Thursday, August 16, 2007
The Big Trip
Hello everybody! We had the most fabulous road trip across the country, and we’re just about settled in to our new apartment. We saw so much cool stuff, it’s hard to consolidate it all into one posting. We decided to just write up the highlights and we’ve uploaded all our pictures to our Shutterfly account (http://princessandthegeek.shutterfly.com/).
Here's our route, courtesy of Google Maps:
As you can see, not the most straightforward route in the world. Anyway, I thought it might be interesting just to see some facts about our trip:
Driving through so much of the country, you see a lot of funny signs.
This is what you get when you let illiterate Star Wars fans name geography:
And this small Wyoming town offered both a drive-through liquor store (a truly remarkable innovation) as well as this well-phrased marquee:
At one point in Utah, we were driving in perfectly clear weather, when we saw a storm up ahead. It literally looked like a wall of clouds, to the right of which was sunshine and to the left was a thunderstorm. Guess which side we had to drive through.
Here's a picture of Anna standing in front of Mitchell, SD's Corn Palace. First constructed in 1892 to highlight the local corn harvest, each year the artists create murals our of halved corn cobs, nailed to the walls.
And last and most amazingly, the Crazy Horse memorial near Mt. Rushmore is one of the most impressive projects we've ever heard of. The sculpture will be of Crazy Horse on the back of his horse, pointing towards his stolen lands.
Funded entirely by private money, the memorial is one part of a plan which includes a Native American medical school, artist exhibition, and museum. Begun in 1949, the mountain sculpture is on such a scale that Mt. Rushmore could fit in Crazy Horse's head. After almost 60 years, they've only recently completed his face, and leveled parts of the mountain for his arm.
One man was hired to create the memorial. He worked alone for the first few years, then met his wife who assisted, followed by seven of his ten children. Anna even saw one of the sons, featured in their orientation video, leading a tour around the museum. This picture is of the 15' high model, framed in front of the mountain itself:
It was wonderful to see our friends and family on this trip. Seeing them is what made the whole trip worth the effort.
Here's our route, courtesy of Google Maps:
As you can see, not the most straightforward route in the world. Anyway, I thought it might be interesting just to see some facts about our trip:
- Total mileage: 4,920 miles
- Cheapest gas: $2.62 in Cincinnati. We saw $2.55 somewhere, but we'd already filled up =(
- States driven through: 16 (You can see the "Welcome to..." signs for 13 states below. Proof!)
- Lightning storms: 4
- Cheapest coffee: $0.01 in Edgemont, SD
- State capitols driven through: 8 (CA, UT, CO, MN, WI, IN, OH, and PA)
Driving through so much of the country, you see a lot of funny signs.
This is what you get when you let illiterate Star Wars fans name geography:
And this small Wyoming town offered both a drive-through liquor store (a truly remarkable innovation) as well as this well-phrased marquee:
At one point in Utah, we were driving in perfectly clear weather, when we saw a storm up ahead. It literally looked like a wall of clouds, to the right of which was sunshine and to the left was a thunderstorm. Guess which side we had to drive through.
Here's a picture of Anna standing in front of Mitchell, SD's Corn Palace. First constructed in 1892 to highlight the local corn harvest, each year the artists create murals our of halved corn cobs, nailed to the walls.
And last and most amazingly, the Crazy Horse memorial near Mt. Rushmore is one of the most impressive projects we've ever heard of. The sculpture will be of Crazy Horse on the back of his horse, pointing towards his stolen lands.
Funded entirely by private money, the memorial is one part of a plan which includes a Native American medical school, artist exhibition, and museum. Begun in 1949, the mountain sculpture is on such a scale that Mt. Rushmore could fit in Crazy Horse's head. After almost 60 years, they've only recently completed his face, and leveled parts of the mountain for his arm.
One man was hired to create the memorial. He worked alone for the first few years, then met his wife who assisted, followed by seven of his ten children. Anna even saw one of the sons, featured in their orientation video, leading a tour around the museum. This picture is of the 15' high model, framed in front of the mountain itself:
It was wonderful to see our friends and family on this trip. Seeing them is what made the whole trip worth the effort.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Home Sweet Home
We've been home now for one week and are finally feeling on schedule, awake and nearly caught up. We had a very long journey home, being rerouted to DC where we spent a day there resting and seeing sites.
I meant to write a last entry about Israel, taking time to reflect on the year. But, we've been too rushed to really reflect much. Mostly, we're very happy to be home. There are some pictures below from our journey home. Enjoy!
