COJECO is excited to launch a second cohort of Adult B’nai Mitzvah Journey, a program for Russian-speaking Jewish adults in New York! This unique experience encourages and enables the participants to join meaningful Jewish learning, celebrate their Bar/Bat Mitzvah, and bring the joy of Jewish living to their families.
The program empowers RSJ change makers to create their own community-building initiatives, with the support of a network of peers, educational workshops, one-on-one mentorship, and mini-grants for project implementation.
A customized, year-long family program for Russian-speaking Jewish parents and their children leading up to Bar/Bat Mitzvah.
The Virtual Academy of Jewish Heritage offers a series of top-notch Jewish and Israel-related educational sessions in English and Russian. Learn more on how to attend these free virtual lectures and help support the academy!
We invite you to join COJECO and the Russian-speaking Jewish community of New York and New Jersey as we proudly march on NYC’s 5th Avenue in support of Israel. We welcome all RSJ community organizations and individuals to join and march together as one strong community.
Bringing Russian-speaking Jewish young adults on a 9-day educational trips to Germany to explore the past and present of Jewish life in Germany, and to experience modern Germany first hand.
We have launched a successful program for adults, children, teens, and families in Northern New Jersey, in partnership with the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey.
SHALOM! HOLA! WELCOME TO THE NEW COJECO TOUR: JEWISH ARGENTINA WITH JACOB SHOSHAN (December 1st-9th, 2025). Experience rich Jewish history and today's vibrant Jewish community in Argentina with COJECO with world renowned tour guide and educator Jacob Shoshan.
Join COJECO in its upcoming events, programs, and trips within the COJECO Center for Adult Jewish Education
Tue, December 16, 2025
Sun, January 18, 2026 – Fri, January 23, 2026
Project OKNA is a multimedia installation inspired by diverse individual views and personal stories on the subject of Jewish identity coming from people within the Russian-speaking community. Through an artistic interpretation, Project OKNA explores the unique juxtaposition of Soviet/Russian past with Jewish identity. We are looking through the ‘windows’ into memories, unforgettable moments, conflict, rejection, […]
Luba Proger
Luba Proger has a background and education in fine arts, graphic design, and photography. Upon moving to the United States, Luba continued her studies and earned a degree in photography and graphic design from the Pratt Institute, NYC. Luba has been making photographs for over a decade. In recent years she got involved in curatorial work, where she conceived, and developed a number of arts, photography and theater projects. She currently resides and works in New York City.
Luba Proger and Leonid Khanin have been collaborating since 2004 under the name L2coLab. Their combined multidisciplinary education and experience in fine art, architecture and photography has allowed them to create multidisciplinary art and theater projects, addressing ideas of inner beauty, multiculturalism, and belonging. They are experimenting with immersive environments by use of space, innovative video and audio sampling techniques that stimulate viewers’ perception between themselves and their environment.
Leonid Khanin
Leonid Khanin is an architect and an artist. He has been involved in a variety of art projects utilizing conceptual design and realization. His art projects combine set design, video and photography. Through the Blueprint Fellowship, in partnership with Luba Proger, Leonid created a unique theater experience through a staging of The Purim Spiel Shadow Theater which gave new life to the Jewish tradition of the Purim Spiel. The show was performed on an inflatable sphere and accompanied by new musical arrangements of well-known songs from Russian cartoons.
Luba Proger and Leonid Khanin have been collaborating since 2004 under the name L2coLab.
Their combined multidisciplinary education and experience in fine art, architecture and photography has allowed them to create multidisciplinary art and theater projects, addressing ideas of inner beauty, multiculturalism, and belonging. They are experimenting with immersive environments by use of space, innovative video and audio sampling techniques that stimulate viewers’ perception between themselves and their environment.
