I've been having a terrific time taking in my last few Jerusalem experiences before I leave. On Saturday night I spent the night with my friends Corinna and Debbie, playing games and chatting. In the morning I went home and went for a run around Gan Sacher where summer camps have begun to hang out - girls in long skirts and long sleeve button up tops racing down the hills under the blazing sun. After packing and cleaning for a while, I went with Debbie to the Old City to do some souvenir shopping. Debbie drives a hard bargain, so we went from store to store as shop owners flirted with us and offered us a "good price" - we each even came away with free cheap-o bracelets: "Lovely ladies, I give you for free. Come see my store I give you good price." We later met Corinna and the rest of the gang to go out for their final dinner at a nice place in East Jerusalem. I had what must have been the world's largest Fattoush. I walked back with everyone to the University and took a bus home from there, trying to put off the goodbyes until the last possible moment. I feel like I missed the opportunity to get to know these terrific people - by the time I was really spending a lot of time with them, the semester was already almost finished. I do hope I'll keep in touch with them though, and I really do expect that I'll run into them again.
Yesterday I spent the whole day cleaning. I dusted the apartment from head to toe, cleaned out the cabinets, swept and mopped the floor, and put all of my belongings into suitcases. I invited Amy, Karen, and Michael over for dinner, feeding them leftovers from Friday night's feast, and it was nice to have company for a little while after rather a lonesome day.
Today, for most of the day, I pretended to be a tourist. At 8am I walked to the shuk - nothing was open but the candy store, so I bought marzipan challahs to bring home as gifts (they are super funny!) I then stopped by the preschool to wish the kids goodbye one las time. The Gan Dror kids took turns giving me blessings: "May you go in peace and return in peace" "May you be healthy." "May you not be sick." "May you have fun." "May you not eat too much ice cream." Then they performed some of their end of the year songs for me - I think if they took the performance on tour it would be a pretty major hit.
I went for a walk to the Yemin Moshe area, then accross the street and up some stairs to the Old City. I decided to see some sites I'd never quite made it to: I began with the Tower of David Museum, which gives an overview of the history of Jerusalem from the first mention of the city in cunieform script to its reunification in '67. It was helpful to have this very basic overview, I feel like all my ducks are a bit more in a row than they were before, and it helped to clarify why and how there are so many layers of history and cultures in this one space. It was a little bit basic, but that's kind of what I was going for. Afterwards I bought myself a two liter bottle of water, as it was very hot and sunny, and I decided to walk the ramparts of the Old City. The man who sold me the ticket asked me to sit with him and drink coffee, took my hand and told me I was very nice... I suppose these are some of the side effects of playing tourist by oneself.
The ramparts walk was very nice - the views were terrific - both of inside and of outside the city, and I took about a million pictures. the walk ended at the Kotel, and since I was already there, I went in, prayed a bit of Mincha, and wrote a note to G-d saying thanks for a terrific year. I left via the Jewish Quarter, and bought myself a ticket to the Burnt House Museum. A few minutes later, I was inside the museum, in which screens and TV's hang over the ruins of a house from the 2nd Temple Period. The visitors sit in rows facing the screens and watch a somewhat hokey though at times actually quite emotional film about the destruction of the 2nd Temple and the seige of Jerusalem. From there I went to the Museum on the Seam to see their latest exhibit "Adam Adama" (Human Land) about the destructive way that humans interact with nature. The art was very interesting, though they ran out of guides in English and I had to read one in Hebrew, so my comprehension was somewhat limited. It was a combination of sculpture, video installments, photography, and painting. One photo showed the old city in the background with heaps of garbage in the foreground, one was a computer demo about how to create convincing artificial nature for movies because real nature is too unreliable, one was a beautiful hill with all of these roads and walls cutting accross it. Eventually I left the museum and walked up to Hebrew University because I had one more form to turn in in order to be able to receive a transcript later - it's a long walk and it was hot - by the time I reached the top my 2 liters of water were gone. I took the bus back to the Yemin Moshe area and walked home from there. As you can imagine, I am quite tired - though I am ready for another day of tourism tomorrow. I leave Jerusalem at 5:30 AM Thursday morning!
Click here to see some quite nice pictures of Jerusalem.
Showing posts with label sight-seeing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sight-seeing. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
FSU Journal Day 1
Day 1
Well, after months of fundraising, planning, and worrying that we weren’t prepared enough, here we are in Moscow on the FSU Pesach Project! Ultimately we sent 16 people (8 pairs) to cities across the Ukraine, Russia, and Belorus to celebrate Passover seders with Jewish communities, providing their energy, knowledge, and enthusiasm to these communities that find themselves on the ‘fringes’ of the Jewish world both geographically and in terms of resources.
Today was a whirlwind of activity and I am writing in the hopes that I’ll be able to hang on to the memories long enough to share them with everyone at home. I hope to write here about what we see, do, and learn. I also plan on supplementing the journal when I get back with facts that I may not have had a chance to write down during the trip. If you are reading this journal, please know that in the course of this journal I will be giving you information about history, culture, etc. that I don’t know much about and haven’t spent a lot of time researching in a reliable way. While I’m trying to give you the best information I can, if you want to know more or in a more confirmed way, you should look elsewhere. Also please feel free to correct me if I’ve mis-stated something. I will be making heavy use of unreliable sources such as Wikipedia in order to inform this journal, for which I apologize. My reasons for writing the journal are (a) in order that I will remember the trip and to have a chance to organize my thoughts about the trip (b) to share the trip with friends and family and (c) as a resource in case I need to write about the trip in the future.
We left our Jerusalem apartment at 3:00 Am to take a sheirut to the airport. We were joined by two of Daniel’s classmates, David and Jordan, who would be with us for our first and last days in Moscow but would otherwise spend their trip visiting two cities in the Urals and on the edge of Siberia. We arrived at the airport, checked in, boarded the plane, and were on our way. The plane ride was uncomfortable but it was mercifully short (about five hours) and at 10:50 local time we landed in Moscow. We were met at the arrivals area by three young women holding signs with our names on them. They smilingly introduced themselves to us – Anya, the translator for David and Jordan, Emma, our translator, and Katya, the director of the office of the World Union for Progressive Judaism in Moscow.
