Bev Fox
This week's parsha is Re'eh. We thought that we would give you a taste of our trip to Russia by sharing some thoughts raised in connection with today's parsha. I'm going to focus on the Educational Seminar part of the trip and to do that I want you to turn to Deuteronomy 15:4, p. 1077. It says: 'There shall be no needy among you. If however, there is a needy person among you, one of your kinsmen in any of your settlements in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman. Rather, you must open our hand and lend him sufficient for whatever he needs. Give to him readily and have no regrets when you do so, for in return the Lord your God will bless you in all your efforts and in all your undertakings. For there will never cease to be needy ones in your land, which is why I command you: Open your hand to the poor and needy.
The rabbis say that this commandment comes to tell us that we our obligated to support a kinsman who has fallen on hard times without calculating whether the help will be repaid. I realize that in most cases people will understand this as meaning that we should help people who are out of work. I would like to widen that definition and suggest that this commandment comes to tell us to help any Jew who has fallen on hard times, and the hard times can be not only monetary, but also finding it difficult to live life as a Jew.
As many of you know the idea for our 'Summer Trip to Russia"came out of our relationship with Kineshma, our adopted city through the Yadlyad program of Chicago Action. The original goal of the program was that as a community we would help Kineshma with the kinds of things suggested by this commandment: money, medical supplies, food, clothing, etc. However, as my relationship with Lucy developed, often our discussion focused around the area of Jewish education. She is in charge of the education of the communities' children and I am a Jewish educator. I guess that was a pretty natural connection.
When I dreamed up the idea of going to do an educational seminar for many Jewish educators in Russia, there were those who said, 'Why are you wasting your time, energy and money on developing educational programs there? We should just help to get them all to move to Israel." I didn't agree with that premise when I first heard it, but having seen the Jewish community with my own eyes, I disagree even more.
I imagine that many of you, as I do, have Russian roots. For years I heard and read stories about the Pale of Settlement, children studying at the cheder and the rich Jewish life in Russia. My many conversations with Lucy, our contact in Kineshma, as we prepared for this Seminar, certainly gave me the sense that the teachers there would welcome our pedagogical imput, but I was not prepared for the hunger with which they ached for Judaism.
They were so open to taking in all that they could from every workshop. At one point Rhonda said, she felt as if she had unzipped her head and was pouring all of the contents out. They wanted to know about everything. One woman told us that she had wanted her son to know something about his background, so she had signed him up for the Jewish kindergarten. He came home wanting to know more and she didn't have anything to offer. So she quit her job as a metallurgist and went to work at the pre-school so that she could learn along with him. Another woman said that she had an opportunity to visit Israel. When she saw the Hebrew letters on the signs, she just wanted to learn Hebrew. She got more involved and then offered to help run family clubs.
Jews in Russia are trying to take in all that they can, but the process is slow and there are few to teach them. The first day I was teaching a workshop entitled Partners with God and we began to discuss the purpose of prayer as a means of communicating with God. I started to talk about the Sheheyanu as a prayer for special occasions and they had never heard of it. We made it a point to teach it to the whole group the next day. While we were there one teacher from Kineshma was not able to attend our SeminaróWhy? Because she had been asked to attend a two week crash course on Hebrew which was being offered at the same time as the Seminar. Then she would go back and become the Hebrew teacher in Kineshma.
These people come from a very cultured society, and they approached our Torah study sessions with great seriousness. In one session we were talking about the Exodus and we were looking at the question of why God chose a burning bush to be a sign for Moses. One person suggested that the Egyptians and Moses in particular were so far from God that they needed a magic trick to get their attention. Perhaps the plagues were also magical for the same reason. Later, during our stay, we visited a JCC in Moscow and we were surprised to learn that only 40% of the members are Jewish. The Center focuses on the arts: drama, music, danceóthe arts are the 'magic tricks"that they use to get the Jews' attention, to bring them in the door. Once there, they invite them to participate in a seder or to attend a Purim celebration.
But as much as I saw what a limited basic Jewish knowledge the participants had, I was also awed by their enthusiasm and eagerness to share what was happening in their own communities. The first evening, each participant had an opportunity to share some artifacts representing themselves, their families and their communities. They brought art work made by the children, crocheted shawls, theater programs, Jewish star necklaces, posters, photographs, food, recipes and educational materials they had prepared and brochures about their Centers. They were eager to tell us their stories, how they came back to being interested in their Jewish roots. Two different people gave us copies of CDs they had created of Jewish music. Once again Jews are singing and dancing to Jewish music in Russia.
