Back to the USSR
A mitzvah project can take you far … in one boy’s case, to Russia and back
BY ELLEN SCHUR BROWN, Family Editor, Cleveland Jewish News, 10/29/10
Preparing for a bar mitzvah can be a trek, but for Beachwood’s Vonya Shiffman, the journey took him all the way to the Russian city of Ulan Ude, on the 5640th kilometer of the Trans-Siberian railway.
The trip to Ulan Ude is nine hours from New York to Moscow and another six hours to the Siberian province of Buryatia. Vonya’s mother Naomi Shiffman had made the trip once before, 10 years ago when she adopted the sweet toddler she had seen in pictures and videos. Shiffman felt it was time Vonya and her older children saw for themselves the orphanage in which he once lived.
Read the whole story at the Cleveland Jewish News.
Related story: Beachwood Agnon School student makes “Cases for Kids” in the Sun Press.