Emma directed us to a car where we would be driven to our hotel. We and she were both shy as we packed into the car and sat in traffic for several hours. We asked a few questions and she explained a bit about Moscow’s geography and answered some questions about herself, but mostly we were quiet. Emma is 18 years old and a first-year college student in a military school studying translation – English and Spanish, and she hopes eventually also Hebrew. She lives in an apartment in Moscow with her parents and she has two older step-sisters, neither of whom lives in Jerusalem. Emma has lived in Moscow all her life but she loves to travel and has been in many places throughout Europe. Emma is responsible, knowledgeable, and eager to help us and teach us. We couldn’t have asked for a better translator, though she keeps insisting that she doesn’t know very much or apologizing for forgetting English words.
After a long car ride we finally made it to the hotel, driving past suburban areas, parks adjacent to historical landmarks, and beautiful churches with bright blue and gold onion domes that we are told were built only just recently. The hotel is very nice and we look forward to sleeping here.
We went out to lunch in a restaurant called Moo Moo (MY MY in Cyrillic letters) which served Russian cuisine – we had salads, blinches, and Daniel tried Kisiel, a popular desert drink that consists of sweetened juice thickened with cornstarch or potato starch, with dried fruits added to it. Across the street from the restaurant there was a beautiful pink and white building that seemed out of place among the dark, severe brick buildings that surrounded it. I asked Emma about the building and she told us it was once the home of aristocracy but is now an office building. This city is layered so thick with history that each spot was once something to someone, long ago.
We were scheduled to give a lecture to the students at the Machon program next. Machon is a para-rabbinic Jewish leadership training program that draws students from throughout the Former Soviet Union. Many students who finish the program either make aliyah, go to rabbinical school, or work formally or informally for and in Jewish communities in the FSU. We didn’t have much time to teach because we were running behind schedule as a result of the traffic jam, but we did our best with the time we had. In the small classroom we sat at the head of the table and spoke to the class of two women and about seven men of ages ranging from high school graduates to young professionals. Our lesson was on the creation of new rituals (largely drawn from what we’ve learned from reading Inventing Jewish Rituals by Vanessa Ochs). After each sentence, Leonid Bimbat, the rabbi who teaches at the Machon program, translated for us. After a brief introduction defining new rituals and discussing how they are developed and why they might be useful, we introduced the ritual for Miram’s cup. The class told us that their teacher had mentioned the ritual but had not explained it, so we talked a bit about Miriam’s well, about the reasoning behind the tradition, and about how it fits into the rest of the seder. Then we had students paint glasses that they could use for the ritual. Some students seemed excited to paint and some a bit skeptical, but we figured that since we would be lecturing for them the next day too and they’d just been at an HUC lecture by David and Jordan we would do something a little easier and more fun for the short time we had. While they were painting the glasses we had a short discussion with the students about the efficacy of new rituals – can they be as important as old ones? More important? When do we need a new ritual and who can create it? The students seemed to take to the idea of new rituals naturally, saying that all rituals were new once. I wonder if their lack of resistance to newness is connected to the fact that for many all of Jewish tradition is new to them as they did not grow up in observant households. I don’t know. In any case, given the time that we had with a tired audience of students at the end of their school day, I was proud of our performance. We’ll go back tomorrow for more.
David, Jordan, Leonid, Anya, Emma, Daniel and I then went through the Moscow subway in order to get to the restaurant where we would have dinner to ‘say goodbye to chametz.’ We walked through a network of underground shops selling baked goods, flowers, DVD’s, clothes, and women’s underwear until we reached the train station. Let me just say that the Moscow Metro is amazing. It is the world’s second most heavily used rapid-transit system and the trains are always packed though they arrive roughly every two minutes. I has 12 lines and 177 stations, and on a normal workday it carries over 7 million passengers. It is state-owned and was built almost entirely undergroung except for the lines that cross the Moskva river or the Yauza River by bridge. The first stage of the metro was opened in 1935, but work on new lines continued through World War II and the spaciousness of the metro is due in part because it also functioned as a bomb shelter during the war. The Council of Minsters moved its offices to the metro, and Stalin made public smeeches there on seval occasions. The Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line is very deep and was built during the Cold war as shelter in the event of a nuclear war. The stations are all extravagantly decorated with statues, stained glass, and marble. The metro stations themselves were definitely worth touring and many of the pictures we took were from inside the Moscow Metro. The stops are named after the streets they are near or historical figures such as partisans, scientists, and politicians.
The restaurant where we ate dinner is meant to be decorated as an old train station and the waitresses wore conductor uniforms. The food was quite good – in addition to vegetables and other ordinary foods, I was able to sample small stuffed buns filled with cabbage, potato pancakes, pickles, and Russian raisin-filled pastry. We drank cider – apparently the only cider served in Moscow as cider is not native to Russia and has only recently made its way here as Russians have traveled throughout Europe. Over the course of our discussion we talked about Ashkenazi and Sephardi traditions regarding what is permitted to eat on Passover. Leonid said that even though most Jews in Russia are of Ashkenazi origin, they should be able to do whatever they like because Jews in the FSU were not raised in a particular tradition, and they are free to choose whatever they want. I wonder if Jews here really do have this kind of blank slate, or if this is just an excuse to eat rice and beans. This is an interesting question, particularly as David and Jordan told us that their presentation to Machon on ethical kashrut didn’t go over well because the students seemed to imply that people here aren’t in the privileged position to be able to care about the treatment of animals in the production of their food and because progressive Jews shouldn’t care about halacha (including kashrut) anyway. Is claiming that Jews here have no background to draw upon true – they have no family traditions and they don’t want to be guided by halacha – or is going too far? From where do they draw their Jewishness?
After dinner we were to go for a walk but ran into a crisis when an ATM ate Daniel’s bank card as he was trying to extract rubles we panicked a but after deciding upon a plane to retrieve the card tomorrow when the bank reopened we continued on for an evening of tourism in the biting cold of a Moscow evening. It seemed particularly cold as I was wearing a skirt in order to blend in with the style in Moscow – everyone seems to be very fashion conscious, with brightly painted lips, fancy boots, skirts, and jewelry. In order to fit in I brought some of the nicest clothes I own!
