FACULTY OF EXACT AND NATURAL SCIENCES
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On December 8, the Jewish Council of Georgia together with the Prime Minister of Georgia, as well as Ambassadors of Israel, United States, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, France, Norway and Sweden celebrated Hanukkah. The event was attended by representatives of various ethnic, religious groups, as well as government officials and representatives of the international community.
Traditionally, during Hanukkah the Jewish Council of Georgia issues a special award to a person for their outstanding contributions toward strengthening the Georgian-Jewish relations.
In 2023, the special award was given to Lasha Shakulashvili, scholar of Jewish Studies. Lasha is an invited lecturer of Yiddish language and culture at the Tbilisi State University (TSU), through support of the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe. He is a graduate of various academic programs at Tel Aviv and Oxford Universities, as well as Paideia – The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden. In 2022, Lasha restored academic instruction of Yiddish at the TSU. The first 9 graduates under his tuteledge won scholarships to pursue academic studies at the Tel Aviv University. Moreover, in 2023, Lasha was awarded with the British “Polonsky” Prize in Jewish Studies.
On October 7, 2023, after the terrorist attack on the State of Israel, Lasha remained in the country and bore witness to the horrors experienced by the Israeli people. He provided daily reports on the war on social media, as well as spoke to numerous TV channels providing political overview of the situation in Georgian, English and Russian languages. He has also volunteered for the Tel Aviv University-led informational campaign for disseminating accurate information on the war to a wider public.
More about Lasha’s work at the TSU: https://ingeveb.org/pedagogy/yiddish-in-georgia