Chutzpah as it is: Jewish communities began to eradicate drunkenness in Russia

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The largest Jewish organization in Russia was tasked with weaning fellow citizens from drugs and alcohol.

As reported by the Interfax agency, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia received a presidential grant to implement a program to combat drug addiction and alcoholism.

Within the framework of the project, it is planned to conduct more than 20 seminars in various regions of the country aimed at improving the professional training of specialists in the field of combating drug addiction and alcoholism. Since the beginning of the year, seminars have already been held in Kazan and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, and in the near future they will be held in Blagoveshchensk, Birobidzhan and Khabarovsk.

FEOR President Alexander Boroda said on this occasion:

"The pooling of forces and the exchange of experience between representatives of various specialized structures is undoubtedly a big step in combating drug addiction and alcoholism. The future of patients and their families depends to a very large extent on the competent work of specialists, and the future of our country depends on the correct preventive work with young people. ".

The seminars bring together doctors, psychiatrists, narcologists, psychologists, teachers, employees of rehabilitation centers and social workers, employees of commissions on juvenile affairs.

The FEOR website provides a rationale for this project:

“Judaism fully shares and supports the approach of the official narcology to the prevention of drug addiction and alcoholism, the treatment and rehabilitation of drug addicts. covering the work and opportunities of the professional community.

The task of FEOR is to cultivate among the population traditional methods recognized at the state level, and, thereby, to help oust organizations that use pseudoscientific methods of treating addiction from the topic of solving drug addiction problems.

Feasible assistance to a specific person, his family and loved ones in their fight against painful addiction, as well as assistance in the development of tools for the prevention of drug addiction, rehabilitation and resocialization of drug addicted people in Russia, are considered by FEOR as the main goals of anti-drug activities.

Rabbis, religious leaders and members of the Jewish community involved in work to help drug addicts and their loved ones fulfill God's commandment, as it is said in the Torah: “You will also walk in His ways” (Book Dvarim 28: 9). Helping a neighbor, a believing person in a sense becomes like God himself: “Be like Him (God): as He is merciful, so be merciful” (Babylonian Talmud, treatise “Shabbat” 133, 2).

Helping others commanded by the Torah is not considered completed if all stages of the task are not completed. This important principle is taught to the community by Jewish sages, supporting their statements with quotations from the Torah, as it is written (Babylonian Talmud, treatise Sotah, 13, 2, and in TANAKH, Joshua 24:32): “Rabbi Hama, quoting Rabbi Hanina, said: "Anyone who does and does not finish, but another came and finished - only about the second does the Scripture say:" For he did the whole thing!"

The inclusion of anti-drug activities in the work of Jewish organizations and the life of the community is the implementation of one of the most important principles of the FEOR. Great is the result of a good deed carried out by society together, as it is said in the Torah (Book of Vayikra 26: 8): “And five of you will put a hundred to flight, and a hundred of you ten thousand will put to flight,” and how this Hebrew verse explains sage Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki (1040 BC)- 1105): “You cannot compare a few performing a good deed with a large society performing it. The more numerous the society, the stronger each of its members."

All this is undoubtedly important and interesting, only the question arises: since drunkenness and drug addiction are not so common among Jewish citizens of the Russian Federation, is it worth spending energy on this project? In our unenlightened view, FEOR, as a religious and national organization, should deal with purely Jewish projects. But experts and relevant public organizations on the ground should explain why it is not worth drinking the Hawthorn bath agent or about the dangers of heroin.

One more nuance. Not very kind people not from Cezuan will probably start talking about the cutting of public funds by persons of Jewish nationality. Regarding the sawing, we admit, in all honesty, not only "non-Sesuanians" probably thought. But is it possible to think so about the crystal-honest fellow tribesmen in neatly doused lapserdaks?

Evil anti-Semitic languages may also recall accusations of how the Jews drunk Russian (Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish and other Slavic people), and now, therefore, they want to deprive people of their last joy. Because in the olden days they used to swear at shinkars for selling alcohol, but even more so - if those establishments for some reason did not open.

So the grant is a grant, and it would be better to channel energy into a peaceful Jewish channel.

Or does the Jewish community of Russia no longer have any problems?

Read also: What is chutzpah?