Some 55 senior citizens from the Jewish communities of Newark, Maplewood, and Irvington shared lunch and sang Russian-language songs on Nov. 15 as they gathered in the penthouse party room of IDT headquarters in Newark.

They came as guests of Howard Jonas, chair of the telecommunications company, who hosts the semimonthly meetings of Chai Cafe, an activity aimed primarily at immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

The program is administered by Masha Penson, a case manager at the Jewish Family Service of MetroWest NJ.

“We try to get people to socialize and have a great time with a kosher meal and a cultural program,” she said.

IDT provides lunch and Shabbat dinners for participants to take home with them.

“The meaning of this is to provide a community partnership with IDT, which wanted to reach out to the Jewish residents of Newark, which overwhelmingly is an elderly Russian-speaking population,” explained JFS executive director Reuben Rotman. “It is their way of giving back to the city of Newark.”

On the day's agenda was singer Vladimir Gudov, a native of Kurdistan who lives in the Bronx. He treated the guests to folk songs and arias in their native language while his grandmother, Tamar Gudova, a resident of the Jewish Federation Towers in Irvington, accompanied him on electric keyboard.

Local stories posted courtesy of the New Jersey Jewish News