April 25, 1998  

Shalom from Warsaw. Susan and I arrived here yesterday morning after 10 days in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and two shtetls. We’d been working with the Joint Distribution Committee (supported by donations from Jewish Federations) and Hillel on the annual Passover project conducting public Seders. For hundreds of reasons, Pesach 5758 is one holiday we will never forget.  

Russia had not been #1 on our list of "must-see countries" in the world.We’d gone primarily to work with the Jewish community. JDC and Hillel conduct Passover Seders during each day of the holiday — not just the first two nights.  

The point is to give people an opportunity to express their "Jewish-ness" in a public way (that’s a novelty here) and to learn something about Jewish ritual.We meet in big halls, in private homes, for everyone from newborns to people who remember the czars. As you can imagine, a holiday that talks about freedom has special meaning to the people who live here.  

There are 100,000 Jews left in St. Petersburg and one synagogue (with an unbelievably beautiful choir and a Shabbat service audience with an average age of 70 — though there are some younger people there as well).  

Rabbi Mendel Pevnser, a Chabad shaliach (emissary) serves the community. We got matzoh just before the holiday from the synagogue — the only place in town where it’s available — baked on the premises. About 10,000 Jews purchased matzoh this year, up from last year.  

Many of the Jews who had a strong commitment to Judaism have already left — to America or Israel. The people who  remain are working to create something here and, it seems to me, they are succeeding.  

Hillel has a dedicated group of students. A JDC-supported but locally-run organization attracts volunteers and attempts to meet the needs of the elderly. Jewish kindergartens teach children and, through the children, reach parents. It really was something to see 5- and 6-year-olds singing traditional songs like dayeinu with the parents tentatively following along.  

The atmosphere before our first Seder (put on for all the city kindergartens and their families as well as Hillel students) was reminiscent of an event in any North American Jewish community. (And why should this have surprised us? Where do you think most of us came from anyway?)  

Old Jewish women brandishing spoons like weapons, preparing the meal and refusing any assistance (though they yammered away in Russian or Yiddish instead of English)… kids running around… parents schmoozing.  

The "festive meal" was a little different though — pea & potato salad, beets, cucumber/tomato plates, bruised fruit, and grape juice. People don’t have much here. For too many, especially the elderly, the standard of living fell with the Berlin Wall and has yet to recover.  

After one Seder, a 75-year-old ballabusta led everyone in the singing of Tumbalalaika and some other Yiddish songs — she sounded just like Ethel Merman. When we were done singing, she turned to the hosts and thanked them. "I’m 75 years old and this was my first Pesach Seder."  

In another home, in a community of 1,000 Jews three hours from St. Petersburg, the host, who was celebrating his 80th birthday that day, concluded the Seder with a 25-minute recounting of his childhood.  

He remembered how his mother used to go through the house with a candle ridding it of unleavened bread. He remembered going to the synagogue on holidays like Simchat Torah. He hadn’t said a word during the entire Seder — it was as though he’d spent the entire time reliving those days and finally had permission to tell us the things he’d never been able to tell even his own family.  

We took the midnight train to Moscow later in the week and conducted one Seder there, again on the outskirts of the city in a place that reminded us of Anitevka. We pulled up to what looked like an abandoned, haunted house and I thought for sure we were just parking there and walking somewhere else.  

Nope. This is the synagogue for this little shtetl. It has an outhouse about 20 yards away in case you need to "go". I tried to imagine people leaving services in my synagogue at home to go out back and use the outhouse… Inside the synagogue, chicken was cooking on the stove and a chaos of disorganization awaited as no one was exactly sure who was going to do what, whether or not the Seder was hallachic (run according to strict Jewish law), and who exactly was coming.  

Not everything on our trip was exactly straight out of a UJA public relations video. There are problems and conflicts and stupidity… so the joke about the lone Jew on the desert island who builds two shuls (so he’ll have one to go to and one he wouldn’t set foot in) is no less true in Russia than anywhere else. Doesn’t matter how little you have or how oppressed you’ve been. Until you have another Jew to fight with, you don’t have a community.  

Our guidebook said that "Russia at firsts frustrates, then maddens, and finally saddens." How true. As warmly as we were welcomed by people, as good as we felt in the work we were doing and the experiences we were sharing with fellow Jews, to be honest, we couldn’t wait to get out of there.  

Arriving in Warsaw was like coming home. And we aren’t the first to feel this way. Kostek Gebert, the editor of a Jewish magazine in Warsaw, told us the following joke: A Parisian boarded a train bound for Moscow at the same time that a Muscovite boarded a train bound for Paris.They each accidentally got off in Warsaw. And each one thought he had already reached his final destination. It’d be funnier if it weren’t so poignant.  

The last two weeks were absolutely unforgettable and I know that we will recount our Pesach experiences at family events for the rest of our lives. The verse of one of my favorite Jewish songs says,"Amsterdam,Disneyland,Tel Aviv, oh, they’re miles apart. But when we light the candles on the Sabbath eve,we share in the prayer in each one of our hearts." If we learned anything this Pesach, it’s how similar we Jews are, even though we live half a world away. Here’s hoping that all is well with each of you.  

Jeff  

Jeffrey Levin is the Executive Director of the Jewish Federation of Washtenaw County in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1998, he and his wife Susan volunteered with the Joint Distribution Committee’s Pesach Project during a six-month trip around the world.You can email him at jeffreylevin@jccfed.org. Photos courtesy of the JDC. All show Passover programming in the Former Soviet Union.

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