Emma led us to Old Arbat Street for a stroll. It is a pedestrian street full of cafes and shops. The first mention of the Arbat was in 1493 as a road leading from the Kremlin to Smolensk. The neighborhood used to be home to elegant churches but later became a prestigious living area where wealthy and famous people could rent their lodgings. The street was almost completely destroyed in the great fire during Napoleon’s occupation of Moscow in 1812 and had to be rebuilt. Alexander Pushkin lodged here for some time, as did Tolstoy. Today the street also has many notable statues in cluding one for the Soviet-era folk singer Bulat Okudzhava – who Emma told us was one of the first singer-songwriters in Russia. During Perestroika, the street was a gathering place for informal youth movements and street musicians. Voktor Tsoi’s wall, which we visited, is on a side street off Arbat. It is a monument to the years of Perestroika and Russian youth still gather there to drink and play songs of Tsoi and other songwriters. We went up to look at the wall and they invited us to join them. The buildings that line the streets are graceful and old, and we strolled leisurely as Emma entertained us with her expansive, encyclopedic knowledge of Moscow. She pointed to buildings and landmarks – a tall building built for Stalin, a statue of Pushkin and his wife. We stopped in a chocolaterie and Daniel had a small thick hot chocolate the consistency of syrup, while Emma talked about the literary figures painted on the alls of the shop. Emma even took us into the first McDonalds in Moscow it opened in 1990 and was at the time the world’s biggest McDonalds – she said lines for McDonalsd used to stretch all the way down the street. McDonalds seems to have adapted to the history-loving, monumentalizing culture of Moscow, and Emma gave us a lesson in Moscow history by walking us through reproductions of historical maps and paintings of Moscow that were hanging on the ways of McDonalds.
Incidentally, Moscow is the largest city in Europe. Historically it was the capital of the former Soviet Union, Russian Empire, Tsardom of Russia and the Grand Duchy of Msocow, and today it is the capital of the Russian Federation. Moscow is also home to the largest number of billionaires in the world and was named the world’s most expensive city for foreign employees in 2006, 2007, and 2008. The first reference to Moscow dates from 1147. In 1156 Prince Yuri Dolgoruki of Rostov ordered the construction of a wooden wall to surround Moscow. It was sacked in 1238 and the Mongols burned the city to the ground. Moscow became the capital of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality in 1327 and it expanded and developed into the Grand Duchy of Moscow. In 1480 Ivan III broke Russians free of Tatar control, and Moscow became the capital of Russia. Moscow has seen many invasions and uprisings. The plague of 1654-1656 killed half of Moscow’s population. In 1712, after Peter the Great founded St. Petersberg, Moscow ceased being the capital of Russia. During the French invasion of Russia in 1812, Moscow was burned – no one is sure whether the Russians did it to prevent the French from accessing Moscovite resources or if the French did it themselves. Nevertheless, Napolean’s army, plagued by hunger and cold had to retreat and was nearly annihilated by the Russian winter. Folowing the Russian Revolution of 1917 Moscow became the capital of the Soviet Union. Moscow is located on the banks of two intersecting rivers, and it is designed as a series of circles around the Kremlin.
Finally at the end of the evening we made our way back to the hotel as Daniel impressed Emma by sounding out the names of subway stations. Emma says she is pleased that we prepared for our visit – but I think we couldn’t possibly have prepared enough and I am so grateful for her guidance and really so impressed with her capable maturity. I am excited to get to know her better over the course of the trip.
Well, after months of fundraising, planning, and worrying that we weren’t prepared enough, here we are in Moscow on the FSU Pesach Project! Ultimately we sent 16 people (8 pairs) to cities across the Ukraine, Russia, and Belorus to celebrate Passover seders with Jewish communities, providing their energy, knowledge, and enthusiasm to these communities that find themselves on the ‘fringes’ of the Jewish world both geographically and in terms of resources.
Today was a whirlwind of activity and I am writing in the hopes that I’ll be able to hang on to the memories long enough to share them with everyone at home. I hope to write here about what we see, do, and learn. I also plan on supplementing the journal when I get back with facts that I may not have had a chance to write down during the trip. If you are reading this journal, please know that in the course of this journal I will be giving you information about history, culture, etc. that I don’t know much about and haven’t spent a lot of time researching in a reliable way. While I’m trying to give you the best information I can, if you want to know more or in a more confirmed way, you should look elsewhere. Also please feel free to correct me if I’ve mis-stated something. I will be making heavy use of unreliable sources such as Wikipedia in order to inform this journal, for which I apologize. My reasons for writing the journal are (a) in order that I will remember the trip and to have a chance to organize my thoughts about the trip (b) to share the trip with friends and family and (c) as a resource in case I need to write about the trip in the future.
We left our Jerusalem apartment at 3:00 Am to take a sheirut to the airport. We were joined by two of Daniel’s classmates, David and Jordan, who would be with us for our first and last days in Moscow but would otherwise spend their trip visiting two cities in the Urals and on the edge of Siberia. We arrived at the airport, checked in, boarded the plane, and were on our way. The plane ride was uncomfortable but it was mercifully short (about five hours) and at 10:50 local time we landed in Moscow. We were met at the arrivals area by three young women holding signs with our names on them. They smilingly introduced themselves to us – Anya, the translator for David and Jordan, Emma, our translator, and Katya, the director of the office of the World Union for Progressive Judaism in Moscow.
Emma directed us to a car where we would be driven to our hotel. We and she were both shy as we packed into the car and sat in traffic for several hours. We asked a few questions and she explained a bit about Moscow’s geography and answered some questions about herself, but mostly we were quiet. Emma is 18 years old and a first-year college student in a military school studying translation – English and Spanish, and she hopes eventually also Hebrew. She lives in an apartment in Moscow with her parents and she has two older step-sisters, neither of whom lives in Jerusalem. Emma has lived in Moscow all her life but she loves to travel and has been in many places throughout Europe. Emma is responsible, knowledgeable, and eager to help us and teach us. We couldn’t have asked for a better translator, though she keeps insisting that she doesn’t know very much or apologizing for forgetting English words.
