March 10, 2000      3 Adar II 5760

Out of the Shadows
With the Soviet Union dead, Russian Jews are reconnecting with their heritage and one another.

Lev Krichevsky Jewish Telegraphic Agency

TULA, Russia — For decades, Faina and Anatoly Sanevich kept their Judaism private.
    Natives of Ukraine, where they both survived Nazi ghettos as small children, the couple spoke Yiddish to each other at home. But unwilling to complicate their children’s lives, they spoke Russian with their two sons.
Every Passover they would have matzah on their table — they didn’t hold a full seder — but kept this fact a secret from their neighbors and colleagues.
Their need to live double lives changed in the waning years of the Soviet Union.
The Jewish community was among the first to benefit from the opportunities provided by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, or openness, initiated in the late 1980s. The most obvious benefit was the lifting of emigration restrictions, which resulted in a massive wave of aliyah to Israel.
Those who remained behind, now numbering about one million, were no less affected by the changes.
Thousands of Soviet Jews took a keen interest in what only a few underground activists, risking jail, would have dared to explore under Gorbachev’s predecessors.
“All of a sudden, Jews stopped being one of the best-kept state secrets,” Anatoly Sanevich recalls. “We just realized we could speak freely about what we had been forced to be silent: our Judaism.”
Cities across Russia have seen Jewish cultural societies and organizations take the place of the small circles of refuseniks and Zionist activists that operated during Soviet days.
Jewish institutional life in Russia has mushroomed since 1989 — and while there are fewer Jewish organizations today than in the early 1990s, those that operate now are much more professional than they used to be.

Tula’s Jewish revival
Most of Russia’s Jewish revival has occurred in Moscow and a handful of other large cities, including St. Petersburg.
But the Sanevich family is helping to spearhead the Jewish revival in Tula, an industrial city that, like the rest of the country, is reeling from the economic crisis that began last August.
The city of 600,000 has a Jewish community of 3,000, most of them working as engineers, doctors and teachers.
Each year some 100 to 120 Jews emigrate to Israel and a few dozen more leave for Germany and the United States. But Jewish leaders here say they do not feel the community is dwindling.
This is probably the most striking feature of Russia’s Jewish revival: Despite continuing aliyah and emigration, Jewish life is touching more people each year. There is a widespread belief — which can’t be measured statistically due to the lack of reliable sources — that the number of Jews in cities like Tula remains the same, even though a significant number of people leave each year.
“Our Jewish population increases not through births, but through new people who have not been previously known as Jews,” says Faina Sanevich, who is the full-time director of Hasdei Neshama, a welfare center that serves the Jewish elderly and poor.
Inna Bronshtein, for example, discovered her Jewish identity 10 years ago.
“I saw a Jewish wedding when my family was visiting our relatives in Ukraine. Then someone gave me a video of Israel,” says the 24-year-old primary school teacher.
“There are few of us here, but we want to create an environment in which we and our kids will feel comfortable,” says Bronshtein, who is also a leader of the local synagogue’s youth group.
Tula, a three-hour drive south of Moscow, has been a center of Russia’s munitions industry for centuries. The city is known as the home of samovars (metal urns with a spigot, used to boil water for tea).
Jewish life here started 150 years ago. The right to settle in Tula was restricted to Jews drafted into the military, as well as limited numbers of skilled Jewish craftsmen, workers, wealthy merchants and doctors.
During the first decades of Bolshevik rule after the Communist Party’s Russian Revolution of 1917, the city’s three synagogues were closed down. Many members of Tula’s Jewish community today migrated here from Ukraine and Belarus after World War II.
Tula does not boast any high-profile Jewish projects that would make even local headlines — and no synagogues have been rebuilt.
The city’s leading Jewish organization is the Chesed Center, led by Faina Sanevich. Part of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee-established network of social and welfare organizations in the former Soviet Union, the center provides basic services, such as food and health care, to dozens of elderly Jews impoverished by the chaos of post-communist Russia.
In addition to the welfare center, Tula has another Jewish address: a home for Jewish culture, where some 25 children are enrolled at the Hebrew school.

