how Debra Brunner built The Together Plan with a little touch of chutzpah

By Tasha Ackerman

As Debra Brunner began taking trips to Belarus in 2009, she was surprised by how much it felt like home. There’s a very familiar sense; the food is so Jewish. In the restaurants, you can order draniki, which are potato pancakes that Jews would recognise as latkes. They are served with a dollop of sour cream just as you would find in a Jewish deli. Along with borscht, herring, and “black” rye bread, being in Belarus Debra could recognise the strong connections to her own heritage. 

However, Debra’s connection to Belarus did not begin with a culinary experience. In 2008, Debra’s synagogue, Finchley Reform Synagogue, in north London, agreed to take on an opportunity to host Belarusian youth for a summer programme. Debra agreed to home host two boys. Since three of her children were already participating in summer programme (two as youth leaders and one as an attendee), she felt it would be a simple way to have a meaningful experience. When the boys arrived, she could see how novel Jewish life was for them: it seemed they knew nothing about being Jewish. They weren’t even familiar with what a synagogue was. She quickly became curious: Why did these teenagers, despite being sent through a Jewish organisation, seem to know nothing about Judaism?

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Debra had always had an interest in history and had read books and seen documentaries about Jews in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. However, she realised how little she knew about Belarus. She found herself drawn deeper into the history of Belarusian Jewry, its once-thriving communities, and the devastating impact of the Holocaust and Soviet rule. It was the beginning of what would become a mission: reconnecting the Jewish world with Belarus and uncovering the stories of those whose voices had been silenced. Her desire to understand the disconnect between the Belarusian boys she hosted in her home and their Jewish heritage planted the seeds for what would eventually become The Together Plan, a non-profit organisation dedicated to uncovering and preserving Jewish heritage in Belarus while empowering local communities.

So much of Jewish life is maintained in the home: keeping traditions, passing stories, and developing our ways of practice. Debra’s Jewish identity formed growing up in a Jewish home with Yiddish-speaking relatives including a mother who became a recorded Yiddish singer. Growing up, Debra assumed everyone’s grandparents were like hers: both of her maternal grandparents (whom she called Bubba and Zeida), Rachel and Samuel Lukover had emigrated from Poland, and her great-grandparents on her father’s side had also come from Poland. She learned stories of Jewish resilience through her own family stories. At the time, she didn’t realise that she was witnessing the last of the shtetl era, something that she now has a great appreciation for. 

Rachel and Samuel immigrated to the UK in the 1920s. After  marrying in Poland, the couple temporarily moved to Paris, where Samuel continued his craft as a shoemaker and thrived in the Parisian artistic cultural life. However, Rachel’s relatives urged them to come to England due to the rising dangers for Jews in Europe. Samuel eventually agreed and reluctantly left Paris and his craft behind. When the couple moved to London, Samuel joined the family fish business as a way to earn money, a field in which he remained through the rest of his professional life. 

Rachel and Samuel built their life in London and raised their children. As World War II loomed, they saw the dangers that Rachel’s family had warned them of, but still faced challenging times in London. During the war, they continued to operate a fish and chips shop in London, even during the Blitz. Starting September 1, 1939, London ordered a blackout, mandating that all lights in private residents, businesses, and city infrastructure would be turned off starting half an hour before sunset through the night as a measure to protect the city from German air strikes during the night. Punishment for disobeying the blackouts included fines and arrests. Despite that, Samuel continued to operate the shop, with a small slit showing light through the blackout curtains to let people know that they were still operating and frying fish. People would order their fish and chips and scuttle into the underground bomb shelters. While this paid off financially, they operated at great risk of punishment for breaking the blackout rules and, of course, the even larger risk of being bombed. Perhaps it was a touch of East European chutzpah (Yiddish for fearlessness or bravery or just having the gall to do it).

Debra later understood how her family stories connected to the larger tapestry of Jewish resilience. The chutzpah, maybe inherited from her Bubba and Zeida, is a quality she carried into her work in Belarus: determined to foster connections and uncover stories. She noticed the void between Jewish and Belarusian identity and heritage, which had been left largely untouched.

After the summer hosting Belarusian youth through Finchley Reform Synagogue, it was suggested that the community set up a twinning relationship with a community in Belarus and Debra took the lead She had seen the impact the visit from the Belarusian children had had on both the British children and the visiting Belarusian children. At the time she thought, sure: how difficult could it be? Looking back now, she realises she had no idea the challenges she would face. 

Debra discovered that in order to make this happen, she would need to partner with someone on the ground, and when her paths crossed with Minsk based Artur Livshyts she knew she had found her guide. They worked together first on building summer programmes. In 2010, Debra took a group of youth leaders to Belarus which included her eldest daughter, Sam, and four others. They arrived carrying suitcases full of resources. She explained to them: you’ve grown up with a Jewish community and identity, learned Hebrew, had a bar/bat mitzvah, and now it’s your turn to share this with peers who haven’t had access to any of that. Her team of five rose to the challenge, saw the impact they had and vowed to return and build on what they started. Led by Sam year on year for 9 years they returned, running bigger and better camps year on year and the impact was clear to see.

