This was a highlight of the brief introduction Arkadiy, one of my co-workers, gave of me to a group of babushky (old women) this morning. It was received with ooohs and aaahs. Today I went to my first “Warm Home.” This is a program that is just starting, and it is going to be one of the main things I am involved in. Once a week a group of 8-12 Hesed clients will meet at someone’s apartment and have tea and cookies. These meetings happen in neighborhoods that are a bit far from Hesed, so these clients visit Hesed-run soup kitchens and receive some services at their homes. I will go with Arkadiy or another volunteer to the apartment and do some sort of activity like show a movie, give a lecture, go on some sort of excursion, or have a little concert ( I am thinking that listening to the new Mates album would be a hit…or I may even sing). Eventually, I will go to these Warm Homes by myself (a couple each week). I am really excited to be a part of something that gets me out of the office and really interacting with the clients!
Side note: I am doing laundry as I write this and the electricity has gone out about 10 times as a result, I’m not kidding, every minute…There is literally NOTHING else using electricity. I even unplugged the fridge temporarily…I just changed the setting on the machine to try and speed up the process. The machine is Italian. So I really have no idea what the settings say…I am home alone. I hope nothing bad happens!
So yes, I am starting to actually have a job! But what has been occupying my thoughts the most recently is this Jewish thing. First I should explain something about being Jewish in Ukraine, or in the Former Soviet Union. Here, Jewish is a nationality, like Ukrainian, Polish, or Russian. If you are Jewish, that is what it says in your passport. Last week a couple of girls from Hillel came to the Day Center at Hesed to give a little talk about the High Holidays. The Hesed clients were having a very hard time understanding exactly who these girls were. “They are from here? They go to a Jewish university in Kiev? We have a Jewish university?”-were the general questions. One woman leaned over to me and said, “Are they Ukrainian or are they Jewish? I don’t understand.” I replied, “They are both, Ukrainian and Jewish.” To this the woman responded, “Eto nevozmozhno.” This is not possible. So for me to be both American and Jewish is really something special.
And this is something I have really been wrestling with, since I applied to the JSC, and I probably until long after I have completed my year of service. When I decided I wanted to spend a year in the FSU doing some sort of public health work, working in a Jewish community was not a priority of mine. But the JSC allows me to do exactly what I wanted to be doing, in the context of a Jewish community. At first I was concerned that I wasn’t Jewish enough. But what does this mean? As I quickly learned, despite considering myself a cultural Jew and not a religious one, here, I am a sort of “Jewish expert.” At my first Shabbat in Ukraine (in Uzhgorod), the women at my table turned to me with questions about Shabbat. For one of the girls at my table, this was her first Shabbat. I was surprised to realize that because I was able (allowed by the government) to have a Jewish education, both formally in Hebrew school, and informally by celebrating holidays and traditions in my home with my family, things about Judaism and being Jewish that I think of as common knowledge, are actually things that Jews here do not know. But they want to know; the women seemed a bit envious of my Jewish upbringing and knowledge. So this of course makes me feel guilty; that I have taken being Jewish, being a practicing, Bat Mitzvahed Jew, for granted.
It is not necessarily the religious part of being Jewish that the people here seem to want. But rather the cultural part, the traditions, celebrations, history, and community. This is the part of being Jewish that I most identify with and practice. Spending The High Holidays here really illustrated this separation. In the week leading up to Rosh Hashanah, I ate more apples and honey and pomegranates than I have in the past five years combined. They were in every office, and served at several meetings and meals. I was wished L’Shana Tova (Hebrew) and S’Novom Godom (Russian) several times a day. I didn’t go to temple for Rosh Hashanah. I don’t usually. I usually go to temple once a year, on Kol Nidre, and I did the same here…more on that in a moment. I spent the two nights of Rosh Hashanah with the local Israeli community. This was a bit of mind twist. My local boss and his wife are Israeli and very involved in the Israeli Jewish community here, a group of considerable size. They took me with them to a meal at the Israeli Cultural Center on the first night, and meal at the Chabbad Rabbi’s house on the second night. On both occasions, Hebrew was the primary language spoken. Too bad I know about 20 words of Hebrew, ten of which are the numbers 1-10.
At the Israeli Cultural Center there were about 70 people, some who now live here and some who just happened to be in town. The extent of the religious part of the night was just prayers over the bread and wine. There were about 30 people at the Rabbi’s house the next night. Here of course, there was a bit more praying, including benching after the meal for which I was given a prayer book in Russian. The weekend was festive, and the sense of community was strong, but overall not really religious.
This past weekend had the potential to be the complete opposite, given that I have become friendly with the Rabbi’s 25 year old cousin and she invited me to spend the entire 3-day weekend at her house celebrating both Shabbat and Yom Kippur (she is orthodox, for those of you who are unclear, I AM NOT). I managed to par it down to lunch at the Rabbi’s house on Sunday (this was a family lunch….The Rabbi, his wife, their 6 kids, my friend Yafit, and me…) We then hung out at the house and watched Ushpizhin (“Guests,” an Israeli comedy about Sukkot in the Hassidic community in Jerusalem…). In the evening, the Rabbi, two of his daughters, Yafit and me went o Temple. I had wanted to go to one of the three main temples in town, and thought that’s where we were headed…but it turns out the Chabbad temple is a couple rooms in the bottom of a building. There were about 20 men already praying when we go there. I followed Yafit and the girls’ leads, and proceeded to stand and pray in the women’s side of the room for about an hour and a half. There were occasional prayers that were familiar and we did all together, but this was largely an individual experience. The prayer books were in Hebrew and Russian…I can sort of read the Hebrew but it doesn’t mean anything to me…I can read the Russian and it sort of means something to me…I took the metro home, much to Yafit’s dismay (She invited me to stay with her again, but finally seemed to understand that while she is very observant, I am not).
On Yom Kippur, I spent the day fasting and relaxing. It was hard not being at home for the big Break Fast we have at my family’s house every year. When ever I spend a holiday like this away from home, I realize how much I enjoy these times with my family. Instead, I broke fast with my host sister (and friend) Sasha at a Ukrainian café. She had also been fasting all day, but had to go to work and to classes (at Hillel and the Jewish University…very confusing for me).
So there you have it. My thoughts about being Jewish and my experiences as an American Jew in Ukraine so far. I’m sure many more of my entries will have a Jewish theme as this is a large feature of my life this year. I have to go get ready for Hillel’s High Holiday celebration: An “Apples and Honey” party at a disco they rented out…
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