Led by the young
A striking feature of the ongoing Russian Jewish revival is that it is increasingly dominated by Jews in their 20s and early 30s.
Yevgeny Katz, a 37-year-old engineer whose interest in Judaism has developed only during the past few years, is now one of the handful of Tula Jews — and the only one under age 75 — who can read from the Torah scroll.
Many of the Jewish activities in Tula are based at Hasdei Neshama, which rents a space from a public kindergarten. The center’s clients take special pride in a local youth klezmer band that plays every Friday night for the Jewish elderly.
During Soviet days, when local Jews could pray only in private homes, the community preserved three of its ancient Torah scrolls and much of its synagogue archives.
Tula’s rabbi, a young graduate of Moscow’s yeshiva, comes to the city every weekend and holds services in various locations. What the community calls its synagogue is a tiny space rented in an old one-story, wooden house owned by the city.
Faina Sanevich says her major concern has been getting more space from the municipality to house the welfare center, the synagogue and the old-age home.
Like other Russian Jewish communities, Tula must rely on aid from abroad to fund its basic needs. In addition to the JDC, a few other groups have funded some of the community’s projects. For example, the New York-based Jewish Community Development Fund in Russia and Ukraine supports several groups in Tula, including the klezmer band, which is known as one of the best in Russia.
Occasional help comes from Tula’s sister congregation, B’nai Torah, in Highland Park, Ill., with which Tula is linked through a Union of Councils for Soviet Jews program. It connects synagogues in the United States with communities in the former Soviet Union.
But most of the Jewish programs here would not be possible without the help of local donors.
“When we opened up our welfare center, we were looking for the poor to help them,” Sanevich says. “When we realized how much it would cost, we began looking around for the wealthy.”
Some of the Jewish businessmen take an active part in Jewish communal life, but there are others who do not want their names to be publicly associated with the Jewish community.
While the future of Jewish life in mid-sized Russian cities such as Tula is unclear, there are signs that it will continue: Large numbers of Tula Jews, including many of the 80 percent who are intermarried, are still taking steps to reclaim their Jewish identity.
“People need this. Otherwise, why would over 20 kids sign up for the Jewish kindergarten?” Bronshtein asks.

Fitting In Nicely
Local teens feel American and Jewish — with some Russian roots.

Steven H. Pollak Staff Writer
spollak@atljewishtimes.com

DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT
Without knowing his name, one would never guess Alex Boguslavsky came from the former Soviet Union. He seems like a typical Generation X teenager. He likes to ride his skateboard, plays video games, has a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do and rocks out on guitar with his own heavy metal band, “Flamehead.”
As evinced by all the Korn and Limp Bizkit posters that adorn his bedroom, he’s swept up in the latest teenage crazes in music. He identifies strongly with Judaism and attends a Jewish summer camp but is not involved in Jewish life during the year.
Of the generation of young people who came to Atlanta from the former Soviet Union in the last decade, Alex characterizes someone who had a relatively smooth transition to American life.
The American Jewish community fought hard to bring their brethren stateside from the former Soviet Union. What happened to the Soviet Jewry once they got here — particularly the younger generation — depended on a number of factors. Some took root in the Atlanta Jewish community while others assimilated. Some have mostly American friends while others cling to their Russian counterparts.
Soviet Jewry came to this country in two waves. The first was in 1979 when the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) settled nearly 32,000 in the the United States. The second wave, between 1989 and 1994, brought about 250,000 to these shores. HIAS contracts with Atlanta’s Jewish Family and Career Services to resettle refugees in this area. About 2,000 were settled by JF & CS in the past decade. Several came from on their own though and estimates for the current Russian Jewish population in Atlanta vary wildly. According to Irina Nikishin of JF & CS, there are between 8,000 and 10,000. The Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta estimates 3,500.
Many settle into the Buford Highway corridor near North Druid Hills Road. In the ensuing years, many move north of Atlanta to East Cobb, North Fulton or Duluth.
Alex, 14, lives with his family in Roswell, Ga. He attends the High Meadows School and Camp, also in Roswell. Alex has only one friend from the former Soviet Union. Not that he has anything against them. He said he just can’t find any Russian friends. Another reason may be because he immigrated to America 10 years ago when he was so young.
“I feel like an American,” Alex said. “I come home and my parents speak to me in Russian but I don’t talk back [in Russian]. I don’t think about talking back in Russian anymore.”