Israel Memorial Day is a very serious occasion in a country where everyone knows someone or has a relative who has died defending the country. We attended the opening ceremonies at the Western Wall where they lit and enormous memorial flame. The picture shows the Wall in the background and the huge crowd in front of us.
Memorial Day ends with the start of Independence Day. We went to a free concert in Zion Square to once again see Hadag Nahash. That's the band in the background and our friends Mary, Mara, and Stephanie.
The holiday Lag B'Omer, marks the 33rd day between Passover and Shavuot. It's celebrated with bonfires. The entire town smelled of smoke and there were fires all over the place. This is an especially big one.
Here are the cantors going to their goodbye party, standing with their vocal coach.
Here we are in the capitol. Home sweet home!
I meant to write a last entry about Israel, taking time to reflect on the year. But, we've been too rushed to really reflect much. Mostly, we're very happy to be home. There are some pictures below from our journey home. Enjoy!
Israel Memorial Day is a very serious occasion in a country where everyone knows someone or has a relative who has died defending the country. We attended the opening ceremonies at the Western Wall where they lit and enormous memorial flame. The picture shows the Wall in the background and the huge crowd in front of us.
Memorial Day ends with the start of Independence Day. We went to a free concert in Zion Square to once again see Hadag Nahash. That's the band in the background and our friends Mary, Mara, and Stephanie.
The holiday Lag B'Omer, marks the 33rd day between Passover and Shavuot. It's celebrated with bonfires. The entire town smelled of smoke and there were fires all over the place. This is an especially big one.
Here are the cantors going to their goodbye party, standing with their vocal coach.
Here we are in the capitol. Home sweet home!Saturday, April 21, 2007
Holiness and the Rafalowke Graveyard
I delivered a sermon this morning at HUC's Shabbat services, about my experience in Ukraine. It's unusual for a cantorial student to be given the opportunity to deliver a sermon here, and I'm proud of what I accomplished. The Hebrew might not come out, but don't worry--it's all translated.
I wrote a d’var torah, all about holiness and sacrifice and the book of Leviticus. I was determined to avoid Yom HaShoah and ritual purity, the topic of the day in our calendar and this week’s parashah. And then, three weeks ago, I went to Ukraine for Passover. My family on my mother’s side comes from Ukraine, from a small shtetl called Rafalowke. My great-grandfather ran away from the Red Army, about 30 years before the Nazis came through the town, brought all the Jews to the graveyard and killed them.
I got the chance to visit Rafalowke while I was in Ukraine. A town official directed us to the Jewish graveyard, not too far away. With the help of our translator and the driver we’d hired for the day, we drove down a small dirt road, stopping to ask directions whenever we ran into someone. The first man said that he thought it was in a wooded area directly behind us, but he suggested we ask his neighbor. That man told us that he remembered his grandfather telling his father that the Jewish graveyard was destroyed, so he assumed it was long since gone. It was a little weird to me that no one knew where the only Jewish graveyward was. In a town with maybe 200 residents; how could no one know the location of the only Jewish graveyard?
We turned onto a very bumpy dirt path—I wouldn’t even call it a road—driving in the middle of a heavily wooded area. We stopped when the road dead ended at someone’s farm. The driver wandered off to get some more directions, and came back with renewed energy, leading us on foot back the way we came. We came to a huge canyon, and across the canyon we could see a graveyard. But it was filled with big, clean gravestones with enormous crosses on them, so we knew that wasn’t right. The guy that had directed us over to this place came up to say we’d gone the wrong direction and led us back towards the car. As we walked, I noticed the driver had stopped ahead of us. As we caught up with them, I found myself walking on rocks. It was only when I looked down that I realized we were walking on broken gravestones.
They were covered with moss and grass and shrub, some completely buried, some standing at an angle, some broken into pieces. The graveyard was a disaster, hardly visible from more than a few feet away, almost every gravestone illegible if it wasn’t broken. We searched for a gravestone with my family’s name, but the graves only showed Hebrew names, and I didn’t know the Hebrew names of anyone in my family. The man who gave us directions told us that years earlier a rumor had gone around that there was gold in the graves. The residents had come, dug up the graves, and destroyed the gravestones. We gathered in front of one anonymous grave to say Kaddish.
We walked back to the car, leaving behind the graveyard hidden in the middle of the woods. Our friend Matt said, “You know, we might be the last people to ever say Kaddish over these graves.” Residents who lived not even a quarter-mile away didn’t know it existed, and the graves were all but hidden by the trees, grass, and dirt. I kept thinking, what is my obligation to this graveyard? Here I am, standing 12,000 miles from my home in California, at the graveyard which almost certainly holds the remains of people in my family, and I am one of the last people in the world who knows where it is.