REFLECTING ON HISTORY OR WHAT BECAME OF MY RED STAR Thur, July 8, 2010 Fifteen NYC-based, Russian-born artists provide reflections on their Russian-Jewish-American identity via paintings, photographs, and mixed-media works at Chelsea’s ICO Gallery. Curated and produced by Olga Monastyrskaya. THE ARTISTS: According to The Los Angeles Times, Yevgenia Nayberg’s art shows a “folkloric approach […]
Olga Monastyrskaya
Olga Monastyrskaya immigrated to the United States with her family at the age of 16. Having graduated from Parsons School of Design in 2003, she has been working as a graphic designer in advertising and publishing industries. Olga has 5 years of classical art school education both from the Ukraine and the United States.
Olga says, “My story is not in any way different… Being such, I am convinced that through the form of visual expression, it will spark a beautiful dialogue with other artists who have their unique stories to tell as well as with the audience, who I hope will recognize their internal and external world in the works on view.”
The Russian Pavilion is a juried exhibition showcasing emerging and established artists from Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Baltic regions during leading international contemporary art fairs in New York, Miami, and other cities.
Artem Mirolevich
Artem Mirolevich’s multimedia work gives him a unique voice: an urban mix of Surrealism, Impressionism, and Japanese printmaking. In 2000, Artem debuted his New York show at a foregone Neva Gallery in Greenwich Village, where he humorously proclaimed his relationship with the world as “Post-Apocalyptic Romanticism. America made me the artist that I am.” The scale of his work spans from small-scale objects to large oil canvases and installations, including “Babylon Tower”- the seashell-shaped multimedia project of galvanized wire at the Chelsea Art Museum in 2012.
Artem’s work paints the meticulous deconstruction of the physical earth into its figurative elements, turning to such media as oil, gouache, wire, and ink. He is also occasionally an engraver– like Durer or Piranesi, using a craft that the world has no immediate use for anymore, yet is peacefully nostalgic and ravishing to look at. For his COJECO BluePrint Fellowship community project, Artem will create a separate track of Russian Jewish art as part of his large initiative “Russian Pavilion.”
A short film that examines how trauma in a Soviet Jewish family can be passed on through generations and its effects. The intention for this film is to bring people in RSJ community together and start a discussion about mental health that can be a taboo subject for our community (and many other immigrant communities ) […]
Marina Gasparyan
Marina is a New York City based Russian-Armenian actress, writer, and producer from Moscow. She can be seen performing monthly at The Pit Striker with her indie sketch team Suede and at venues around the city with her indie improv group the idiots. She also performs original characters. She has produced, wrote, and acted in the past two seasons of 2293 Productions’ Reservations at The Kraine Theatre as well the web series The Box. Marina holds a degree in Cinema Studies and Dramatic Literature from NYU Tisch School Of The Arts (2012.) She was the co founder of a curated monthly screening series Black Mariah Films (2012-2015) where she programmed film series that showcased emerging filmmakers alongside classic and art house films. She completed the two year acting conservatory at The Barrow Group Theatre Company where she studied with Seth Barrish and Lee Brock and performed in her first full length play, A Perfect Couple as Emma. Marina continued her acting training at Playhouse West Brooklyn Lab where she completed the two year Meisner training program. She is an Academy level student at Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) where she has been taking improv and character classes since 2015. She has also studied improv at The People’s Improv Theatre (PIT) and at iO Chicago.
A short film that examines how trauma in a Soviet Jewish family can be passed on through generations and its effects. The intention for this film is to bring people in RSJ community together and start a discussion about mental health that can be a taboo subject for our community (and many other immigrant communities ) […]
Irina Gorovaia
Born in Leningrad, Russia, raised in the belly of Brooklyn, Irina has been on the path of metamorphosis from a young age. Although she doesn't remember much of her childhood, she enjoys reading Dostoyevsky and daydreaming of other lifetimes. After being discovered at a young age to play Young Margo in The Royal Tenebaums, Irina went on to be in several more feature films including It Runs in The Family and The Butterfly Effect. She attended the School of American Ballet, LaGuardia High School for Drama, and then CUNY Hunter College where she earned her BA in the highly lucrative field of Philosophy. Irina has since gone on to study at UCB, the Barrow Group under Seth Barrish and Lee Brock, and with international Meisner teacher Andrea Dantas. She works in both theater and film, most recently moving into producing and performing her own content including co-writing and producing her own web series (Frank&Alice), two seasons of Reservations at The Kraine Theater under 2293 Productions, and writing, producing and starring in critically acclaimed short films (Sun on Your Elbows, A Magnificent Gray), the latter of which is now being adapted into a feature film. Irina currently resides in NYC and can be spotted weaving through traffic and avoiding potholes on her bicycle, rain or shine. She wears her helmet proudly. Irina would like to thank her family and friends for their undying love, support and laughing at her jokes even when they aren't funny. She believes in the power of collaboration, being kind, and sharing french fries.