Language Skills
Others still speak Russian in and out of the home. Boris Niktalov, an 18 year-old senior at Yeshiva Atlanta, said most of his friends are fellow teenagers from the former Soviet Union. “I still would characterize myself as a Russian Jew,” he said.
Niktalov, who became a citizen one month ago, lives in the Buford Highway corridor.
Niktalov plays basketball for Yeshiva’s varsity team and picks up extra cash with window tinting jobs. Next year, he plans on attending Life University to study computers.
He left Uzbekistan for Atlanta six years ago. Niktalov said he thought America was “amazing,” when he first came. But, he did not feel at home in the new country. Time passed though, and he grew comfortable with life in Atlanta.
When he’s not in school or on the basketball court, he said he enjoys hanging out with his friends, socializing and going to the movies. But Niktalov added that he feels more relaxed around his Russian friends.
“They’re more like brothers to me,” he said.
Besides attending Yeshiva Atlanta, Niktalov has been involved in Jewish life through the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization and athletic programs at the Atlanta Jewish Community Center. He has been to Israel and will return this summer for a six-week program. Life in America changed Niktalov’s outlook on Judaism.
“I’m not ashamed of it like I used to be in Russia,” he said. “I feel good about it. I have more respect for it.”
Fellow Yeshiva Atlanta student, Nataliya Nemtseva, 16, has a similar story. She arrived in Atlanta from the Ukraine three years ago and lives in the same section of Buford Highway. She enjoys art, fashion design and spending time with her friends. Outside of her classmates at Yeshiva Atlanta, Nataliya said all of her friends are Russian.
“It just so happens that I didn’t meet a lot of American friends,” she said.
Unlike Niktalov and most of other Russians, Nataliya did come to this country with a Jewish education. Most Russians never had an opportunity to explore their faith since the state discouraged it. In the town of Korosten, Ukraine, where Nataliya grew up, they built a synagogue when she was six years old. There was no rabbi but the town’s senior citizens knew Judaism well enough to set up a Sunday school. The Jewish background carried over to Yeshiva where she considers herself a Jew who was born in Russia and lives in Atlanta.
“The fact that I’m Jewish comes first,” she said.
Yelena Gurevich, 18, also came to this country with a firm Jewish background. She arrived in Atlanta four years ago and now attends North Springs High School in Sandy Springs. In her spare time, she works as a teaching assistant at The Temple’s Sunday school.
“I had a better knowledge of tradition than others who came from there,” she said. “It’s very important to me today. Especially knowing that my parents and grandparents couldn’t practice it openly.”
Yelena has very few American friends though. She said she fits in better with the other international students who attend her public school.

American Friends
Many of the people who came to Atlanta as young children seem to have mostly American friends. Liza Kravets, 15, came here 10 years ago from St. Petersberg. She is a freshman at Pope High School in East Cobb and spends a couple of nights a week at the after-school program for Jewish teens, Tichon Atlanta.
She said she is very proud to say she is Russian and uses the fact to impress friends who may find her origins to be exotic. She likes ballroom dancing, the drama club and “chatting” on the internet at her Marietta home. Since she was so young when she came here, learning English was not a big obstacle. Her transition to American life went smoothly, she said. But she still considers herself Russian. “I call Russia my home,” she said.
Her friends consist of mostly American kids both Jewish and non-Jewish. “There’s not a lot of Russian people at school,” she said. “And most of them I just don’t click with.”
Similarly, Gene Germanovich has mostly American friends.
“If the person happens to be Russian, that’s fine with me,” he said. “But it’s not like I’m seeking it out especially.”
Gene, 17, came to this country 10 years ago. He attends the New Atlanta Jewish Community High School where he plays basketball. Next year, he will go to Israel for the first time.
The transition from to a new country was troubling, he said, but he quickly adapted. Like Liza, he learned English very quickly because he was so young. Gene now considers himself an American Jew who was born in Russia. He said he feels no different from his friends and lives comfortably within the culture and customs of America.
“I guess most of us [from the former Soviet Union] want to fit in,” he said. “A lot of Americans say, `Why aren’t you proud of where you’re from?’ That seems to be a big American thing ... Everybody’s proud of where they’re from. Well, I’m just not. I don’t see anything wrong with that. I just don’t see anything good coming from being from the Soviet Union. I can be proud of my family for their resistance and struggle but not the place I’m from.”

