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Euroasian Jewish News
Condolences On Death of Zakhar Rokhline
13.01.2009
On the 13th of January is Moscow, the heart of Zakhar Rokhline, sociologist, cultural anthropologist and pedagogue, the last director of the "New Jewish School," stopped.
Zakhar Rokhline was merely 30. He had been full of creative ideas and plans for the future. Despite his youth, he had done much: published books, helped better the Jewish education in Saint-Petersburg and other Russian cities, read lectures, organized scientific expeditions and community camps. But much remains undone...
The Euro-Asian Jewish Congress condoles with the relatives and friends of Zakhar Rokhline.
Tehiyu nafsho tzrura be-tzror ha-chaim - May his Soul be Bound into the Knot of Life.
The funeral will take place on the 15th of January in Saint-Petersburg.
ZAKHAR ROKHLIN (1979 – 2009)
Zakhar Rokhlin, a social anthropologist and teacher, the last director of the New Jewish School pedagogical club, was born in Leningrad on January 4, 1979.
Upon graduation from the Saint-Petersburg Art Lyceum in 1996, he was matriculated at the Department of Sociology of Saint-Petersburg State University.
As a sophomore, he began to make sociological surveys on Jewish topics. In 1999, Zakhar became one of the founders and a research fellow of the New Jewish School pedagogical club — a unique network for professionals in Jewish education that served as an umbrella and a center for teaching methods for all Jewish schools and informal educational organizations in the former Soviet Union.
In 2002 he graduated from the university and spent a year in the Jerusalem Makhon Meir yeshiva. Upon his return to Russia, he continued his sociological and pedagogical activities.
Zakhar was the author of several dozen articles on the problems of Jewish education, which were published, inter alia, in the Jews of Euro-Asia, Community Life, and New Jewish School journals, as well as in the Euro-Asian Jewish Year Book. In 2002, his book on Jewish schools in the FSU, written in cooperation with Hana Rotman, was published.
In 2005 Zakhar Rokhlin became executive director of the New Jewish School, which organized many programs (seminars, workshops, etc.) for Jewish teachers and published books and methodological materials on Jewish education. Among the programs led by him were the Art and Tradition in Jewish School series of seminars and the Isaac’s Wells project for publication of the Five Megillot with new comments.
For several years Zakhar actively participated in the research expeditions supported by the EAJC to study Jewish monuments of the Diaspora. In 2006, the New Jewish School and the International Center for Jewish Education and Field Studies held a unique field seminar for Jewish teachers and painters in the Crimea, initiated by Zakhar; in 2007 he organized a student expedition to research the Jewish monuments of the Western Ukraine.
In 2007 Zakhar Rokhlin began work at the Saint Petersburg Choral Synagogue as a lecturer and head of educational programs. At that time he began to write A Course of Jewish History.
In the last months of his life Zakhar lived in Moscow, where he continued to work on various sociological surveys, articles, and translations.
Zakhar Rokhlin died of a sudden heart attack, nine days after his thirtieth birthday.
Zakhar was a thoroughly gifted person, a brilliant poet, artist, and lecturer. His amazing personality, graceful style, and unique sense of humor will always be honored by his relatives, friends and colleagues.
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