About This Talk

Join us for a very special evening with Rabbi Howard Shub-Hillel Meyer ben Ya’akov v’Bayle, a first-generation Canadian Jew with deep Belarusian roots.

This will be a hybrid event, taking place in person at the Minsk Jewish Heritage Centre. For our followers and supporters abroad, we are delighted to offer a unique opportunity to join us online via Zoom, wherever you are in the world.

The evening will be bilingual, English and Russian, and we warmly encourage you to bring your questions. This will be less of a lecture and more of a lively discussion, an open conversation where curiosity is welcomed and every voice matters.

With humour, warmth, and insight, Rabbi Howard will explore what it means to be a “Belarusian Jew” from the other side of the globe. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to hear a life story shaped by history, faith, and family, and to be part of the conversation.

About the Speaker
Rabbi Howard Shub-Hillel Meyer ben Ya’akov v’Bayle is a first-generation Canadian Jew born in Toronto. His maternal grandparents came from Poland in the early 1900s; his paternal grandparents came from Belarus (then part of the “Mogilev Gebernye”). Raised in a traditional Jewish home where Yiddish was spoken as easily as English, his Jewish identity was nurtured from an early age through family, school, and a Labour Zionist summer camp.

He earned his undergraduate degree from Yeshiva University in New York and later completed an M.A. in Contemporary Jewish Studies, specialising in modern Jewish history, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After several years in Israel, he spent five years in Australia; first as Hillel Director in Melbourne, and then in an unexpected role as a probation and parole officer working in a maximum security prison.

Returning to North America, Rabbi Howard pursued his true calling and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York in 1988. For nearly 40 years, he served as a congregational rabbi, retiring in June 2023, only to return to a part-time pulpit and, most recently, as interim rabbi of the synagogue where he served for 23 years. He continues to teach Jewish topics across Florida and serves as mashgiach (kosher supervisor) at the only kosher deli in the area.

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