Video Images from
Vinnitsa's Jewish Community

This Web page contains digital video from the Vinnitsa Jewish community. These QuickTime videos have been digitized from a videocassette which the Vinnitsa Region Jewish Community kindly made as a gift for me during the summer of 1996. Below the image depicting each digital film is a short description of that video.

Please note that, even though these files have been compressed, they are still very large. For your convenience, the file size and chronological length of each video are included.

Instructions: To download and/or view the video represented by the image, select the image or the image's name to the right of that image.

Please let me know if you have any problems, questions, or suggestions. Thank you very much for your time, consideration, and patience -- and I hope that you enjoy viewing these moving images from the Jewish community of the Vinnitsa region.

Cordially,

David M. Dickerson

 Town Synagogue: Downtown Vinnitsa (1.2 MB / 19 seconds)

This synagogue, in the center of the town of Vinnitsa, is being restored by the Vinnitsa Region Jewish Community. When Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, the synagogue building housed the local Philharmonic Society.

 Old Synagogue: Vinnitsa Jewish Quarter (2.2 MB / 34 seconds)

This old brick synagogue in the old Jewish quarter of Vinnitsa currently serves as a non-Jewish "sports school."

 Jewish Headstone: Vinnitsa (3.7 MB / 59 seconds)

In this QuickTime film, the camera closely pans the front of an old Jewish headstone in a Jewish cemetery near Vinnitsa, providing a detailed view of the Hebrew lettering. At the top of the headstone, the Hebrew letters Peh and Noon are the initials of the two Hebrew words, Poh nikbar -- "Here lies buried."

Two rampant lions flank the Hebrew letters Peh and Noon; the lion is an important symbol: "Revered as the king of beasts, the lion has always been a symbol of triumph and was adopted by several of the tribes of Israel, including Dan, Gad, and Judah. The lion is the insignia of people named Yehuda, Leib, Lebb, or Ari." (Arnold Schwartzman in Graven Images: Graphic Motifs of the Jewish Gravestone [New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1993], p 70.)

His father is of Judah and his mother of
Dan and together they are called lion.

Yalkut Shimoni
Genesis 160