A big scale installation containing 42 separate pieces will invite audiences of all ages to actively participate throughout the course of three (3) days on display at the auditorium space at the JCC Manhattan. The audience was able to rearrange the pieces and construct their own Solomon’s Chair, an amassing artifact that originally emerged as a result of […]
Zhenya Plechkina
Zhenya Plechkina is a Ukranian-born artist living in South Brooklyn. Zhenya studied art at the Pratt Institute and the Tisch School of the Arts, and Art Education at the Pratt Institute.Zhenya's teaching experience includes New York City public and private schools, camps and Riker's Island vocational school. Zhenya leads her own Museum Education Series for children and adults. She has exhibited works in a variety of venues in the US and abroad, including the Queens Museum of Art, the Venice Architectural and Moscow Biennials.
After the BluePrint Fellowship, Zhenya went on to become the first Russian-speaking Jewish Joshua Venture Group fellow, where she further developed her initiative, Zshuk Art Initiative.
Speak Memory is an exhibition of four COJECO Blueprint Fellowship: Katya Meykson, Irina Sheynfeld, Tanya Levina and Yuliya Levit. This show explores Russian-Jewish immigrant identity, artists ties to the historic past, and the connection to our roots that we feel in everyday lives. February 28, 2013 at Columbia / Barnard Kraft Center Auditorium Show opening included […]
Tatyana Levina
Originally from Minsk, Belarus, Tanya Levina is a Brooklyn based painter. Her artistic inclinations showed at a very young age as she started compulsively drawing on every surface in sight including books, walls and papers around the house. As she grew older, Tanya gave up defacing household property and started using drawing and painting as an outlet for documenting surroundings and expressing affection for things she liked, especially horses. To this day horses remain a dominant theme in her work. Tanya often sets her subjects in extremely colorful, exaggerated and slightly surrealistic settings, drawing inspiration from her surroundings, travel experiences, as well as works by Dali, Klimt and Monet. Her artwork can be found at www.tanyalevina.com
Aside from painting, Tanya studied Economics at Brandeis University, and after a couple of stints at various strategy consulting firms landed as a Research Manager at Scholastic.
Yuliya Levit
Yuliya was born in Moscow in 1979 and graduated from RGGU with degree in IT in 2001. She moved to New York, along with all my family: my parents, my 84 year old grandfather, two of my 83 year old grandmothers, our dog, our cat, a violin, a guitar, my father’s bike and sewing machine that same year. Ever since she can remember she was interested in the link between the photo and a story, but she got serious about photography only 9 years ago. I currently reside in New York and work as a professional photographer. See her work at www.ylevit.com
Nadya Meykson
Nadya Meykson and Victoria Schwartzman plan to make a recoding of contemporary Russian-Jewish emigre composers. The recording will include works that are rarely heard and which they feel deserve to be introduced to a wider audience. The recording will be followed by two public concerts.
Nadya Meykson moved to the US in 1996 from Moscow. She holds a Master’s Degree in Music from the Eastman School of Music. She has performed in venues such as Weill Recital Hall at the Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Millennium Stage at The Kennedy Center, The Bohemian National Hall, The State Kremlin Palace Concert Hall, All-Union House of Composers in Moscow and The Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow.
