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Rabbi Yaakov Bleich
challenges us to remember
the Forgotten Jews of the
former Soviet Union.
THINK QUICK. Can
you name a country --
somewhere in Europe --
with a population of only 500,000 Jews, yet
with nearly 20 Jewish day schools open
year-round, educating the community's young
for up to 8 hours a day; a community that
refuses to become part of Jewry's "continuity
crisis," but is receiving relatively little help in
areas of financial resources and moral
encouragement?
Let's face it, most of us can't. And the question
we should be asking ourselves is: Why not?
One could, I suppose, answer "because the
Ukraine is just so far away. Out of sight, out
of mind. What do you really expect?"
But that's more of an excuse than an answer.
IT HAS BEEN A
DECADE since I made my first trip to what
was then the Soviet Union. Actually, a
"pilgrimage" would be a more accurate
description. We were 20 Chasidic youth in
search of our roots in a faraway land that,
during our formative years, had served as the
setting whence our cultural heritage had been
sprung; on whose ground our most revered
sages had walked. We had come to draw
inspiration; to pray at the grave sites of the
Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chasidic
movement, and his disciple, Rabbi Ber of
Mezrich, and other greats, in order that they
should act as our "proxies" Above. We prayed
to the Creator for continued success in our
endeavors and for a good life; for happy
marriages and dutiful children.
As Karlin-Stoliner Chasidim, we were
particularly excited to be visiting the burial
place of the famed Beis Aharon, one of the
Founding Fathers of our sect, who lays in the
Western Ukrainian hamlet of M'linov. We
were said to be the first Jews who would visit
the site as a group since the outbreak of World
War II.
But it was not to be.
Upon returning from prayer services on
Shabbes morning, we were greeted by an
official who promptly informed us that our
permission to visit the site had suddenly been
revoked. (The USSR in 1988, it must be
remembered, had many towns and villages
that were closed to outsiders. At any time --
and for any reason -- the authorities could
simply cut off a region from the rest of the
world. And nothing, absolutely nothing, could
be done to rectify the situation.)
We chose an alternative location: the local and
nearby cemetery in Kiev.
IT WAS A WEEK AFTER
SUCCOS, a bitter cold Sunday morning. I
remember the details well, as it was the
highlight of our trip, and an epiphany for me.
The cemetery was like most in the USSR --
decrepit, yet other-worldly looking. Most of
Kiev was sound asleep as our group made its
way through the region's silent streets and
countryside. But to our surprise, the eternal
home for residents of this city, so rich with
history and ideas, was fully packed with Jews.
These were individuals who, for one reason
or another, apparently could not visit before
Rosh HaShana, in accordance with Jewish
custom. Despite the spiritual starvation so
rampant at the time, this custom, it seems, was
for some reason never forsaken.
As we wandered about, we suddenly noticed
ourselves being watched intently by the
assembled. And for a flicker of a moment, we
wondered if the Motherland, which had just
put a damper on our other plans, had actually
gone to the bother of sending so many of her
dutiful "deputies" to watch us here as well.
This was the Soviet Union, after all.
It didn't take us long to find out. Our group
was suddenly surrounded from all sides.
An elderly, hunched-backed Jew wearing a
tattered cap and supporting himself with a
cane was the first to come forward. It was
obvious that our presence had moved him.
But in which direction?
He began to run his hands up and down the
sleeves of my coat, trying to hold back tears
that must have been welled-up just under the
surface for a half-century. He asked in a gruff,
thickly-accented Yiddish: "Are you real? Am I
still on Earth? Is this some sort of dream?"
He wasn't kidding.
"I am very much real," I responded. "And
there are many more like me from where I
come."
An elderly woman then asked if she could
hold my friend's prayer book. "The last time I
saw one," she said, as hot tears ran down her
wrinkled face, "was so, so many years ago."
Our encounter in Kiev left us moved. We had
come here to go "grave-hopping," in the
Chasidic vernacular. But we left with a lesson
in geo-politics that even the most proficient
professor could not have conveyed better.
IN KIEV, AT THIS TIME, there were
some 150,000 Jews. And millions more were
still trapped behind the Iron Curtain. Yet we
knew so little about them, and they, of course,
knew even less about us.
It's now almost ten years later. The world is,
by all accounts, a far different place. The
Soviet Union is no more. There are organized
Jewish communities -- with synagogues, daily
minyanim, and institutions of Jewish learning
-- scattered all throughout the Commonwealth
of Independent States. Yet I dare ask: Has the
Jewish world really changed?
In the 1970s and 1980s, the struggle for Soviet
Jewry united Jews the world over. In the early
1990s, after the fall of Communism and the
fulfillment of the "cause," the USSR suddenly
became a novelty to the West. It was sort of
like opening a time capsule and taking
inventory of what had survived and what had
not, a mere amusement.
Of course, there are some establishment
Jewish groups doing their part. But it
sometimes seems that the only time the
average Western Jew is reminded of our
existence is in sensationalistic stories and
coverage of visits by political leaders. Does
the average Jew, in fact, care that the
7,000-member Jewish community of Lemberg
has gone to great lengths to organize a Judaic
renaissance -- complete with social service
agencies, educational facilities and the like?
Do the Jews of (relatively) nearby Riga
deserve more attention than merely serving as
a backdrop in a newswire story about a
resident who will be receiving a check from
the Swiss Holocaust fund?
There are still millions of Jews living behind
the Plastic Curtain. It's a transparent partition.
But who will be the ones to push their
outstretched hands
Jewish World Review Oct. 1 1998 / 11 Tishrei, 5759
Questions Most
Can't
Answer
Rabbi Yaakov Bleich is Chief Rabbi of the Ukraine.