I want to share with you the most memorable moment of the Seminar for me. Anne had been teaching a session about creating ritual in relation to weddings and she discovered that there was a new bride in her group. She thought it would be nice if we developed a set of Sheva Brachot in honor of the new bride. Since most of the participants wouldn't be familiar with the Hebrew, we took the subject content of each of the seven blessings and wrote our own blessings in English. Then at lunch on the second day, each of the teachers and organizers of the conference stood in front of the new bride and read her our blessings. The whole group then sang siman tov and mazel tov. That afternoon a group of Russian madrichim came to camp to prepare for a Jewish family camp that would be held the following week. We discovered that there was another new bride in the group of madrichim, so at the next meal the Sheva Brachot were delivered again. This time, seven volunteer participants in the seminar wrote the blessings in Russian (and the translators translated back to English for the benefit of the Americans). I will never forget the look on the faces of those two brides as they received the blessings. It was worth the whole trip.
Perhaps the biggest surprise for me was that of all the 40 participants, several were not Jewish . These people were enlisted by the Jewish community to use the talents they have and infuse them with Jewish content to help in this revival. Victoria, a participant in my reflection group described it this way, 'I'm not Jewish. I'm Russian. I don't know my roots. For a Russian person, I started to get interested in Judaism as I wanted to know more about the Bible. Based on what I read, I understood that the Jews were not just one of many, but the chosen people. God said to Abraham, 'Whoever blesses you, I will bless them. In spite of the fact that I'm Russian, I'm interested in Jewish culture. I believe that every person in their heart believes in God. Leah is the curator of a museum in Moscow. The only experience I'd had with Jews before this was to see how they laid a table. Leah wants to set up a family club and she invited me to come to the conference and learn so that I can help her with the club. I've only been learning about Judaism for the past two months." Another participant, Sergei, was a director. He is only one quarter Jewish and does not choose to identify himself specifically with any of his ancestry. He is planning to write a play about Jewish life in Russia and he wanted to immerse himself in Judaism as part of the preparation for his writing. He may have received more than he bargained for by attending the conference, I'm hoping that we put the hook in nice and deep.
But let's go back to the Torah portion again. When I see the hunger in the way that these participants want to learn about Judaism, I feel that we were absolutely fulfilling the mitzvah of providing for the needy. The analogy which seems most appropriate to me is that of Hannukah. I felt as if once the Communist regime took over the Soviet Union, it was as if the lamp was left with only a drop of oil. For all of these years the Jews have been holding onto that oil, not wanting to let it go out and now finally when they are free to live openly as Jews again, they are trying to rekindle the light. It is our job to continue to help in that rekindling of spirit.
Ellen Holtzblatt
Parshat Re'eh begins, "See, this day I set before you blessing and curse: blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I enjoin upon you this day; and curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon you this day and follow other gods, whom you have not experienced." (Dvarim 11:26-28)
This is my question. What do these verses mean if the god that has not been experienced is the God of Moses; the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel and Leah? For over seventy years in the Soviet Union Jews were not allowed to openly study and teach about Judaism or to say words of Jewish prayer. Religious observance, community participation and cultural identification waned under oppressive regime after oppressive regime. Interfaith marriages were common, a practice that continues today. Seventy years is a long time. My grandmother came to America from Minsk, at the age of 18, just seven years before the Revolution. She died at the age of 97, one year before Maya was born, and the same year the Soviet Union broke apart. In 70 years generations are born and generations die. After seventy years who was left? Who knew how to help Jews to know their God?
What does it mean to be Jewish in a godless society? In the Soviet Union if you ask an identified Jew the question, "what is your nationality?" you will receive the answer, "I am Jewish." They will not say, "I am Russian." I do not want to focus on anti-Semitism, but you cannot talk about Jewish identity in Russia without mentioning it. When we were in Kineshma I asked a group of men, some my age and some older, what their experiences were with anti-Semitism. They said that Jews are still afraid. To make his point one of the men said, "There are three Levys in town, but only one identifies himself as Jewish." One man stated that although anti-Semitism is no longer officially sanctioned as it was in the Stalin era, the fear from that time still exists. History is present and alive for those who remember Stalin. But when I asked teenagers about anti-Semitism they said it doesn't exist for them. Either they have no memory of it, or they do not see anti-Semitic experiences as anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps they just do not have a name for these experiences. On the wall just outside the door of the Jewish Center in Kineshma, where these conversations took place, is a crudely painted swastika. It cannot be missed.
