(IsraelNN.com) In the lonely reaches of the Russian Far East, there stands a Sukkah in the city of Khabarovsk. And in the Sukkah is a representative of the State of Israel.

Pavel Giril, the Jewish Agency for Israel's emissary to the region, oversees all activities relating to aliyah (immigration to Israel), Jewish Zionist education (the two are melded together in this area) and the effort to strengthen the Jews' identity with their brethren in Israel.

Two local Jewish residents, Giril and Khabarovsk Rabbi Yaakov Samtakov, worked together to build the beautiful wooden sukkah. The brilliant blue sky peeks through the thick green spruce boughs that comprise the schach, which serves as a roof for the temporary booth.

Approximately one-third of the 15,000 Jews who live in the Russian Far East live in Khabarovsk, the administrative center of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia and the second largest city of the Russian Far East. Originally part of Manchu-ruled Imperial China, the city is located only 30 miles from the Chinese border and is 8,523 kilometers (5,296 miles) from Moscow.

Khabarovsk also is located near Birobidjan, the capital city of the remote Jewish Autonomous Oblast (Republic). Located six time zones away from Moscow, Birobidjan's 4,000 Jews comprise slightly more than five percent of the city's total population, according to Chabad-Lubavitch emissary Rabbi Mordechai Scheiner, an Israeli father of six and the city's Chief Rabbi.

Birobidjan has seen a rejuvenation in Jewish culture since the city's synagogue center reopened in 2004. The official opening of the complex, which includes Sunday school classrooms, a library, museum and offices, also marked the 70^th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. 

Jews began living in the Russian Far East at the beginning of the 19^th century (on the Gregorian calendar) after their expulsion from the west by the Czar who sent them to work in labor camps in the region.

When the Nazis invaded Soviet Russia, Belorussia and Ukraine during World War II, Jews in those areas fled eastward, hoping to reach safety.

The Soviet government also "encouraged" Jews to move to the area, said Michael Jankelowitz, spokesman for the Jewish Agency.  He added in a statement that the Jewish Agency has since helped the majority of the region's Jews to immigrate to Israel since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989