After a long car ride we finally made it to the hotel, driving past suburban areas, parks adjacent to historical landmarks, and beautiful churches with bright blue and gold onion domes that we are told were built only just recently. The hotel is very nice and we look forward to sleeping here.
We went out to lunch in a restaurant called Moo Moo (MY MY in Cyrillic letters) which served Russian cuisine – we had salads, blinches, and Daniel tried Kisiel, a popular desert drink that consists of sweetened juice thickened with cornstarch or potato starch, with dried fruits added to it. Across the street from the restaurant there was a beautiful pink and white building that seemed out of place among the dark, severe brick buildings that surrounded it. I asked Emma about the building and she told us it was once the home of aristocracy but is now an office building. This city is layered so thick with history that each spot was once something to someone, long ago.
We were scheduled to give a lecture to the students at the Machon program next. Machon is a para-rabbinic Jewish leadership training program that draws students from throughout the Former Soviet Union. Many students who finish the program either make aliyah, go to rabbinical school, or work formally or informally for and in Jewish communities in the FSU. We didn’t have much time to teach because we were running behind schedule as a result of the traffic jam, but we did our best with the time we had. In the small classroom we sat at the head of the table and spoke to the class of two women and about seven men of ages ranging from high school graduates to young professionals. Our lesson was on the creation of new rituals (largely drawn from what we’ve learned from reading Inventing Jewish Rituals by Vanessa Ochs). After each sentence, Leonid Bimbat, the rabbi who teaches at the Machon program, translated for us. After a brief introduction defining new rituals and discussing how they are developed and why they might be useful, we introduced the ritual for Miram’s cup. The class told us that their teacher had mentioned the ritual but had not explained it, so we talked a bit about Miriam’s well, about the reasoning behind the tradition, and about how it fits into the rest of the seder. Then we had students paint glasses that they could use for the ritual. Some students seemed excited to paint and some a bit skeptical, but we figured that since we would be lecturing for them the next day too and they’d just been at an HUC lecture by David and Jordan we would do something a little easier and more fun for the short time we had. While they were painting the glasses we had a short discussion with the students about the efficacy of new rituals – can they be as important as old ones? More important? When do we need a new ritual and who can create it? The students seemed to take to the idea of new rituals naturally, saying that all rituals were new once. I wonder if their lack of resistance to newness is connected to the fact that for many all of Jewish tradition is new to them as they did not grow up in observant households. I don’t know. In any case, given the time that we had with a tired audience of students at the end of their school day, I was proud of our performance. We’ll go back tomorrow for more.
David, Jordan, Leonid, Anya, Emma, Daniel and I then went through the Moscow subway in order to get to the restaurant where we would have dinner to ‘say goodbye to chametz.’ We walked through a network of underground shops selling baked goods, flowers, DVD’s, clothes, and women’s underwear until we reached the train station. Let me just say that the Moscow Metro is amazing. It is the world’s second most heavily used rapid-transit system and the trains are always packed though they arrive roughly every two minutes. I has 12 lines and 177 stations, and on a normal workday it carries over 7 million passengers. It is state-owned and was built almost entirely undergroung except for the lines that cross the Moskva river or the Yauza River by bridge. The first stage of the metro was opened in 1935, but work on new lines continued through World War II and the spaciousness of the metro is due in part because it also functioned as a bomb shelter during the war. The Council of Minsters moved its offices to the metro, and Stalin made public smeeches there on seval occasions. The Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line is very deep and was built during the Cold war as shelter in the event of a nuclear war. The stations are all extravagantly decorated with statues, stained glass, and marble. The metro stations themselves were definitely worth touring and many of the pictures we took were from inside the Moscow Metro. The stops are named after the streets they are near or historical figures such as partisans, scientists, and politicians.
The restaurant where we ate dinner is meant to be decorated as an old train station and the waitresses wore conductor uniforms. The food was quite good – in addition to vegetables and other ordinary foods, I was able to sample small stuffed buns filled with cabbage, potato pancakes, pickles, and Russian raisin-filled pastry. We drank cider – apparently the only cider served in Moscow as cider is not native to Russia and has only recently made its way here as Russians have traveled throughout Europe. Over the course of our discussion we talked about Ashkenazi and Sephardi traditions regarding what is permitted to eat on Passover. Leonid said that even though most Jews in Russia are of Ashkenazi origin, they should be able to do whatever they like because Jews in the FSU were not raised in a particular tradition, and they are free to choose whatever they want. I wonder if Jews here really do have this kind of blank slate, or if this is just an excuse to eat rice and beans. This is an interesting question, particularly as David and Jordan told us that their presentation to Machon on ethical kashrut didn’t go over well because the students seemed to imply that people here aren’t in the privileged position to be able to care about the treatment of animals in the production of their food and because progressive Jews shouldn’t care about halacha (including kashrut) anyway. Is claiming that Jews here have no background to draw upon true – they have no family traditions and they don’t want to be guided by halacha – or is going too far? From where do they draw their Jewishness?
After dinner we were to go for a walk but ran into a crisis when an ATM ate Daniel’s bank card as he was trying to extract rubles we panicked a but after deciding upon a plane to retrieve the card tomorrow when the bank reopened we continued on for an evening of tourism in the biting cold of a Moscow evening. It seemed particularly cold as I was wearing a skirt in order to blend in with the style in Moscow – everyone seems to be very fashion conscious, with brightly painted lips, fancy boots, skirts, and jewelry. In order to fit in I brought some of the nicest clothes I own!