Everywhere we went, from the seminar in Pushkina to Kineshma, people wanted to tell us their stories. Anne, Rhonda, Bev and I discussed why this was. We wondered if one reason was that as foreigners with very different life experiences than them we displayed an interest in their stories that that they could not give each other. It is not a stretch to use an analogy of a starving person. If you had nothing to eat would you want to hear your neighbor moaning about his empty stomach? We met person after person who shared extraordinary stories of spiritual and community starvation, and their struggles to learn how to feed their hunger. There was a beautiful, fashionable young woman with fantastically painted fingernails and plunging neckline who described being Jewish as the only important aspect of her being. There was the woman who lugged on her train ride a huge collage that she had made. In the center of the collage was a Jewish star which proudly expressed the centrality of Judaism in her life.
Bible stories were intensely personal for the seminar participants. We led a text study each of the mornings of the seminar. On the last morning we read the first chapter of Ruth. Participants discussed whether they were more like Ruth or Orpah. Some felt that they were more like Ruth because in the FSU, where the majority of Jews deny their heritage, one has to make a conscious choice to be Jewish. One woman argued that she was more like Orpah because she stayed in her tradition. Two women, Larisa and Galina, passionately disagreed over who deserves to be labeled and treated like a Jew. In Russia many Jews keep Eastern Orthodox icons in their homes. Some of these Jews may keep the icons out of religious conviction, while others may be doing so out of fear of anti-Semitism and the need to be seen as a part of mainstream society. Still others may keep the icons out of habit or respect for elderly or deceased relatives. Larisa felt very strongly that these people had abandoned Judaism and should not be allowed to receive tzedakah from Jewish organizations. Galina was just as passionate in her belief that because many of these icon owners were elderly and poor they were deserving of compassion and Jewish tzedakah.
There was also an interesting and short discussion about Naomi changing her name to Mara. This made absolute sense to the Russians who seemed to possess a beautifully fatalistic and pessimistic mentality. They were of the belief that Naomi should be punished for abandoning her land and people when they were suffering with a famine. Although Naomi had escaped the physical hunger of the famine, ultimately she was unable to escape her true fate. Naomi had to suffer through the famine of the death of her husband and sons. Even the loyalty that Ruth demonstrated to Naomi could not appease the depths of her suffering. The bitterness was so complete as to necessitate the alteration of her name.
One last story that I would like to share is that of Galina, the same Galina who argued for compassion for the icon owners. When she was seven years old she was taken to a Jewish cemetery. Up to that point she had received no Jewish education or upbringing. She walked over to one of the gravestones and looked at the Hebrew letters etched upon it. She felt a connection to the letters that she could not explain. It was after this experience that she began her exploration into her Jewish ancestry and her Jewish soul.
But even Jewish souls can feel pulled in two directions. Galina must deal with feeling torn between Russia and Israel with one son living in each nation.
This parasha begins with a warning and a promise. The Israelites are warned that they will be cursed if they do not obey the commandments and follow other gods. The promise is a blessing if the commandments are obeyed. The Jews that we met in Russia seem to be immersed in curses. For years their religion was forbidden to them. They live with the fear of anti-Semitism. For the most part they are monetarily poor, at least by our standards. But when I look at them, listen to their stories, eat their food, drink their vodka, glow in the warmth of their hospitality, all I know are blessings. They are blessed with a small, but growing Jewish community. They are blessed with children who are being proudly taught the truth of who they are. They are blessed with the desire to learn how to live as Jews. They are blessed with the freedom to debate in the tradition of the Rabbis.
In meeting them and knowing them in even a small way we are also blessed. I feel like I have witnessed the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, of Creation itself. I remember when I was trying to get pregnant with Maya, feeling the miracle and near-impossibility of conception and birth. How did this burgeoning and vibrant society emerge from the very unwomb-like Soviet Union? It is a blessing to have been witness to even a small part of this process.