These summer programmes turned out to be an incredibly mutually rewarding experience but came with challenges that would become lessons. One challenge Debra faced was navigating differing beliefs around what the purpose of the relationship between communities would be. To Debra, it was clear that the mission of these programmes should be to support  community capacity building. Indeed, the summer programmes that she was running were designed to help youth learn how to learn skills so that they could confidently create programmes themselves within their own communities. Debra faced immense scrutiny and push back from other non-profit organisations working in Belarus who were looking solely for a charity relationship focused on financial support. 

Another challenge stemmed from cultural differences: Debra’s perspective from the UK valued a creative and explorative approach to youth work, and she needed to learn how to communicate her mission to the community leaders who held values that conflicted with Debra’s approach to programming. One such example was with a community group from Slutsk that participated in the 2018 residential camp program titled “Zoymen,” which was a camp intended to plant the seed to help youth grow something new in their communities by teaching them skills to develop youth programming. The adult leader from Slutsk believed that her youth group needed to be obedient and respectful and stay within set boundaries,hesitant to let them foster the independence that Debra and her youth leaders were endeavouring to nurture .Navigating the cultural divide was immensely challenging and Debra and her team had to stand fast and not be swayed but this paid off in spades and by the end of the week, Debra was shocked and delighted to see the Slutsk cohort coming out of their shells and expressing themselves through new creative ways, even giving a musical performance for the closing ceremony. As for their adult leader – she too experienced something new during her time at Zoymen and left with a very new perspective. This experience gave Debra hope for what’s possible when youth of different cultural backgrounds work together to create something new and impactful. 

Through these early initiatives, Debra learned to meet her goals of community building and heritage education,and set out on a mission to change  mindsets and create mutually supportive communities. She also saw that the need was much wider than she could have imagined and considered how they could expand their efforts. In 2013, Debra and Artur registered the charity in the UK under the name “The Together Plan.”  

In 2014,  they embarked on an ambitious project to translate a collection of testimonies written by survivors of the Minsk Ghetto, titled: We Remember, Lest the World Forget – Memories of The Minsk Ghetto. When Debra learned about this collection, which was written in Russian and a print run of only 300 copies, she was inspired by the possibility of these stories reaching a much larger audience. She had already been spending time meeting with Jewish communities across Belarus and was understanding both the pain in these lost stories as well as noticing the difference between her experience growing up in a Jewish home to what Judaism looked like in Belarus. Despite the loss of over 800,000 Jewish lives during the Holocaust, so many of these stories were unknown, and the opportunity to amplify these voices spoke to Debra’s desire to honour Jewish heritage. 

Read more about the ‘We Remember” book translation. 

With each project, Debra’s tenacity and deep appreciation for Jewish heritage have driven her to ensure these stories are told: believing in their significance for both Jews and non-Jews in Belarus as well as the global community, especially for those who can trace their routes to Belarus who are looking to understand their heritage. From the Brest-Litovsk Jewish Cemetery Campaign to Archive Services to “Making History Together,” The Together Plan’s projects take diverse approaches to sharing Jewish stories. By building the Jewish route in Belarus, in partnership with the European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage (AEJP),  the charity’s dedication to cultural preservation and community empowerment will ensure that Jewish Belarus will literally be put on the world map. 

Read more about our projects: Brest-Litovsk Jewish Cementary Campaign, Archive Services, “Making History Together”

After years of helping others discover their ancestry, Debra decided to take a DNA test. It turned out, she was 100% Jewish and confirmed that of the family history that she knew. As a result of her DNA test , a distant relative in Boston, Massachusetts contacted her to corroborate their family trees. From him, Debra learned that she had relatives who had perished in Auschwitz, which she had not known when she had visited in the past. These were her grandmother Rachel’s relatives that she had left behind in Poland. This meant her grandmother had held the loss of the relatives for the rest of her life and had never told anyone in Debra’s family. In 2014, Debra’s mum, Hilda Bronstein, who is a Yiddish singer performed in Minsk for the Holocaust survivors. To Debra, it felt like the story had come full circle.  

Just as a recipe is handed down and shared among generations, the work of preserving Jewish heritage in Belarus requires many hands, each adding their own unique contribution. The familiarity that Debra feels each time visiting Belarus can serve as a reminder that even through change and upheaval, the essence of Jewish life endures. Through this journey, Debra has become keenly aware of how her heritage is woven across cultures. She knows now that her family was not like all others: not all Jews grew up with a mum singing Yiddish folk songs or had the fortune to attend Jewish summer camps that infused a sense of Judaism and togetherness. But all this gave her the tools to know that working together makes the daunting task of capturing 700 years of history possible. As Debra reminded me: Many hands make light work – indeed it takes a village – or maybe we should we say, a shtetl!