Nelly
Shulman
The Jewish
Miracle
[German]
In the former
Soviet Union we actually have to educate the people from the beginning. Many
don't know what Shabbat is, what Chagim [festivals] are, what Aleph-Beth [Hebrew
alphabet] is, etc. And only after a while we can introduce the ideas of
responsibility, pluralism, inclusiveness - including people from the margins of
the society, people who are not halakhically Jewish [i.e. having only a Jewish
father], who live in mixed marriages or are the children of mixed marriages,
etc. - and courage.
There is
indeed a lot of courage! When I first came to work as a rabbinical student in
Minsk - I grew up in St. Petersburg - I was amazed how many people actually took
on their Jewishness and started to act according to their Jewishness. I was
amazed at how many people chose not to hide, which is a very good sign! Every
day people enter my congregation who choose to rediscover their Jewish identity.
A lot of them hid their Jewishness during the Communist years and many are still
afraid to accept themselves as Jews. We need to tell them every day: Be
courageous! Be honest to yourself! Say: "I am Jewish." If we didn’t have so many
people who are courageous, we wouldn't have the Reform movement in Belarus, we
wouldn't have 18 congregations there. And we wouldn't have nearly 100 Reform
congregations in the former Soviet Union - if not for the people who are
courageous.
When you
enter organised Jewish life in the former Soviet Union today, you carry heavy
luggage. Often you come with the wrong family - whether it is a mixed marriage
or whether you are halakhically not fully Jewish. People who are 30 years old
and older come with the experience of life under the Communist regime, with the
experience of hiding, of fear, of not being able to be plural, to freely,
openly, fully express their opinion. And most of them do not yet understand what
Jewishness means to them and whether they want or don't want to be Jewish. And
we are working with them day after day - turning them into Jewish people.
I have been
working for three years in the Reform congregation of Minsk, under not very
simple conditions. Life is difficult, the government of the country is not very
helpful to the Jewish community and the Jewish community itself is very diverse.
In addition, the economical conditions are influencing the activities of people.
People are very much concerned about work, unemployment, salary and things like
that, but nevertheless they are still trying to be Jewish. The hunger for
learning is unbelievable. They want to learn any time of the day or the night! I
will just tell you a small incident that happened to me recently. I had to leave
a youth camp with around 50 kids in Siberia. My flight back to Minsk was
scheduled at three o'clock in the morning, so I had to leave at about one
o'clock. A car was coming to pick me up. I went to the kids to say good-bye.
They were about 15-17 years old. There was actually a disco that night. I came
in, but not a single one was dancing. Every one, every single kid, was sitting
outside in a little hall. Just before, during the dinner, I had given them a
copy of Tanach [Hebrew Bible], which I had in Russian and Hebrew and a copy of
Pirkey Avot [Sayings of the Fathers, Mishnah]. Now they had divided themselves
into two groups - one of them was reading Tanach, the other one Pirkey Avot. And
as I wanted to say good-by, they said: "Well, the car isn't here yet. Sit with
us the next twenty minutes and study with us, so that we may learn from you,
because we don't have other chances to study with a rabbi." At one o'clock in
the night! And this was not even an exceptional situation, it happens every day.
So my vision
for the Reform movement in the former Soviet Union is not to depend on only
three rabbis. Imagine - the territory is huge. I sometimes have to fly eight
hours to Siberia to teach, to run summer camps and seminars for young people.
There are at least half a million people in the former Soviet Union who identify
themselves as Jewish, but we only have three Reform rabbis - three - "drei" in
German. And this is totally unacceptable. It is very difficult to bring people
back to Judaism when you have to work in a town that had its last rabbi in 1940
and not a single person remembers that guy, but everybody begs: "Please stay!"
Well I cannot stay, because I have 18 congregations waiting for me back in
Belarus. And these people continue begging: "Please send us somebody! We have
7,000 Jews in our city, but not a rabbi."
So hopefully
- that is my vision - our young people from the former Soviet Union, from
Eastern Europe will go and study for the rabbinate and, which is even more
important, will return to be rabbis here. Hopefully every city with a sizeable
Jewish population will in about fifteen years have a progressive congregation
and a progressive rabbi. And I invite all of you to come to the former Soviet
Union to see with you own eyes the Jewish miracle that is happening every day.
Rabbi
Nelly Shulman, born in St. Petersburg, Russia, received her rabbinical
ordination at the Leo Baeck College in London in 1999. For the past three years
she has been working for the Belarussian Union for Progressive Judaism.
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