Jewish Life Growing in Former Soviet Union

Dear Colleagues:

The great American writer, Henry Miller, once observed about travel: “One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.”

These words captured my mood when returning home last Friday from a remarkable four-day mission to Moscow and St. Petersburg. It was a mission that brought 16 New York congregational rabbis from across the religious spectrum to witness and experience the renewal of Jewish life in the former Soviet Union.

We gathered for prayer three times daily, and one evening, we found ourselves in Red Square. Just yards from Lenin’s Tomb, we prayed ma’ariv, the evening service. Lenin and his comrades were probably turning in their graves, as were some of our great-grandparents and grandparents. For 70 years, the Soviet regime did everything it could to eliminate religion, and yet, it is now clear, the search for meaning and community cannot be contained.

Nowhere is this more apparent than at the more than 60 summer camp sessions that are being operated by the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI). Natan Sharansky, who served nine years in Soviet prisons and now leads JAFI, and his wife Avital, who led the struggle for human rights, joined us when we visited one of these camps.

I met one young woman named Anna. She had not even known she was Jewish when her grandmother suggested that she attend one of the JAFI summer camps. So she did. She said, “At camp, I experienced Shabbat for the first time.” Her eyes lit up. “It changed my life. I returned for two summers as a camper, am now a counselor, am part of a youth group during the year, and I am going to Israel on a special program.” There are 6,000 like Anna who will attend summer camps this summer, but for lack of funds, an equal number cannot. This weighs on me heavily.

Before visiting the summer camps, we spent time with some of the 165,000 elderly, isolated, and often homebound seniors, who are being provided meals and medical care by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the extended hand of world Jewry. We were also introduced to some of the educational and cultural start-up initiatives that UJA-Federation is also supporting.

The camps, schools, youth groups, and voluntarism that accompany the welfare efforts are together giving birth to emerging Jewish life. Yes, some are drifting away from Judaism, and intermarriage continues. Said differently, in Moscow and St. Petersburg there is today both erosion and renewal, just like in New York. The difference, as some of the rabbis observed, is that the Russian community is under-organized and welcomes support for all positive initiatives.

At the final session, many rabbis, moved by what they had seen, spoke about taking back observations and lessons learned to their synagogues and communities. This was my fifth trip to the former Soviet Union and, like the rabbis, I continue to be inspired by what is happening there. But 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, young and old are being magnetically attracted to Jewish community. One sees so clearly there how the power of Jewish life is deep and abiding. What a privilege to help make this possible. Sometimes it takes a trip across the world to illuminate what we already know. 

Shabbat shalom.

John