A group of eight Emory Hillel students, accompanied by Rabbi Joshua Lesser, joined up with the Hillel in Minsk, Belarus, for a week of Purim celebrations and community service. Upon arrival, the Emory students began helping members of the Minsk Jewish community make Mishloach Manot (Purim packages) for disabled children and the elderly. They also decorated a Purim bus that delivered these gifts to the countryside.

This special group of Emory students, called the Tritt Social Justice Force, comprises eight of ten total students involved in the first year of a groundbreaking project to dramatically increase the scope of Jewish social action projects at Emory University. Funded primarily through a visionary, three-year, $45,000 grant by the Ramie and Joyce Tritt Family Foundation, "Force" participants have committed to initiate new social justice programs aimed at involving hundreds of students and thousands of beneficiaries over the next few years.

Force members have received special training over the last few months, including encounters with some of the most prominent social action leaders in the area.  The group traveled to Vitebsk, the birthplace of Marc Chagall and Shimon Peres, and participated in a Belorusian-Ukrainian Purim festival. They witnessed many different interpretations of the Purim story as groups competed for the best Purimshpiel. The Emory students spent the majority of their week visiting and sharing Purim with the disabled and the elderly.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta answered the "challenge" by the Tritt Family Foundation and provided the $10,000 in funding necessary to make this year's Minsk Trip happen. Minsk is a sister city of Atlanta, and this trip has spurred discussion between the young people of both communities about how to institutionalize, through joint programs, the close bonds fostered on the trip. Discussions are already underway with JFGA's "Partnership" Committee about doing this trip again next year, and including a contingent from JFGA's Partnership region in Israel, Yokneam/Meggido.

Rebecca Liebeskind, a junior at Emory University, who had not been involved in Jewish life until joining up with the Force, wants to go back to Minsk this summer to volunteer in the community. "These people are so sincere in their desire to be Jewish," she said "They really want to make a lasting connection with us."

To explore how you can be involved in this – or any one of Hillels of Georgia's 550 programs, please contact Jacob Schreiber at 404-727-6490 or Jacob@Hillelsofgeorgia.org.

Hillels of GA is one of Federation's local beneficiary agencies, and received an allocation of $407,326 in FY04.