History was made on Tuesday, July 9, when the Jewish community of Shymkent, Kazakhstan, gathered to inaugurate ‘Mikvah Mei Elazar,’ the city’s first-ever mikvah. The mikvah’s opening marks a coming of age for Jewish life on the vast Kazakh steppe.
Shymkent is a city in southern Kazakhstan near the border with Uzbekistan. It is the third largest city in the country and serves as the administrative and cultural center of the South Kazakhstan Region.
In 2018, Rabbi Mordechai and Shoshana Morozow moved to the region to establish Chabad-Lubavitch of Shymkent where they offer prayer services, adult education classes and Jewish programming to the community. Until 1991, Kazakhstan was a part of the Soviet Union and today there are 12 emissary couples serving Jews in seven cities throughout the Central Asian country.