Emma led us to Old Arbat Street for a stroll. It is a pedestrian street full of cafes and shops. The first mention of the Arbat was in 1493 as a road leading from the Kremlin to Smolensk. The neighborhood used to be home to elegant churches but later became a prestigious living area where wealthy and famous people could rent their lodgings. The street was almost completely destroyed in the great fire during Napoleon’s occupation of Moscow in 1812 and had to be rebuilt. Alexander Pushkin lodged here for some time, as did Tolstoy. Today the street also has many notable statues in cluding one for the Soviet-era folk singer Bulat Okudzhava – who Emma told us was one of the first singer-songwriters in Russia. During Perestroika, the street was a gathering place for informal youth movements and street musicians. Voktor Tsoi’s wall, which we visited, is on a side street off Arbat. It is a monument to the years of Perestroika and Russian youth still gather there to drink and play songs of Tsoi and other songwriters. We went up to look at the wall and they invited us to join them. The buildings that line the streets are graceful and old, and we strolled leisurely as Emma entertained us with her expansive, encyclopedic knowledge of Moscow. She pointed to buildings and landmarks – a tall building built for Stalin, a statue of Pushkin and his wife. We stopped in a chocolaterie and Daniel had a small thick hot chocolate the consistency of syrup, while Emma talked about the literary figures painted on the alls of the shop. Emma even took us into the first McDonalds in Moscow it opened in 1990 and was at the time the world’s biggest McDonalds – she said lines for McDonalsd used to stretch all the way down the street. McDonalds seems to have adapted to the history-loving, monumentalizing culture of Moscow, and Emma gave us a lesson in Moscow history by walking us through reproductions of historical maps and paintings of Moscow that were hanging on the ways of McDonalds.
Incidentally, Moscow is the largest city in Europe. Historically it was the capital of the former Soviet Union, Russian Empire, Tsardom of Russia and the Grand Duchy of Msocow, and today it is the capital of the Russian Federation. Moscow is also home to the largest number of billionaires in the world and was named the world’s most expensive city for foreign employees in 2006, 2007, and 2008. The first reference to Moscow dates from 1147. In 1156 Prince Yuri Dolgoruki of Rostov ordered the construction of a wooden wall to surround Moscow. It was sacked in 1238 and the Mongols burned the city to the ground. Moscow became the capital of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality in 1327 and it expanded and developed into the Grand Duchy of Moscow. In 1480 Ivan III broke Russians free of Tatar control, and Moscow became the capital of Russia. Moscow has seen many invasions and uprisings. The plague of 1654-1656 killed half of Moscow’s population. In 1712, after Peter the Great founded St. Petersberg, Moscow ceased being the capital of Russia. During the French invasion of Russia in 1812, Moscow was burned – no one is sure whether the Russians did it to prevent the French from accessing Moscovite resources or if the French did it themselves. Nevertheless, Napolean’s army, plagued by hunger and cold had to retreat and was nearly annihilated by the Russian winter. Folowing the Russian Revolution of 1917 Moscow became the capital of the Soviet Union. Moscow is located on the banks of two intersecting rivers, and it is designed as a series of circles around the Kremlin.
Finally at the end of the evening we made our way back to the hotel as Daniel impressed Emma by sounding out the names of subway stations. Emma says she is pleased that we prepared for our visit – but I think we couldn’t possibly have prepared enough and I am so grateful for her guidance and really so impressed with her capable maturity. I am excited to get to know her better over the course of the trip.
FSU Journal Day 5
Day 5
The train ride was much more pleasant this time, as it was just the three of us and we knew what to expect. We stayed up late playing cards and munching on matzah and cheese. It was past midnight when we settled down and went to bed. I woke up early in the morning to see out the window rows and rows of dimly lit trees hovering majestically over the snow-dusted ground. I watched the scenery go by for a while – a cluster of large, high-ceilinged homes near agricultural fields, and then trees and trees and trees. Finally, I allowed myself to go back to sleep, waking up a few hours later to the music that signifies the ten-minute warning to arrival. We hastily put on our shoes, threw our playing cards and matzah into our backpacks and left the train.
We went straight to the hotel to freshen up a bit and from there to the center for progressive Judaism for Shabbat morning services. On the shared van on the way to the progressive Judaism center, Emma asked Daniel where Passover comes from – whether he thinks the historic roots are economic, cultural, political, etc. Daniel gave her a learned answer (he’s getting very rabbinical these days) and a conversation proceeded about different fasts in different religions and about the symbols that different religions use to remind them of core ideas or beliefs. Without objects, it’s hard to imagine what a religion would be. We talked about the prohibition on graven images and why this might have existed – does seeing a picture of G-d so influence the way we think about G-d that it is hard to imagine G-d any other way than according to the depictions? And is this a bad thing? Emma said that it seemed to her that Christians have more objects and symbols than Jews – they have different kinds of fasts that seem to happen more often, they have icons, pussy willows (what Russians use instead of palms for Palm Sunday), crosses, etc. We reminded her of all the objects, ritual and otherwise, that Jews do have, and how they are used to remind us of Judaism’s ideals, but are also in and of themselves powerful because they create the boundaries between holiday and not-holiday. We know it is Passover because there is matzah and a seder plate- if there was no matzah or seder plate but on one day everyone thought about freedom , would it still be Passover? Anyway, it was an interesting conversation and I mostly made note of it because I thought it was interesting to hear people “ask the rabbi” questions about Judaism and religion and to see how well Daniel responded to the responsibility of being the question-answerer.
Services at the progressive Judaism center were quite nice. About 30 people were in the congregation, but we are told that the number is often much higher and people are probably just a little Jew-ed out after their Passover seders. The progressive community in Moscow boasts two rabbis, Sasha and Leonid, and a cantor. This is particularly impressive as there are only six progressive rabbis serving the whole Former Soviet Union area. The congregation itself is quite knowledgeable – one congregant read the Torah, another did the blessings, and all the Machon students were in the congregation as well. The rabbis called me and Daniel up to the Torah for aliyot, which was very nice. The tunes were familiar and aside from the drash in Russian, it was not unlike attending a Reform service in Israel or the US.
After services were over, we went to the oneg hall, where they served different kinds of fish, caviar, matzah, wine, cheese, and dried fruit. We had a little snack and while we were eating several congregants introduced themselves to us. Some spoke a little Hebrew to us, others spoke English. One man in particular had quite good English and we asked him questions about what Jewish life was like during the Soviet Union. He told us that he always knew that he was Jewish but he never knew what it meant to be Jewish, that is until recently. Our conversation was cut a bit short because he had to run off to the Hebrew class that Leonid was teaching, so Daniel and I went up to the Rabbis’ offices to check our e-mail and rest a bit before our next activity.