“I’m not ashamed of it like I used to be in Russia.”
Boris Niktalov, on being Jewish

Academic Boom
MOSCOW — Jewish higher education is thriving across the former Soviet Union.
    Courses in Judaica are currently being taught at nearly 100 universities and other academic institutions across the former Soviet Union, and every prestigious university in Russia has opened or is going to open a department for Jewish or biblical studies.
The overall number of students, roughly 4,000, is modest compared with numbers in the United States, but only 10 years ago, the Soviet authorities did not permit Jewish studies.
Moreover, the field is still expanding — and in a return to Soviet days, crystallizing Jewish activities and activists.
A three-day annual conference on Jewish studies near Moscow earlier this month brought together 400 scholars — double last year’s attendance — from across the former Soviet Union and around the world.
During the days of the Soviet Jewish underground, before Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, the Jewish national movement concentrated on studying Hebrew, Torah and Jewish history classes. They also held seminars, conferences and supported underground educational summer camps.
Now, with its organizational life splintered among bickering factions, Russia’s Jewish community is continuing this tactic of trying to gain self-identification and self-organization through academic and educational activities.
    — Lev Gorodetsky

Loyal But Divided
Soviet youth in Israel feel a tug between two homelands.
Judith Sudilovsky Special to the Jewish Times
JERUSALEM — The Soviet youth who arrived here some 10 years ago with their parents serve in Israel’s army, use the latest Hebrew slang, listen to Israeli music and carry mobile phones just like other Israelis. But, they say, they still carry Russia in their heart.
Larisa Kagan, who was 11 when she moved here from the Ukraine with her mother in 1992, is typical.
“Clearly, I am an Israeli,” she said. “I have lived here for so many years, and it is hard for me to imagine myself being somewhere else, and I feel Israeli. But it is an Israeli-Russian combination.”
Among the more than 800,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the last decade, nearly a quarter were children under age 17. Now they are beginning to reach adulthood, to hold jobs, serve in the military and vote in elections. Their attitudes toward Israel and Judaism, as well as their ties to their Soviet past, are expected to be important factors in shaping civil society here.
Though they arrived in Israel while they were still young and speak Hebrew with barely a trace of an accent, in interviews, most of the immigrants said they still feel more comfortable with those like themselves. They said they tend to form their closest social ties with other children of Soviet immigrants, speaking a curious mixture of Hebrew and Russian.
“I work with Israelis, and I study biology at the university and my friends are equally divided between Israeli and Russians, but my best friends are Russians,” said Ina Oreter, 20, who arrived in 1990 from Uzbekistan with her parents and younger sister.
She has a longtime Russian-immigrant boyfriend, she said, and they share the same intellectual interests, cultural pursuits and personality traits. In theory, she said, she wouldn’t rule out dating a non-Russian Israeli who shared those things — but, she indicated, that’s just not likely.
Curiously, her boyfriend, Daniel Zeitlin, who immigrated nine years ago from Tajikistan with his parents and twin brother, says he is less tied to his Soviet roots. A computer science and mathematics student at Hebrew University, he says, “I’m very proud of being Jewish and I need to be both Jewish and Israeli.”
Roman Simkin, 20, who arrived 10 years ago from the Crimea with his mother, said he feels close to both sides. “I feel like I don’t have much in common with a Russian who came in 1998, and get along better with open-minded Israelis. But today it doesn’t make much difference to me who is Moroccan, Russian or Israeli. The way I look at it, we are all eating from the same plate.”
But things weren’t always so easy. All the immigrants interviewed spoke of the difficulties they had in the beginning with the new language, culture and people. There were fistfights and cursing, mainly with the Sephardic Jews, they said.
The young adults said they respected Jewish religious traditions but, just like in mainstream Israeli society, were divided as to the degree to which they observe these traditions. Most came to Israel with little or no knowledge of Judaism and learned what they know in school. Though some started keeping kosher, most said they respect their religion from afar.
Oreter, formerly of Uzbekistan, is the only one in her family to observe the laws of kashrut and said she plans to keep kosher when she has her own apartment.
“I feel in our crazy world these religious rules create clear boundaries for us,” she said. “It makes me think about the things I do. It is important to have these ethical, moral boundaries with all the freedom around us.”
Keeping kosher is a way of connecting himself to the Jewish people, said Mark Zadov, 21, who arrived eight years ago from Dagistan, near Chechnya. But when it comes to more mundane things like music, he says, he prefers the Russian tunes. The words, he says, “speak” to him more.