If you read through this week’s parashah, you’ll see that the way our biblical forebearers dealt with ritual impurities like menstruation or leprosy was by ostracizing the person from the community. Though the affected person is still part of the community, the priest orders them to stay outside the camp until the infection is gone. As I read through “Tazria,” when I came to this priestly directive, my mind returned to the Rafalowke graveyard. Like the biblical leper, that graveyard is outside the Jewish community. It is no longer a part of the community, but I am. I am whole, healthy, and connected. Do I have a responsibility to say Kaddish for those people in the graveyard? Or to clean it up and repair it? The analogy isn’t strong; the people who died in Rafalowke were not ordered out of the community by the High Priest, they were murdered. There was nothing ritually impure about them, but they were driven from their homes anyway.
Jewish tradition tells us that community is the source of all holiness and ritual purity. God commands us in Leviticus 19
“[ קְדשִׁים תִּהְיוּ כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי יְהוֹה אֱלהֵיכֶם ] You shall be holy, for I, the Eternal your God, am holy.” The Hasidic tradition tells us that God did not issue a fact, but a commandment. It is not that we are holy, but that we must become holy, it is our responsibility to make ourselves holy. God also did not say [ תהיה ], speaking to us individually, but [ תהיו ] as a group. As a community we must be holy and only as a community can we be holy. Everyone is a part of the group, even those who are outside the camp. Those who are on the periphery are also a part of our holiness.
In his commentary on Leviticus, Prof. Baruch Levine clarifies that “holiness cannot be achieved by individuals alone, no matter how elevated, pure, or righteous. It can be realized only through the life of the community, acting together.” We realize the communal nature of holiness whenever we say a blessing: [ אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו ] “who sanctified us with His commandments.” The sanctification occurs not only for all of us, but through all of us, acting as a community. In Jewish practice we are reminded again and again of the holiness of community, through communal worship in the synagogue, communal thanksgiving after a meal, and communal atonement for sins on Yom Kippur. Each of these holy acts occurs only as a communal enterprise.
The Sfat Emet takes it even further and tells us that, “No one can attain holiness except by negating his own self before the whole of Israel.” Not only do we achieve holiness through our community, but we are unable to achieve it any other way. We need our community so that together we can achieve the holiness which God has commanded us. That includes those outside of the community. We have an obligation to the lepers who have been forced outside the camp. We need them in order to be holy, because only as a community may we achieve holiness. They didn’t choose to get leprosy, but they are forced to the periphery anyway. We have an obligation to them, and that obligation is to treat them as members of the community even though they are apart from us.
We learn about our obligation to those on the periphery after God’s commandment to be holy, when the Torah tells us how to be holy. First, the Torah gives us the 10 Commandments. What’s unusual about Leviticus 19 is that the 10 Commandments aren’t in order, and they’re not alone. Not only are we to honor our parents, but we are also told to leave the fallen fruit of our vineyards for the poor and the stranger. Not only should we not steal, but we are also not allowed to delay payment to our employees. Do not murder, do not insult the deaf, and do not place a stumbling block before the blind. These are the ways to holiness.
Aside from a few of the 10 Commandments, all of these are about how we deal with people. Honor the blind, the hungry, the poor, the stranger, and deal honestly with everyone. Do not hate your brother in your heart. We become holy by treating those around us with dignity and respect. And if all of those commandments are too hard to remember, God sums it up in verse 18: [ואָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ ] Love your neighbor as yourself. If we want to be holy as God has commanded us, all we need to do is treat those in our community with love and respect. Though people within our community will sometimes be pushed to the periphery—either for the good of the community or the good of the person—we have an obligation to treat them with the honor and respect they deserve.
And maybe that’s the answer to my trouble with the Rafalowke graveyard. I can’t maintain it; I don’t have the money to fly there regularly, and I don’t think I could live there forever. I also can’t continually say Kaddish for the Jews buried there; no one should spend their whole life in mourning. I can’t help them, but I can honor their memory. I can’t help them, but I can show the world that the Jewish community exists, that it is strong and based on values of love and respect. There is no one left to take care of the graves in Rafalowke, but its memory is honored by our holy communities. Even though the graveyard is lost, by treating those in our community with love and respect, we are made holy and it too is made holy.