Nadya has appeared as soloist with OSSIA Orchestra, Shoals Symphony Orchestra, Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra and Alabama Youth Symphony Orchestra. She has won various prizes, including Concert Festival, Noel Levine, First Prize at Ray Dunmyer Youth Concerto Competition, and First Prize at Shoals Symphony Orchestra Young Artist Competition.
Irina Sheynfeld
Irina Sheynfeld is an artist, illustrator and designer born in Odessa, Ukraine, where she studied painting at the Odessa College of Art. Upon arriving to New York, Irina earned her BFA from Parsons School of Design and MFA from School of Visual Arts. She worked as a designer and illustrator for The Wall Street Journal, Time Warner and Oxygen Media. For several years Irina illustrated a weekly column for Editor and Publisher magazine. Irina just had her first solo show at Tagine Gallery in NYC and her work could be currently seen at Amsterdam Art Gallery and at Iridium Jazz Club. She was one of the winners of the Printmaking Completion and recipient of the New Media Award for the best web design.
“Spoils of War: Ode to a Refusenik Mother” was originally published by Tablet Magazine on June 6, 2012 (bit.ly/spoilspoem), and the panels illustrating the poem were exhibited at New York City’s National Arts Club through the Russian American Foundation’s Russian Heritage Month. The poem is accompanied by a spoken word track over a mix tape in […]
Margarita Korol
Margarita Korol is an urban pop artist, designer, and writer in New York City producing media in the publishing and public worlds including art directing, editing, and illustrating for several online and print magazines. Her writing, illustrations, paintings, and arts and culture propaganda are vibrant expressions of urban progress in directed contexts.
Born the week of Chernobyl in Ukraine to refuseniks, Korol’s focus on empowering individuals in disadvantaged struggles against their political systems is an ongoing theme in her work. Her most recent exhibit for Brooklyn’s ArtOnBrighton exhibition on the Coney Island/ Brighton Beach boardwalk featured a series of propaganda posters directed to the area’s SovJew immigrant community in Korol’s generation. Previously, Propaglasnost: The Transparency Projects series was on view at NYC’s KGB Bar May and June 2011. Meanwhile, her Berlin Wall installation Die Mauer is housed at Chicago’s DANK-Haus German Cultural Center.
“Strange Pilgrims No More” is a collective portraits of Jewish women who emigrated to the US from the former Soviet Union. Like all women, we struggle to overcome the unique challenges of our time; our struggle to balance work and home, children and career, love and marriage, past and present. We want it all, but […]
Irina Sheynfeld
Irina Sheynfeld is an artist, illustrator and designer born in Odessa, Ukraine, where she studied painting at the Odessa College of Art. Upon arriving to New York, Irina earned her BFA from Parsons School of Design and MFA from School of Visual Arts. She worked as a designer and illustrator for The Wall Street Journal, Time Warner and Oxygen Media. For several years Irina illustrated a weekly column for Editor and Publisher magazine. Irina just had her first solo show at Tagine Gallery in NYC and her work could be currently seen at Amsterdam Art Gallery and at Iridium Jazz Club. She was one of the winners of the Printmaking Completion and recipient of the New Media Award for the best web design.
Architecture workshops for Russian-speaking families with kids 6-12 years old. The project participants will discover works by architects of Jewish descent (ex: Moisei Ginzburg, Alexander Brodsky, Moshe Safdie and Louis Kahn among others) and will develop the foundation of architectural design and freedom of creativity. Through the workshops families will find parallels between Jewish values and specific […]
Masha Dinor
Masha Dinor is originally from Saratov, Russia and recently immigrated to New York. She is an architect and interior designer by trade and finds inspiration in teaching kids about art and design. She was an active member of Saratov' Jewish life and taught tradition and craft lessons at a local Jewish Family Center. Once she moved to Moscow to advance her career, Masha also led classes at a local architectural studio for kids. Masha continues her work as an art educator in New York, where she teaches at Kibbutznik summer camp, Kompot events, Little-Avangardist and Dacha project.
