Three Women in Front of Brick Wall by Joan Roth — Tatiana Plotnikova; her mother-in-law, Ida; and Larissa Kovalenko, Project Kesher activists in Lutsk, celebrate. They received a grant for their health initiative as a result of a Project Kesher gathering on women’s health. “Project Kesher changed my life,” Plotnikova said. “I’m more concerned with the environment, nutrition, and health. In fact I lead workshops now. I teach women that all these parts of their lives are interconnected.”
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If you go
What: Dessert reception for “Women and Jewish Renaissance in Ukraine”
When: Wednesday, Sept. 16, at 7 p.m.
Where: Gaelen Gallery East Arts Lobby, Leon & Toby Cooperman JCC, Ross Family Campus, West Orange
Hosts: Photographer Joan Roth, UJC MetroWest NJ, JCC MetroWest, and the women of Project Kesher
Information: Contact Lisa Suss at 973-530-3413 or lsuss@jccmetrowest.org
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September 2, 2009
Women and Jewish Renaissance in Ukraine,” a photo essay/exhibit by internationally acclaimed photographer Joan Roth will be celebrated with a reception on Wednesday evening, Sept. 16, at the Leon & Toby Cooperman JCC, Ross Family Campus, West Orange.
The exhibit will be on display at the JCC’s Gaelen Gallery East Arts Lobby from Sept. 13 until Oct. 25.
Sponsored by United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ and JCC MetroWest, the exhibit will include more than two dozen black and white portraits of women in countries of the former Soviet Union who are involved in social activism through the work of Project Kesher.
The collection of photographs grew out of Roth’s longstanding involvement with Project Kesher, an organization consisting of 165 women’s groups and 90 multi-faith/multiethnic coalitions in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, and Kazakhstan. Founded in 1969, the network recently expanded to include Russian-speaking women who have relocated to Israel.
The organization provides innovative leadership training programs for women and girls, job training at ORT/Keshernet Computer Centers, and Jewish educational programs. It supports social advocacy initiatives tackling health and social ills that affect the larger society, including breast cancer, HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, human trafficking, anti-Semitism, and other forms of ethnic intolerance.
In 1994, Roth documented Project Kesher’s first International Conference of Jewish Women in Kiev, Ukraine. She returned in 2006 during a worldwide campaign against domestic violence.
Her photographs capture “ordinary” women creating extraordinary change in their own lives and in the lives of their communities.
“I really look forward to coming to the MetroWest community,” Roth told NJ Jewish News. With the JCC exhibit, everything has come “full circle.” Her children and grandchildren live in the MetroWest area, and she has photographed the region in Ukraine where her father came from. The exhibit, she said, “brings it all together: past, present, and future”
She said she is particularly thrilled “to highlight the work of Project Kesher and their extraordinary work bringing women into the 21st century.” The women she has documented are “so accomplished; they read Torah and study Torah, and now they can lead us. We need to do what they are doing.”
Roth said it has been “an honor and privilege” as well to bring her photographs to the community where her daughter works; Melanie Roth Gorelick is an associate with the Community Relations Committee of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ.
Joan Roth is also “very excited to bring these worlds together: Project Kesher, a vital organization that is important to bring to the community, and the many women in MetroWest who support its work.”
Just before the opening of the exhibit, Roth was off to Poland to do research on the occasion of the 67th anniversary of the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto, including delving into family roots; her great-grandmother was from nearby Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland).
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