Reflections on a meaningful Passover

Shalom, my dear darling readers.

Each year, as we sit around the Passover seder table, we say "בשנה הבאה בירושלים"--Next year in Jerusalem.

You can imagine the excitement with which I said this sentence last year, sitting with my family, celebrating my acceptance to rabbinical school and upcoming move across the world to Jerusalem. I would literally be spending the next year in Jerusalem! After all of our years of wishing, I would actually have the opportunity to spend not only the year, but specifically Passover in Jerusalem!

But wait, Elle, I thought you just put up 400+ pictures on your facebook of your adventures in Ukraine...which happened during Passover! 

That's correct, friends.

Instead of staying in Jerusalem for Passover, I made the decision to participate in the 2012 FSU Pesach Project. I fundraised over $3000 (a huge shout-out of gratitude to my donors! I could not have done it without you!), spent time organizing and programming, and finally departed just before the first seder with my #partnersincrimea, Jessie and Vlad. We had an incredibly meaningful experience, which we blogged about here: http://partnersincrimea.blogspot.com/

Since we blogged about our specific seder-leading activities, I'll spare you the details here, but I do want to share some reflections on what I learned there.

Until this year, I had had basically no exposure to the Former Soviet Union, let alone contemporary Jewish life there. Throughout the course of the year, I've learned a lot about how life was during the Soviet regime, how there was persecution, and how over one million Russian Jews came to Israel. I've learned how the influx of Russian Jewry was different from the influx of Ethiopian Jewry. I've learned how, when you're up in the North of Israel, signs are in Hebrew, Russian, and Arabic.

But I hadn't really learned what happened to the Jews who decided to stay in the Former Soviet Union. The Jews who, unlike so many of their family and friends, made the choice not to immigrate to Israel, bur rather to stay where they were.

This year has been so Israel focused that I think I've largely forgotten what it's like to be in an American Reform community, let alone a progressive community somewhere else in the world.

We've had a couple of speakers in our Israel Seminar who have worked closely with the FSU Jewish communities. Some tell us stories about their own experiences helping the Jews there. Others tell us about how this whole enterprise is about reclaiming Former Soviet Jews, not the other way around [that is to say, it's not about Former Soviet Jews reclaiming Judaism or their Jewishness].

Upon arriving in Simferopol, the city we considered our home base for the week, it was not obvious that we were among Jews. Unlike what has become normal for me to see here in Jerusalem, the streets were not packed with black hat wearing obviously Orthodox Jews. In fact, we walked right past the synagogue the night of the first seder, not realizing that it was where we needed to be. This sort of concealed or camouflaged Jewishness didn't seem to be intentional, but after so many years of repressing any outward signs of religious observance, it does not seem shocking that so few of the Jews there looked like what I see each day here in Israel.

During our time in Crimea (the south region of Ukraine), Jessie, Vlad, and I got to experience a lot of what Vlad (originally from Belarus) has been talking about all year when he talks about his family or memories from his time in Belarus. The food, the culture, and of course the language were all consistent with what we had come to expect. Something that surprised me, though, was the large range of religious diversity present in Crimea. Jews, Karaites, Muslims, and Crimean Tatars have all found a home among the gorgeous Russian Orthodox churches and their communities that abound in Crimea. I found myself intrigued by the Russian Orthodox services we would pop into as we walked around the various cities; they have such a multi-sensory tradition, and hearing different praises being chanted while candles are being lit and incense burns nearby creates a very powerful prayer environment. I feel like I learned so much about the different religions in the region!


We had the opportunity to travel for 3 days after our official seder leading gig was over, and I feel like we did a great job seeing a lot of different regions in Crimea. We spent some time by the Black Sea, looking at different historical palaces and cool museums. We were also, as it turns out, the three smiliest people on the peninsula.

All in all, it was an incredible experience. The memories of the seders and my interactions with the various Jewish communities there are so valuable, and I look forward to sharing them with the communities I'll be working with in the future.

So, with that, a great big thank you to everyone who supported me in this project. And, for those of you reading this who may one day have the chance to study at HUC in Jerusalem, I cannot recommend highly enough that you participate in this project!

!בשנה הבאה בירושלים...או אוקראינה

Want to see pictures from the trip?
Ukraine Pictures