Of the current population of over 200,000 in the Jewish Autonomous Region, no more than a few thousand are Jewish. In addition, hundreds are leaving the region every year for Israel and other places. Like many Jews elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, most Jews in the Jewish Autonomous Region feel isolated from their Jewish heritage. Few have any familiarity with Judaism or Yiddish. Still, there is no sign that the official designation of the Jewish Autonomous Region will be taken away. Nor is there any indication that the Jewish community of the Jewish Autonomous Region, no matter how small, will lose interest in recovering its Jewish heritage. More than seventy years of communist rule did not extinguish all forms of Jewish identity. Yet the state of affairs in Birobidzhan today strongly suggests that the future of Jewish life in that region is bleak. The hopes and aspirations that so many of the original Jewish settlers placed in the Birobidzhan experiment remain unfulfilled.