parsippany, NJ, that brought together 800 young Russian-American Jews—the partnership will allow Limmud FSU, which already runs the largest gathering of Russian Jews in North America, to expand its international presence into several new countries and regions with Russian-Jewish communities, including plans to hold its first Canadian conference later this year.

The partnership also expands on the IFCJ’s decades of existing work helping Jews from the former Soviet Union, including recent efforts to provide emergency assistance to the Jewish community of Ukraine.

“The Fellowship, which has helped hundreds of thousands of Jews across the Soviet Union for many years, is joining today an outstanding organization with the aim of strengthening it and allowing many more participants to come and join its conferences and to prove that Judaism has many faces and remains relevant to young Jews,” IFCJ President Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein stated.