In looking at the verses that I quoted in the beginning, I think that I would have to argue, like Galina: compassion for those who do not know God, compassion for those who seek God, compassion for those who are afraid of God, compassion even for those who do not believe in God. In all my life I have never met people who more internalized the words of Tanach. May their lives be a blessing.
Anne Johnston
So, it is my job to somehow bring this d'var to a conclusion.
Let us complete our journey. Close your eyes and take a Shabbat walk with us in Kineshma.
On Shabbat Va'etchanan, we walked from our hotel to the Jewish center. We walked alongside a roadway so full of potholes, it was not possible to drive it in a straight line. Turning off onto a cracked asphalt path, we followed Lucy and Victor as they threaded their way between crumbling Krushchevski, classic Soviet apartment blocks. Crossing lots rampant with weeds, we took a rickety bridge over the neighborhood water pipe. We had just glimpsed the fields marking the edge of Kineshma when we arrived at the Jewish center.
From the outside, it is unmarked, except by the swastika about which Ellen spoke. Flanking the front door are weedy flower beds, which we only this week learned from Lucy had last year been planted with flowers by the children-only to be destroyed by neighborhood boys. Lucy fears that the park Bev has suggested could be constructed on the weedy plaza in front would only meet the same fate.
Inside, we are warmly greeted. The men are davenning, in Russian transliteration, in the office of the official community head, Vladimir Mlodinoff. The women meet next door, studying Torah with Lucy, who leads the discussion from a book of parashah summaries. As we enter, we understand at once the improbable dimensions of the tablecloth we had made in the minyan-the table stretches the entire length, and much of the width of the room. Later we will fit all in attendance around it for lunch, singing, and many toasts.
No one there has ever seen women in tallitot, and Bev explains "traditional egalitarian"-an interesting experience in a community just learning Jewish tradition, in a culture where even communist ideology failed to conquer gender. Fortunately, Lucy had already gotten a strong dose of this at the seminar, and translated comfortably, even if with 2-4 words in Russian to every one of Bev's in English. "I am explaining," Lucy told us. Jewish tradition was first packaged for communities in the FSU efficiently and with characteristic passion by Chabad-and we should all say heartily "kol ha-kavod" to those schlichim: they were there when the rest of us-and our movement leadership-were not (and still really are not-not with any serious commitment of personnel or funding). So the men of the Kineshma Jewish community have been to Moscow, to learn how to daven-and to learn that women do not need to.
After the Torah discussion, Bev, Rhonda, and I leyn from a chumash-the women have never heard women leyning. Ellen chants a part of the haftarah-but first we must explain what the haftarah is, as it is entirely unfamiliar to them. Liz has requested that we say a misheberach l'cholim for her in Kineshma. Bev explains, and I lead the group in a creative take-off on a misheberach. As we go around the circle, names are added to Liz', and we come together in our concern for those in our communities who are in need. The next day, Kristina, divorced at 21 with a 2-yr-old son, Ilya, will share with us that Ilya began to get well after our misheberach that morning.
And then we sing and sing and sing. Vladimir will later open kiddush with a remonstrance to the women that we were too loud-but we do not even think about that now. We sing Hebrew songs, listen to Hebrew songs sung in Russian, offer some of our own. After lunch, and again the next day during Sunday School, we will sing some more-the women's singing group serenading us, the whole community joining together in songs of Russian patriotism, the children showing us the English songs they have learned.
We may only have mastered a handful of Russian words-it is truly amazing what you can accomplish with "pajouste"-please-and "spasiba"-thank you-but we can sit around a table and sing together across the language barrier. The songs belong to all of us-one people, finally together again.
These communities may not have sifrei Torah, or "real" siddurim, or Hebrew teachers-but as both Bev and Ellen have said so eloquently, they are crafting Jewish lives, marked in an evolving blend of Jewish and Russian Jewish tradition and time.
And that brings us back to our parashah-all the way back to where Ellen began, to the ritual of blessings and curses by which the b'nei Yisrael would mark their ascension into the land. Ellen spoke of the blessings she witnessed and experienced on this trip. But I want to look at the whole ritual-it was both blessings and curses. Indeed, to get the full story we must jump ahead to chp. 27, in Ki Tavo. The JPS Commentary puts this ceremony in the context of two previous covenanting ceremonies-the initial acceptance of Torah at Horeb, and the reaffirmation at Moab. Indeed, the parallels are strongest with our standing at Sinai and proclaiming, "Naaseh v'nishmah." These are moments of rebirth-in which we were reborn as a people, a covenanted people, living from those points on ever in relation to our one G-d.