Emma, who had gone home for the morning, came to the office to join us and we sat in the kitchen with her to have a cup of tea. People kept coming in and out, chatting with us and preparing for various activities. That night they were hosting a deaf seder with an expected turnout of something like thirty deaf Jews, and that afternoon there was to be a youth group Havdalah service. Leonid and a youth group student came to join us as we joked around. We learned a bit about Emma’s curriculum. For the first year of translation school her major assignments involve memorizing passages from her textbook and reciting them – her marks are based largely on pronunciation. We spent a lot of time making fun of the passages she has to recite – “oh I think it is going to rain, let me fetch my umbrella. I’m glad I remembered to wear my mackintosh today.”
Eventually we left the office to go to the Red Square and visit the State Historical Museum. The museum was opened in 1894 by Tsar Alexander III and its lavish decorations include a ceiling paiting depicting a family tree of the Russian monarchs from Olga of Kiev (890-969) to Alexander III (1845-1894). It charts the history of Russia from ancient tribal beginnings through to the Romanov tsars of the 19th century. All of the exhibits were written in Russian, but Emma guided us through much of it and from whatever knowledge we had of Russian history we were able to decipher some of the rest. I was certainly impressed not only here but throughout Russia at the centrality of Peter the Great in the retelling of Russian History. He seems to be the watershed marker between traditional and European Russia.
When we left the museum we intended to go into St. Basils Cathedral, but found that we were too late. Instead we visited the Kazan Cathedral, and went inside during a service. Inside, the church was filled with people holding pussy willows to be blessed for Palm Sunday. The choir sang solemn hymns as we wandered around the building, glancing at women with their heads covered by scarves lighting candles at the altars of saints. At one point, Emma motioned to us that we should stand against the wall, and several priests walked by in a procession, burning incense as they walked. The Kazan Cathedral was originally erected as a shrine in the early 1630’s to mark the city’s liberation from the Poles during the Time of Troubles. It was destroyed by a fire in 1632 and the Tsar ordered the church to be rebuilt with brick. The church was renovated many times until it is now not known how the church originally appeared. In 1936, when the government was preparing the Red Square as a site for military parades, Stalin ordered that all churches in the Red Square should be destroyed, and the cathedral was demolished. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Kazan Cathedral was the first church to be completely rebuild after having been destroyed by the Communists. The restoration was completed in 1993, and now church services are conducted in the cathedral regularly.
We went to dinner in a coffee shop and eventually we were met by the progressive Jewish youth group with whom we were going to do Havdalah. We sat and chatted while waiting for the sun to set, and then we took to the streets. The youth group has a program once a month in which they bring students to different landmarks of the Jewish history of Moscow, explain the significance of the place, and then have Havdalah. This week, they went to the place where the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee held their first rally. There, we read a plaque that told of the committee in Russian, and in Yiddish said the word “gedenk” which means “remember.” The Jewish Antifascist Committee was a Soviet Jewish Organization that operated from 1942 to 1948. Its goal was to call on the Jews of the world, and in particular on American Jewry, to join the struggle against Nazi Germany by supporting Soviet war efforts. The committee was also one of the first institutions to document the atrocities of the Holocaust. It was chaired by Solomon Mikhoels, the popular actopr and director of the Moscow Jewish State Theater. The committee was also considered to be the central representative body of the Jews in the Soviet Union. It had its own newspaper in Yiddish, Eynikeyt (Unity) in which some of the most popular Yiddish writers published. It was dissolved by the Soviet authorities in November 1948 and most of its leaders were executed.
After hearing this sobering story, we walked across the street to a park featuring a giant statue of Freidrich Engels, and stood in a circle for Havdalah. The tune, written by Debbie Friedman, reminded me of how small the world really is. At the end of the Havdalah service, everyone dipped their pinkies into the wine cup and dabbed the wine on their temples. Daniel and I asked Emma what was going on and she was very surprised that we didn’t know. She said it’s a superstition that the wine will grant you luck wherever you place it – if you put it on your temples it will make you smart, if you touch your chest it will bring you much love, if you touch your lips it will make you eloquent, etc. I don’t know where this comes from, but I kind of like it – maybe we should bring it to NFTY or something.
After Havdalah, Emma’s friend invited us back to his apartment for some tea. In all there were seven of us: Emma and her friend, me and Daniel, Leonid and two youth group kids. The friend’s apartment was beautiful – an old building with a painting on the ceiling of the foyer. His dad is a sculptor, and there were photographs of his sculptures on the wall (he does big public monuments). The friend (whose name I don’t remember, sorry) is a very talented photographer, and his art was hanging on the walls as well – they were really terrific. He is now attending an art school, but is thinking about leaving to go into audio production for theater.