The Art Sprinter Emerging Jewish Artist Awards is a global art competition specifically targeting talented contemporary Jewish artists from all over the world. The project was created with the vision to recognize exceptional early and mid career artists and present their talent to a global audience through online promotion and a gallery exhibition. While submissions are […]
Katya Bychkova
Katya Bychkova is a New York based marketing and event planning professional with over 10 years’ experience in journalism and PR. Prior to moving to New York in 2008, Katya studied Journalism at the Moscow State University, where she was admitted as a winner of the Journalism competition organized by the International Confederation of Journalists’ Unions. Her first years in the US, Katya worked as a reporter and then as a Managing Editor for the Russian-American newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo. In 2012 she started to work for the award-winning law firm Wilk Auslander LLP, where she is currently handling marketing responsibilities.
Documentary “The Collective Effort: A Sartorial Journey” follows the creation of a dress made from fabric hand-painted by Jewish youth, and its odyssey from a sketch, onto the cutting table, under the sewing machine, on the model’s body at a photo-shoot, to an auction to raise money for a Jewish cause. The documentary highlights the […]
Leonid Gurevich
Leonid Gurevich is an NYC-based fashion designer, editorial stylist, fashion photographer, and producer. Gurevich is best known for creating strong fashion looks with luxury flair, characterized by an extreme degree of individuality. His editorial work has appeared in numerous print publications including The New York Times, Martha Stewart Weddings, New York Weddings, US, and HELLO. Leonid Gurevich has styled fashion presentations, editorials, workshops, look-books, print ad campaigns for bridal and eyewear brands, a two-part ad campaign for NIKON Europe, and most recently, an ad campaign for the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism.
The International Mail Art Project “Ticket To Jerusalem” invited people from all over the world to create and mail in their “ideal” handmade art-tickets. All entries are exhibited online at http://tickettojerusalem.com. The art exhibit “Ticket to Jerusalem” by Radik Shvarts was held at the JCC of Manhattan in April 2010. The opening event had approximately 100 participants, […]
Mark Gold aims to give a well-supported creative outlet to Young Jewish Creatives; to develop much-needed pro-Israel / pro-Jewish content and cultural collaborations for major media and social distribution. This will be a creative hub that directly works with and supports the Israeli Government’s pro-Israel PR initiatives. A platform where any pro-Israel/pro-Jewish creative content can be […]
Mark Gold
Mark is the Chief Marketing Officer of Toto Global Ventures, a seasoned Marketing Consultant and an official Mentor with New York State's Business Mentor of NY program. Named "Super Connector" by Social Magazine and recently featured as a keynote speaker at Wix, Microsoft and the New York Bar Association, Mark’s aptitude for business development makes him a much-sought-after thought-leader among entrepreneurs and executives. Mark Gold's authentic and forward-thinking approach has successfully launched thousands of marketing campaigns for hundreds of organizations both locally and internationally in the last decade.
A series of art workshops for children, exploring the wisdom of Jewish texts and art. Collective artwork created will have a purpose of moving towards peace, conflict resolution, empathy and reconciliation.
Ilona Bouzoukachvili
Ilona is originally from Moscow. Her most pleasant childhood memories are associated with visiting her grandparents in Georgia. In the United States Ilona studied English, Graphic Design and Fine Arts. She worked as a Graphic Designer in children's publishing. In recent years Ilona has been organizing community projects for kids and composing Jewish songs in Russian to the guitar. She is also known for baking delicious Challah. Ilona currently works in nursery schools where she teaches art, substitute teaches and babysits.
COJECO was formed in 2001 as an umbrella organization for grassroots community organizations of Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants in New York to make their voices heard and respected. Today we represent over 30 such network organizations, including young adult leadership groups, Holocaust Survivors, professional associations, arts & culture organizations, and social justice groups.
COJECO was formed in 2001 as an umbrella organization for grassroots community organizations of Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants in New York to make their voices heard and respected. Today we represent over 30 such network organizations, including young adult leadership groups, Holocaust Survivors, professional associations, arts & culture organizations, and social justice groups.
Tel: 212-566-2120 E-mail: info@cojeco.org
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