Military service
Like other Israeli youth, Zadov served in the army and pays attention to the fighting that has been going on in southern Lebanon. He said he is against violence on principle but convinced there is no other way to protect Israel.
Zadov also tracks how the Russians have been trying to suppress the rebellion in Chechnya and notes that if his family had not moved to Israel, he likely would have been drafted into the Russian army and been involved in that war.
“With the situation there,” he said, “I look at everything objectively. I can’t do that with the situation here. Here it is an emotional issue for me. Here I care, I have more of a connection.”
The young immigrants talk, as people their age often do, of traveling and seeing the world — possibly studying abroad for a while — but in the end, they say, they would return to Israel. That’s not necessarily for any deep Zionist or religious reasons, but just because Israel has become “home” for them.
“I really enjoy living in Israel. The education level is high and so is the level of technology here,” said Zeitlin’s brother, Eli, who also studies computer science and mathematics. “I’m not against studying for my master’s in the States and seeing the world, but I’ll live here when it comes time to raise a family, whenever that may be.”
Kagan, who said she sees the army as the great equalizer of Israeli society, is looking forward to participating in this Israeli rite of passage. She will be drafted this summer. Oreter, who said she didn’t like the idea of spending two years of her life “serving coffee to officers” as a female soldier, opted to do a year of national service. She was able to choose the job she wanted to do at a hospital laboratory.
Their parents have been a pivotal force in Israeli politics — helping elect first Binyamin Netanyahu and then Ehud Barak, and likely to play a major role in decisions about Israel returning the Golan Heights to Syria.
Most of their parents continue to keep up to date with news from the old country through cable television and Russian-language newspapers, so the dinner table conversations at home tend to reinforce the sense of a degree of separation from the nation in which they live.
“I don’t try to be like Israelis and I don’t try to disconnect from being Russian,” Zadov said.
“I don’t try to change myself,” he continued. “That was my life, and I don’t try to erase it; it is something that joins what I am today. But it’s like a big scar in your heart which doesn’t go away.”

Judith Sudilovsky is a ...

Uisr25 A
COFFEE TALK: Larisa Kagan, left, and Ina Oreter have coffee at a popular Jerusalem coffee shop called Second Cup.
Photo by Debbie Hill

Uisr25 B
NEW TUNES: Larisa Kagan looks at CDs in a Jerusalem store.
Photo by Debbie Hill

Uisr25 C
HOMEWORK: Twins Eli, left, and Dani Zeitlin study the computer in their house in Jerusalem.
Photo by Debbie Hill

Uisr25 D
STUDY DATE: Ina Oreter, left, and boyfriend Dani Zeitlin discuss their upcoming university exams in Dani’s parents’ home in Jerusalem.