Our conversation at the friend’s apartment began with Emma asking me to recount a brief history of Yiddish for her. I thought it was fun that she addressed me with a Yiddish-professor-to-be question, just like she addressed Daniel with rabbi-to-be questions. I explained a bit about the history of Yiddish and she asked whether one might say that Yiddish was more a dialect than a language. This led to a long discussion about the boundaries between dialects and languages: is AAVE a dialect or a language? How about Ukranian? We talked about how people who speak dialects are seen as speaking their language incorrectly, whereas people speaking other languages are seen as speaking their own language correctly – so language is a title of respect. This was a very interesting conversation and everyone was involved in it, commenting on different dialects they know and how different they are from Russian, or how similar, and how people respond to accents that deviate from the normative Moscow Russian. The conversation about language and about Yiddish went on for some time, before we moved to another topic – we asked the students to tell us a bit about how history is thought about in Russia – how do people remember the USSR? They told us that many people are nostalgic for the USSR and hope that it will come back. If you were not a dissident, the USSR promised security that people no longer feel. Also, people tend to remember the good things about the past and forget the bad, which leads them to yearn for a past that was not as perfect as they remember. Obviously Jewish life was not better under the USSR, but apparently some things were better, and we cannot discount that under the USSR there were some stellar accomplishments, and that in contrast to the Russian Empire, the people felt more empowered and in control. Emma’s friend quoted Putin to us, saying, “If you don’t want the USSR to come back, you have no heart, but if you do want the USSR to come back, you have no mind.” People wanting the USSR to come back can also be a problem because many people blame its collapse on the Jews. The government encourages teachers in school not to paint the Soviet Union as something good that they want to return to, and in order to make the USSR seem ‘bad’ they must make the Russian Empire seem, by way of contrast ‘good’ – which causes some problems too. What I found most interesting about this conversation is not only does Russia have no history of democracy, but they aren’t really practicing it today. They have a very low voter turn out and most people just assume that Putin will be their leader and want it that way, as he is seen as strong – one could go as far as to say that they are electing a dictator. A few days later, Jordan asked us if we felt, while we were in Russia, as though the Cold War was still going in – between the visas we needed to get there and the streets named after Lenin, there was something very Cold War-ish about the experience. I am reminded of history classes when we were urged to consider that when historians break time into chunks in order to study it – be it decades or centuries or the reign of a king – the differences between these blocks of time did not emerge suddenly on New Year’s eve of the next time block, but evolved. Maybe Russia is still moving into its next stage, just like 1980’s fashions lingered regrettably long into the 90’s. (OK a bad analogy but you see my point)
Emma asked us whether our experiences in Russia matched our expectations. She told us that she had met another group of Americans, from Atlanta GA, who had unrealistic expectations about Russia and were very surprised. They expected that Russia was very rural and were anticipating seeing bears walking on the streets of Moscow. They thought Russians drink all the time and don’t have access to modern amenities. We told Emma that our experiences weren’t far from our expectations, but we also told her that, not unlike a trip to Israel, we had come to Eastern Europe with the hope and expectation that we would feel some kind of personal connection to the land of our ancestors. And maybe we did, actually, feel that connection. Emma thought this was strange as we aren’t Russian speakers, my family did not come from Russia proper (to the best of my knowledge), and even if our family had come from Moscow itself it would have been generations and generations ago. It didn’t even occur to her that we might have been feeling this nostalgic connection to a Jewish homeland here in Russia, and to me her not thinking about it is as interesting as our thinking about it.
In any case, after tea at the friend’s house we returned to the hotel to sleep in real beds for the night.
The train ride was much more pleasant this time, as it was just the three of us and we knew what to expect. We stayed up late playing cards and munching on matzah and cheese. It was past midnight when we settled down and went to bed. I woke up early in the morning to see out the window rows and rows of dimly lit trees hovering majestically over the snow-dusted ground. I watched the scenery go by for a while – a cluster of large, high-ceilinged homes near agricultural fields, and then trees and trees and trees. Finally, I allowed myself to go back to sleep, waking up a few hours later to the music that signifies the ten-minute warning to arrival. We hastily put on our shoes, threw our playing cards and matzah into our backpacks and left the train.
We went straight to the hotel to freshen up a bit and from there to the center for progressive Judaism for Shabbat morning services. On the shared van on the way to the progressive Judaism center, Emma asked Daniel where Passover comes from – whether he thinks the historic roots are economic, cultural, political, etc. Daniel gave her a learned answer (he’s getting very rabbinical these days) and a conversation proceeded about different fasts in different religions and about the symbols that different religions use to remind them of core ideas or beliefs. Without objects, it’s hard to imagine what a religion would be. We talked about the prohibition on graven images and why this might have existed – does seeing a picture of G-d so influence the way we think about G-d that it is hard to imagine G-d any other way than according to the depictions? And is this a bad thing? Emma said that it seemed to her that Christians have more objects and symbols than Jews – they have different kinds of fasts that seem to happen more often, they have icons, pussy willows (what Russians use instead of palms for Palm Sunday), crosses, etc. We reminded her of all the objects, ritual and otherwise, that Jews do have, and how they are used to remind us of Judaism’s ideals, but are also in and of themselves powerful because they create the boundaries between holiday and not-holiday. We know it is Passover because there is matzah and a seder plate- if there was no matzah or seder plate but on one day everyone thought about freedom , would it still be Passover? Anyway, it was an interesting conversation and I mostly made note of it because I thought it was interesting to hear people “ask the rabbi” questions about Judaism and religion and to see how well Daniel responded to the responsibility of being the question-answerer.
Services at the progressive Judaism center were quite nice. About 30 people were in the congregation, but we are told that the number is often much higher and people are probably just a little Jew-ed out after their Passover seders. The progressive community in Moscow boasts two rabbis, Sasha and Leonid, and a cantor. This is particularly impressive as there are only six progressive rabbis serving the whole Former Soviet Union area. The congregation itself is quite knowledgeable – one congregant read the Torah, another did the blessings, and all the Machon students were in the congregation as well. The rabbis called me and Daniel up to the Torah for aliyot, which was very nice. The tunes were familiar and aside from the drash in Russian, it was not unlike attending a Reform service in Israel or the US.
After services were over, we went to the oneg hall, where they served different kinds of fish, caviar, matzah, wine, cheese, and dried fruit. We had a little snack and while we were eating several congregants introduced themselves to us. Some spoke a little Hebrew to us, others spoke English. One man in particular had quite good English and we asked him questions about what Jewish life was like during the Soviet Union. He told us that he always knew that he was Jewish but he never knew what it meant to be Jewish, that is until recently. Our conversation was cut a bit short because he had to run off to the Hebrew class that Leonid was teaching, so Daniel and I went up to the Rabbis’ offices to check our e-mail and rest a bit before our next activity.
Emma, who had gone home for the morning, came to the office to join us and we sat in the kitchen with her to have a cup of tea. People kept coming in and out, chatting with us and preparing for various activities. That night they were hosting a deaf seder with an expected turnout of something like thirty deaf Jews, and that afternoon there was to be a youth group Havdalah service. Leonid and a youth group student came to join us as we joked around. We learned a bit about Emma’s curriculum. For the first year of translation school her major assignments involve memorizing passages from her textbook and reciting them – her marks are based largely on pronunciation. We spent a lot of time making fun of the passages she has to recite – “oh I think it is going to rain, let me fetch my umbrella. I’m glad I remembered to wear my mackintosh today.”