I wrote a d’var torah, all about holiness and sacrifice and the book of Leviticus. I was determined to avoid Yom HaShoah and ritual purity, the topic of the day in our calendar and this week’s parashah. And then, three weeks ago, I went to Ukraine for Passover. My family on my mother’s side comes from Ukraine, from a small shtetl called Rafalowke. My great-grandfather ran away from the Red Army, about 30 years before the Nazis came through the town, brought all the Jews to the graveyard and killed them.
I got the chance to visit Rafalowke while I was in Ukraine. A town official directed us to the Jewish graveyard, not too far away. With the help of our translator and the driver we’d hired for the day, we drove down a small dirt road, stopping to ask directions whenever we ran into someone. The first man said that he thought it was in a wooded area directly behind us, but he suggested we ask his neighbor. That man told us that he remembered his grandfather telling his father that the Jewish graveyard was destroyed, so he assumed it was long since gone. It was a little weird to me that no one knew where the only Jewish graveyward was. In a town with maybe 200 residents; how could no one know the location of the only Jewish graveyard?
We turned onto a very bumpy dirt path—I wouldn’t even call it a road—driving in the middle of a heavily wooded area. We stopped when the road dead ended at someone’s farm. The driver wandered off to get some more directions, and came back with renewed energy, leading us on foot back the way we came. We came to a huge canyon, and across the canyon we could see a graveyard. But it was filled with big, clean gravestones with enormous crosses on them, so we knew that wasn’t right. The guy that had directed us over to this place came up to say we’d gone the wrong direction and led us back towards the car. As we walked, I noticed the driver had stopped ahead of us. As we caught up with them, I found myself walking on rocks. It was only when I looked down that I realized we were walking on broken gravestones.
They were covered with moss and grass and shrub, some completely buried, some standing at an angle, some broken into pieces. The graveyard was a disaster, hardly visible from more than a few feet away, almost every gravestone illegible if it wasn’t broken. We searched for a gravestone with my family’s name, but the graves only showed Hebrew names, and I didn’t know the Hebrew names of anyone in my family. The man who gave us directions told us that years earlier a rumor had gone around that there was gold in the graves. The residents had come, dug up the graves, and destroyed the gravestones. We gathered in front of one anonymous grave to say Kaddish.
We walked back to the car, leaving behind the graveyard hidden in the middle of the woods. Our friend Matt said, “You know, we might be the last people to ever say Kaddish over these graves.” Residents who lived not even a quarter-mile away didn’t know it existed, and the graves were all but hidden by the trees, grass, and dirt. I kept thinking, what is my obligation to this graveyard? Here I am, standing 12,000 miles from my home in California, at the graveyard which almost certainly holds the remains of people in my family, and I am one of the last people in the world who knows where it is.
If you read through this week’s parashah, you’ll see that the way our biblical forebearers dealt with ritual impurities like menstruation or leprosy was by ostracizing the person from the community. Though the affected person is still part of the community, the priest orders them to stay outside the camp until the infection is gone. As I read through “Tazria,” when I came to this priestly directive, my mind returned to the Rafalowke graveyard. Like the biblical leper, that graveyard is outside the Jewish community. It is no longer a part of the community, but I am. I am whole, healthy, and connected. Do I have a responsibility to say Kaddish for those people in the graveyard? Or to clean it up and repair it? The analogy isn’t strong; the people who died in Rafalowke were not ordered out of the community by the High Priest, they were murdered. There was nothing ritually impure about them, but they were driven from their homes anyway.
Jewish tradition tells us that community is the source of all holiness and ritual purity. God commands us in Leviticus 19
“[ קְדשִׁים תִּהְיוּ כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי יְהוֹה אֱלהֵיכֶם ] You shall be holy, for I, the Eternal your God, am holy.” The Hasidic tradition tells us that God did not issue a fact, but a commandment. It is not that we are holy, but that we must become holy, it is our responsibility to make ourselves holy. God also did not say [ תהיה ], speaking to us individually, but [ תהיו ] as a group. As a community we must be holy and only as a community can we be holy. Everyone is a part of the group, even those who are outside the camp. Those who are on the periphery are also a part of our holiness.
In his commentary on Leviticus, Prof. Baruch Levine clarifies that “holiness cannot be achieved by individuals alone, no matter how elevated, pure, or righteous. It can be realized only through the life of the community, acting together.” We realize the communal nature of holiness whenever we say a blessing: [ אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו ] “who sanctified us with His commandments.” The sanctification occurs not only for all of us, but through all of us, acting as a community. In Jewish practice we are reminded again and again of the holiness of community, through communal worship in the synagogue, communal thanksgiving after a meal, and communal atonement for sins on Yom Kippur. Each of these holy acts occurs only as a communal enterprise.
