The Sepher Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization, which is a part of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC), and the Jewish Studies Department of the Lomonosov Moscow State University have announced a competitive selection of candidates for grants for a study placement at the Jewish Studies department in the 2012/2013 school year.

Sepher Center Director, EAJC General Council member Dr. Victoria Mochalova spoke about the program to the Jewish News Agency.

According to her, this program has been active since the mid-90s. “This program appeared because 1990s Jewish Studies needed new scholars, advanced studies courses, and so on,” stressed Dr. Mochalova.

At first, the program was financed by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Then, in the early 2000s, the Newman and Shneeweiss families, hailing from the USA, became sponsors.

Since 2009, these study placements have been financed by the Genesis Philanthropy Group as part of the CAF Russia “Jewish Communities” program. “They decided this was a good program, popular among university professors,” said the Sepher Center director.
The scale of the study placement has also changed. The student is put on the MSU roll and has the right to visit lectures, seminars and language classes appropriate to their scholarly interests in the Jewish Studies Department.

The winner receives a stipend. The program also pays his or her schooling fee, transportation to and from the place of study and the dormitory fee. The study placement has also become longer – one can now stay for up to three months. An MSU certificate is given at the end of the study placement.

As Victoria Mochalova noted, the program has become widely known over the course of its existence. “If, in the beginning, we mostly used personal contacts to get candidates for study placements, now anyone can log onto our website and fill in our form. Sometimes come people whom we haven't eve heard of,” she stressed.

The results of the 2010-2011 selection can be also found on the Sepher website. Candidates have hailed from such diverse places as from the former pale of settlement (Chernivtsy, Brest, Minsk), Siberia (Tyumen') and the Far East (Birobijan and Khabarovsk), Central Asia (Dushanbe) and even Saint-Petersburg.