Our parashah-among several places in Torah and Tanach-expresses this special status as Am Segulah, a treasured people. In Ki Tavo, just before the ceremony is laid out, Moshe uses a different express: "Am Kadosh," a santicified, or better, set-apart people. How do we understand these two terms?
Our sages have understood Am Segulah to encompass a range of meanings-and relationships with G-d. Early rabbinic commentators, as discussed in the Fields' commentary, saw becoming a treasure as an act of inexplicable, mystical love: how could we possibly understand the powerful attraction that led G-d to bring us out of Egypt and into the brit? And yet, a midrashic counter-tradition coexists-the one which pictures G-d holding Har Sinai over our heads as G-d asks us to choose Torah and life, or not. This tradition sees G-d as being as much in search of a people as we were in search of a G-d and rules for living. As Rabbi Fields crisply summarizes: "It is a desperate choice of desperate people singled out by a desperate G-d." G-d needed a people to carry the burden of Torah, and thus the world, on its shoulders. We would be a treasured people to the extent that we are willing to accept that burden and live lives of Torah.
This brings us back to a grammatical issue in verses 27 and 28: [read in Hebrew, emphasizing asher vs im] Rashi's characteristically cryptic comment is: [read in Hebrew]
Nechama Leibowitz understands Rashi to be referring to the Talmudic concept of "al menat"-on account:
"Al menat implies retroactive force. "I shall pay you IF you perform a certain task" constitutes an obligation to pay when the work is completed-on performance. "I shall pay you on account on account of the work you perform for me" implies a retroactive obligation to pay even before the performance" (pp122-123)
Leibowitz concludes that the difference in phrasing shows us that the original state of the world was that of blessing-we were given blessings on account. Only later would we experience curses, only in the condition of our disobedience.
Leo Baeck brings these threads together: we are an Am Segulah, a treasured people chosen in love by a G-d with a deep well of divine patience for our foibles, and high expectations that we will do the right thing, to grow into our "consciousness of election" and our vocation of bringing G-d's righteousness, justice, compassion, peace and all those good things to all the peoples of the world.
We are an Am Kadosh in that we are set apart both in this burden, and in the particulars of the brit into which we have chosen (and must continually choose) to enter.
We separate ourselves from G-d's love and our covenant when we do not do our part-when we by our behavior create the conditions for curses to flourish.
THIS MOMENT, this ritual of blessings and curses, is a moment of defining the very nature of our relationship to G-d-a relationship for all time. Indeed, in chp 27, Moshe and the Levites begin the ceremony by exhorting:
SILENCE! And listen, Israel-this is not something you may undertake lightly. This is the first day for the rest of your life.
TODAY is a moment like that. NOW, not when it's convenient. In Russia and throughout the FSU, our people is once again reclaiming their status as an Am Segula. They are struggling with what that means-how to be an Am Kadosh in a culture where being seen as set apart has not been a good thing-- no less than generations of our teachers have struggled. But they are proceeding al menat-not on assurances of continued funding, basic libraries, or neighborly acceptance-but on an ancient and now living assurance:
[Hebrew: 14:2] For you are a people consecrated to the Lord your G-d: the Lord your G-d chose you from among all other peoples on earth to be G-d's treasured people.
The question with which I think we all were left was: and what of us? What do we do now? If we, too, claim to stand in the brit, then how is it that we do not read about the struggles of Russian Jews every day in our Jewish papers? Once upon a time the place to be seen was protesting in front of the Soviet consulate, singing heartfelt songs and making passionate speeches. I have no doubt that there are those in this room who actively smuggled chumashim into the Soviet Union, and who returned to share news of those embattled communities. Well, they are still embattled-not by the government, but by budget reallocations at the Joint, by American Jewish ignorance and apathy, by the horrors of mideastern and international terrorism that dominates the front pages and fundraising of Jewish communities.
We are AM ECHAD-how can we work less hard than Lucy, and Sveta, and Yulya, and Galina, and Olga, and Larissa, and all of the others whose names we do not yet know?
Go home.