The Sfat Emet takes it even further and tells us that, “No one can attain holiness except by negating his own self before the whole of Israel.” Not only do we achieve holiness through our community, but we are unable to achieve it any other way. We need our community so that together we can achieve the holiness which God has commanded us. That includes those outside of the community. We have an obligation to the lepers who have been forced outside the camp. We need them in order to be holy, because only as a community may we achieve holiness. They didn’t choose to get leprosy, but they are forced to the periphery anyway. We have an obligation to them, and that obligation is to treat them as members of the community even though they are apart from us.
We learn about our obligation to those on the periphery after God’s commandment to be holy, when the Torah tells us how to be holy. First, the Torah gives us the 10 Commandments. What’s unusual about Leviticus 19 is that the 10 Commandments aren’t in order, and they’re not alone. Not only are we to honor our parents, but we are also told to leave the fallen fruit of our vineyards for the poor and the stranger. Not only should we not steal, but we are also not allowed to delay payment to our employees. Do not murder, do not insult the deaf, and do not place a stumbling block before the blind. These are the ways to holiness.
Aside from a few of the 10 Commandments, all of these are about how we deal with people. Honor the blind, the hungry, the poor, the stranger, and deal honestly with everyone. Do not hate your brother in your heart. We become holy by treating those around us with dignity and respect. And if all of those commandments are too hard to remember, God sums it up in verse 18: [ואָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ ] Love your neighbor as yourself. If we want to be holy as God has commanded us, all we need to do is treat those in our community with love and respect. Though people within our community will sometimes be pushed to the periphery—either for the good of the community or the good of the person—we have an obligation to treat them with the honor and respect they deserve.
And maybe that’s the answer to my trouble with the Rafalowke graveyard. I can’t maintain it; I don’t have the money to fly there regularly, and I don’t think I could live there forever. I also can’t continually say Kaddish for the Jews buried there; no one should spend their whole life in mourning. I can’t help them, but I can honor their memory. I can’t help them, but I can show the world that the Jewish community exists, that it is strong and based on values of love and respect. There is no one left to take care of the graves in Rafalowke, but its memory is honored by our holy communities. Even though the graveyard is lost, by treating those in our community with love and respect, we are made holy and it too is made holy.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Kiev
Quick reminder: this is the third posting in the series.
We left Lviv by sleeper car train on Thursday night and arrived in Kiev Friday morning. After reuniting with the other students traveling in Ukraine, we went on a short tour of "ancient Kiev" and then to Shabbat services. The Shabbat services here were very touching and enthusiastic. Although the congregation was very small, they clearly took great joy in coming to the small synagogue and participated fully in the service. New tunes were played, many written by the young cantor from this synagogue.
Saturday we spent the day touring the city, seeing sites and accidentally running into an enormous anti-parliment rally. Saturday night we attended our final Ukrainian seder, which included a live band, matzah eating contests and dancing into the night. It felt a bit like a bar mitvah. After the seder, our friend Tanya and her fiance Losha came up to our hotel room where they played some of the music we heard Friday night. Jamie recorded it on his ipod to bring home to share. In turn, some other students shared some American Jewish music that hadn't yet made it to Ukraine.
Sunday, as our last view of Kiev and Ukraine, we visited Babi Yar. Babi Yar was an enormous ravine where the Nazis killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Jews, Gypsies, rebels and more. Most were Jewish. Today it is less than half the depth it once was and is now a large public park. The only reminder of what happened there are a few memorials and the trees that grow in the park where the soil is impossible for growth, but so much human ash under the surface makes life possible. There is a small Jewish memorial and it is only a few years old. Ukrainians do not learn about the tragedy of Babi Yar in their curriculum and many do not know what they are walking through as they stroll through the park.
We leave Babi Yar and head to the airport. Our trip to Ukraine has been a quickly swinging pendulum, from death to life, from tragedy to triumph, from memorials to living communities. Here we are at the end, saying goodbye to our new friends, once again looking at death, tragedy and memorials. I can't decide if this has meaning, or if it's simply where the itinerary allowed for time. In any case, as I look back at Babi Yar, this horrific place, I am struck by how many trees grow where a half-century ago trees could not grow. Life keeps going on. Maybe that is the lesson here in the Former Soviet Union, keep on living, keep on trying, our people continue to survive.
Kiev:
Babi Yar:
We left Lviv by sleeper car train on Thursday night and arrived in Kiev Friday morning. After reuniting with the other students traveling in Ukraine, we went on a short tour of "ancient Kiev" and then to Shabbat services. The Shabbat services here were very touching and enthusiastic. Although the congregation was very small, they clearly took great joy in coming to the small synagogue and participated fully in the service. New tunes were played, many written by the young cantor from this synagogue.
Saturday we spent the day touring the city, seeing sites and accidentally running into an enormous anti-parliment rally. Saturday night we attended our final Ukrainian seder, which included a live band, matzah eating contests and dancing into the night. It felt a bit like a bar mitvah. After the seder, our friend Tanya and her fiance Losha came up to our hotel room where they played some of the music we heard Friday night. Jamie recorded it on his ipod to bring home to share. In turn, some other students shared some American Jewish music that hadn't yet made it to Ukraine.
Sunday, as our last view of Kiev and Ukraine, we visited Babi Yar. Babi Yar was an enormous ravine where the Nazis killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Jews, Gypsies, rebels and more. Most were Jewish. Today it is less than half the depth it once was and is now a large public park. The only reminder of what happened there are a few memorials and the trees that grow in the park where the soil is impossible for growth, but so much human ash under the surface makes life possible. There is a small Jewish memorial and it is only a few years old. Ukrainians do not learn about the tragedy of Babi Yar in their curriculum and many do not know what they are walking through as they stroll through the park.
We leave Babi Yar and head to the airport. Our trip to Ukraine has been a quickly swinging pendulum, from death to life, from tragedy to triumph, from memorials to living communities. Here we are at the end, saying goodbye to our new friends, once again looking at death, tragedy and memorials. I can't decide if this has meaning, or if it's simply where the itinerary allowed for time. In any case, as I look back at Babi Yar, this horrific place, I am struck by how many trees grow where a half-century ago trees could not grow. Life keeps going on. Maybe that is the lesson here in the Former Soviet Union, keep on living, keep on trying, our people continue to survive.
Kiev:
Babi Yar:
Monday, April 16, 2007
Lviv
This is posting 2 of 3 from our trip to Ukraine. Please also visit our complete photo album at princessandthegeek.shutterfly.com.
A little background: We are now in Lviv, about a three hour drive from Lutsk. We have met a new translator here named Veronika. Lviv was once a thriving Jewish community. It held the first Reform synagogue in Ukraine in the 1800's. As in other parts of Ukraine, the Jewish community today is a small fraction of what it once was, but it hold many remains of the former Jewish community. Today it is again becoming an active Jewish community and offers many Jewish organizations. In fact, our seder was smaller than predicted because another organization was holding their seder the same night. Lviv is where the famous author, Shalom Alechem, lived for a short time (he wrote the novel that became Fiddler on the Roof). Below you can see his house and some Yiddish signs left on the side of an old building.
This is a picture of a famous synagogue that was burned down and they are trying to raise money to rebuild.
And here is a picture of their gorgeous opera house. If you look closely, you can see Jamie standing where Lenin once stood:
Wednesday
Groggy, hungry and cold, we are taken for our first glimpses of Lviv. We begin with lunch and then head for the Jewish memorial. Here, in a small fenced in park, stands a man made of many large stones, lifting strongly up from the ground, raising his hands to the sky. Beneath him lies a small pit with rocks and boulders haphazardly stacked on each other. A few rocks have memorial plaques.
'97% of the Jewish population in Lviv was killed in WWII,' Veronika says with a straight face. The people here are so closely connected with the Holocaust. I have met survivors, I have visited camps in Poland, but they live in the city where their own people were massacred a half-century ago.
Later, we head over to the Jewish kindergarten where the class is doing a seder/play. Veronika’s mother runs this kindergarten. She tells the story of Passover and the children sing and nibble from their seder plates. We are continually ushered from memorials of death and destruction into places of life and vitality. Do Ukrainians experience this everyday? If they do, are they aware of their experience?
After the seder we are invited to sit down with the kindergarten staff and the rabbi for a grown-up seder meal. Veronika’s mother begins asking Jamie about his school, how many years is it? How will you afford it? She hears that he has borrowed money from the government and wants to know if foreigners can do the same. 'No,' he says carefully. 'I don’t think so.' She begins asking more questions about how a foreigner might be able to go to school in America. She is insistent and asks question after question. She has two daughters at the table and it is clear why she’s asking these questions. We don’t know, Jamie says. But we promise to send you any information we can find.
We have come to Ukraine to see how Jewish life is progressing. Here is an important leader of the Lviv community, teaching young children about their heritage, which their parents do not know because they lived under Soviet rule. But now she is a mother who will clearly do anything to make the best life for her daughters. Maybe that means she wants them to leave.
The rabbi asks us how we like Ukraine. ‘How is Lviv? Did you enjoy the kindergarten?’ We tell him that this a beautiful country and we have loved the people. ‘Don’t leave,’ he says. ‘Stay with us.’ He is not laughing. This is not a joke or a tease. ‘We need you,’ he says. ‘We don’t have many ordained rabbis. There is only one cantor in Ukraine. We need you. Please stay.’ I have spent a year in Israel, dying to return to the States, counting the seconds until my final flight. But now I am in no rush. I wish we had more time. We could do so much more. He turns his head back to this meal; he knows we will not stay.
We eat quietly for a while. Veronika’s mother comes back to our end of the table. She thanks us sweetly for joining them. She talks about how hard life is in Ukraine. She asks us to be their friends. We nod. Yes, of course we are friends. She is insistent. We need your help. You have come to visit us, but can we come to you? We need a sister congregation because we don’t have money. She speaks faster with more anxiety now. We are trying so hard and we have so little. Please do not forget us. Please be our friends.
It is a painful speech. I do not want to leave them. I want to give them everything. Will I remember this when we return to Israel? To America?
Thursday
The Progressive Community of Lviv is in an large old building. It was clearly once a beautiful building with intricate designs on the ceiling and stair railings. Today, however, they only have electricity in certain parts of the building, no heat, and much of the place is need of serious repair.
We climb the stairs to our seder. Maybe 40 people are in attendance, 6 are visiting from the catholic university. We go through the usual seder, skipping over many sections and begin eating. Quickly, people begin to asks Jamie to sing. ‘Yiddish. Please sing some Yiddish songs.’ Happy to begin singing, Jamie picks up his guitar and sings Ofn Prepichick. Goldman, the founder of this community, cannot contain his tears and wipes his eyes frequently with his napkin.
Jamie moves onto Tumbalalaika, an old classic. The whole room joins in for each round of the chorus. Although this is a smaller and older group than in Lutsk, they are much more excited to sing. Jamie is a hit.
The woman who sat in front of him tells us about her son who lives in Israel. Her granddaughter was born there. She tells Jamie she would like to sing to him now, a song about Jerusalem in Hebrew and Russian, composed by a Ukrainian. Although we don’t expect it, her voice is sweet and clear as she sings the song of longing and dreaming.
I look around the room. The people here have done more than welcome us into their seders. They have opened their hearts to us. Through broken bits of English and Hebrew and the great effort of our translators, they have told us a little of their struggles, but mostly told us their stories, about their families and have done everything they can to make us as comfortable as possible.
Suddenly, I feel ridiculous. I have come from American and Israel, two prosperous countries and what have I brought with me? A few simple gifts, just a little bit of money. Couldn’t we have done so much more? They didn’t need my help leading seders. They need to repair their building, they need Jewish supplies and they need more leadership. Are we so self-centered to believe that what they needed was us?
I take another look around the room. Most of these faces are smiling at us. Just happy to have these young, Jewish Americans here to visit. Perhaps we are what they needed. Just a little friendship from the other side of the world. It is a great joy to be with them. We feel free, on the other side of the Red Sea.
A little background: We are now in Lviv, about a three hour drive from Lutsk. We have met a new translator here named Veronika. Lviv was once a thriving Jewish community. It held the first Reform synagogue in Ukraine in the 1800's. As in other parts of Ukraine, the Jewish community today is a small fraction of what it once was, but it hold many remains of the former Jewish community. Today it is again becoming an active Jewish community and offers many Jewish organizations. In fact, our seder was smaller than predicted because another organization was holding their seder the same night. Lviv is where the famous author, Shalom Alechem, lived for a short time (he wrote the novel that became Fiddler on the Roof). Below you can see his house and some Yiddish signs left on the side of an old building.
This is a picture of a famous synagogue that was burned down and they are trying to raise money to rebuild.
And here is a picture of their gorgeous opera house. If you look closely, you can see Jamie standing where Lenin once stood:
Wednesday
Groggy, hungry and cold, we are taken for our first glimpses of Lviv. We begin with lunch and then head for the Jewish memorial. Here, in a small fenced in park, stands a man made of many large stones, lifting strongly up from the ground, raising his hands to the sky. Beneath him lies a small pit with rocks and boulders haphazardly stacked on each other. A few rocks have memorial plaques.'97% of the Jewish population in Lviv was killed in WWII,' Veronika says with a straight face. The people here are so closely connected with the Holocaust. I have met survivors, I have visited camps in Poland, but they live in the city where their own people were massacred a half-century ago.
Later, we head over to the Jewish kindergarten where the class is doing a seder/play. Veronika’s mother runs this kindergarten. She tells the story of Passover and the children sing and nibble from their seder plates. We are continually ushered from memorials of death and destruction into places of life and vitality. Do Ukrainians experience this everyday? If they do, are they aware of their experience?After the seder we are invited to sit down with the kindergarten staff and the rabbi for a grown-up seder meal. Veronika’s mother begins asking Jamie about his school, how many years is it? How will you afford it? She hears that he has borrowed money from the government and wants to know if foreigners can do the same. 'No,' he says carefully. 'I don’t think so.' She begins asking more questions about how a foreigner might be able to go to school in America. She is insistent and asks question after question. She has two daughters at the table and it is clear why she’s asking these questions. We don’t know, Jamie says. But we promise to send you any information we can find. We have come to Ukraine to see how Jewish life is progressing. Here is an important leader of the Lviv community, teaching young children about their heritage, which their parents do not know because they lived under Soviet rule. But now she is a mother who will clearly do anything to make the best life for her daughters. Maybe that means she wants them to leave.
The rabbi asks us how we like Ukraine. ‘How is Lviv? Did you enjoy the kindergarten?’ We tell him that this a beautiful country and we have loved the people. ‘Don’t leave,’ he says. ‘Stay with us.’ He is not laughing. This is not a joke or a tease. ‘We need you,’ he says. ‘We don’t have many ordained rabbis. There is only one cantor in Ukraine. We need you. Please stay.’ I have spent a year in Israel, dying to return to the States, counting the seconds until my final flight. But now I am in no rush. I wish we had more time. We could do so much more. He turns his head back to this meal; he knows we will not stay.
We eat quietly for a while. Veronika’s mother comes back to our end of the table. She thanks us sweetly for joining them. She talks about how hard life is in Ukraine. She asks us to be their friends. We nod. Yes, of course we are friends. She is insistent. We need your help. You have come to visit us, but can we come to you? We need a sister congregation because we don’t have money. She speaks faster with more anxiety now. We are trying so hard and we have so little. Please do not forget us. Please be our friends.It is a painful speech. I do not want to leave them. I want to give them everything. Will I remember this when we return to Israel? To America?
Thursday
The Progressive Community of Lviv is in an large old building. It was clearly once a beautiful building with intricate designs on the ceiling and stair railings. Today, however, they only have electricity in certain parts of the building, no heat, and much of the place is need of serious repair.
We climb the stairs to our seder. Maybe 40 people are in attendance, 6 are visiting from the catholic university. We go through the usual seder, skipping over many sections and begin eating. Quickly, people begin to asks Jamie to sing. ‘Yiddish. Please sing some Yiddish songs.’ Happy to begin singing, Jamie picks up his guitar and sings Ofn Prepichick. Goldman, the founder of this community, cannot contain his tears and wipes his eyes frequently with his napkin. Jamie moves onto Tumbalalaika, an old classic. The whole room joins in for each round of the chorus. Although this is a smaller and older group than in Lutsk, they are much more excited to sing. Jamie is a hit.The woman who sat in front of him tells us about her son who lives in Israel. Her granddaughter was born there. She tells Jamie she would like to sing to him now, a song about Jerusalem in Hebrew and Russian, composed by a Ukrainian. Although we don’t expect it, her voice is sweet and clear as she sings the song of longing and dreaming. I look around the room. The people here have done more than welcome us into their seders. They have opened their hearts to us. Through broken bits of English and Hebrew and the great effort of our translators, they have told us a little of their struggles, but mostly told us their stories, about their families and have done everything they can to make us as comfortable as possible. Suddenly, I feel ridiculous. I have come from American and Israel, two prosperous countries and what have I brought with me? A few simple gifts, just a little bit of money. Couldn’t we have done so much more? They didn’t need my help leading seders. They need to repair their building, they need Jewish supplies and they need more leadership. Are we so self-centered to believe that what they needed was us?
I take another look around the room. Most of these faces are smiling at us. Just happy to have these young, Jewish Americans here to visit. Perhaps we are what they needed. Just a little friendship from the other side of the world. It is a great joy to be with them. We feel free, on the other side of the Red Sea.