Eventually we left the office to go to the Red Square and visit the State Historical Museum. The museum was opened in 1894 by Tsar Alexander III and its lavish decorations include a ceiling paiting depicting a family tree of the Russian monarchs from Olga of Kiev (890-969) to Alexander III (1845-1894). It charts the history of Russia from ancient tribal beginnings through to the Romanov tsars of the 19th century. All of the exhibits were written in Russian, but Emma guided us through much of it and from whatever knowledge we had of Russian history we were able to decipher some of the rest. I was certainly impressed not only here but throughout Russia at the centrality of Peter the Great in the retelling of Russian History. He seems to be the watershed marker between traditional and European Russia.
When we left the museum we intended to go into St. Basils Cathedral, but found that we were too late. Instead we visited the Kazan Cathedral, and went inside during a service. Inside, the church was filled with people holding pussy willows to be blessed for Palm Sunday. The choir sang solemn hymns as we wandered around the building, glancing at women with their heads covered by scarves lighting candles at the altars of saints. At one point, Emma motioned to us that we should stand against the wall, and several priests walked by in a procession, burning incense as they walked. The Kazan Cathedral was originally erected as a shrine in the early 1630’s to mark the city’s liberation from the Poles during the Time of Troubles. It was destroyed by a fire in 1632 and the Tsar ordered the church to be rebuilt with brick. The church was renovated many times until it is now not known how the church originally appeared. In 1936, when the government was preparing the Red Square as a site for military parades, Stalin ordered that all churches in the Red Square should be destroyed, and the cathedral was demolished. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Kazan Cathedral was the first church to be completely rebuild after having been destroyed by the Communists. The restoration was completed in 1993, and now church services are conducted in the cathedral regularly.
We went to dinner in a coffee shop and eventually we were met by the progressive Jewish youth group with whom we were going to do Havdalah. We sat and chatted while waiting for the sun to set, and then we took to the streets. The youth group has a program once a month in which they bring students to different landmarks of the Jewish history of Moscow, explain the significance of the place, and then have Havdalah. This week, they went to the place where the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee held their first rally. There, we read a plaque that told of the committee in Russian, and in Yiddish said the word “gedenk” which means “remember.” The Jewish Antifascist Committee was a Soviet Jewish Organization that operated from 1942 to 1948. Its goal was to call on the Jews of the world, and in particular on American Jewry, to join the struggle against Nazi Germany by supporting Soviet war efforts. The committee was also one of the first institutions to document the atrocities of the Holocaust. It was chaired by Solomon Mikhoels, the popular actopr and director of the Moscow Jewish State Theater. The committee was also considered to be the central representative body of the Jews in the Soviet Union. It had its own newspaper in Yiddish, Eynikeyt (Unity) in which some of the most popular Yiddish writers published. It was dissolved by the Soviet authorities in November 1948 and most of its leaders were executed.
After hearing this sobering story, we walked across the street to a park featuring a giant statue of Freidrich Engels, and stood in a circle for Havdalah. The tune, written by Debbie Friedman, reminded me of how small the world really is. At the end of the Havdalah service, everyone dipped their pinkies into the wine cup and dabbed the wine on their temples. Daniel and I asked Emma what was going on and she was very surprised that we didn’t know. She said it’s a superstition that the wine will grant you luck wherever you place it – if you put it on your temples it will make you smart, if you touch your chest it will bring you much love, if you touch your lips it will make you eloquent, etc. I don’t know where this comes from, but I kind of like it – maybe we should bring it to NFTY or something.
After Havdalah, Emma’s friend invited us back to his apartment for some tea. In all there were seven of us: Emma and her friend, me and Daniel, Leonid and two youth group kids. The friend’s apartment was beautiful – an old building with a painting on the ceiling of the foyer. His dad is a sculptor, and there were photographs of his sculptures on the wall (he does big public monuments). The friend (whose name I don’t remember, sorry) is a very talented photographer, and his art was hanging on the walls as well – they were really terrific. He is now attending an art school, but is thinking about leaving to go into audio production for theater.
Our conversation at the friend’s apartment began with Emma asking me to recount a brief history of Yiddish for her. I thought it was fun that she addressed me with a Yiddish-professor-to-be question, just like she addressed Daniel with rabbi-to-be questions. I explained a bit about the history of Yiddish and she asked whether one might say that Yiddish was more a dialect than a language. This led to a long discussion about the boundaries between dialects and languages: is AAVE a dialect or a language? How about Ukranian? We talked about how people who speak dialects are seen as speaking their language incorrectly, whereas people speaking other languages are seen as speaking their own language correctly – so language is a title of respect. This was a very interesting conversation and everyone was involved in it, commenting on different dialects they know and how different they are from Russian, or how similar, and how people respond to accents that deviate from the normative Moscow Russian. The conversation about language and about Yiddish went on for some time, before we moved to another topic – we asked the students to tell us a bit about how history is thought about in Russia – how do people remember the USSR? They told us that many people are nostalgic for the USSR and hope that it will come back. If you were not a dissident, the USSR promised security that people no longer feel. Also, people tend to remember the good things about the past and forget the bad, which leads them to yearn for a past that was not as perfect as they remember. Obviously Jewish life was not better under the USSR, but apparently some things were better, and we cannot discount that under the USSR there were some stellar accomplishments, and that in contrast to the Russian Empire, the people felt more empowered and in control. Emma’s friend quoted Putin to us, saying, “If you don’t want the USSR to come back, you have no heart, but if you do want the USSR to come back, you have no mind.” People wanting the USSR to come back can also be a problem because many people blame its collapse on the Jews. The government encourages teachers in school not to paint the Soviet Union as something good that they want to return to, and in order to make the USSR seem ‘bad’ they must make the Russian Empire seem, by way of contrast ‘good’ – which causes some problems too. What I found most interesting about this conversation is not only does Russia have no history of democracy, but they aren’t really practicing it today. They have a very low voter turn out and most people just assume that Putin will be their leader and want it that way, as he is seen as strong – one could go as far as to say that they are electing a dictator. A few days later, Jordan asked us if we felt, while we were in Russia, as though the Cold War was still going in – between the visas we needed to get there and the streets named after Lenin, there was something very Cold War-ish about the experience. I am reminded of history classes when we were urged to consider that when historians break time into chunks in order to study it – be it decades or centuries or the reign of a king – the differences between these blocks of time did not emerge suddenly on New Year’s eve of the next time block, but evolved. Maybe Russia is still moving into its next stage, just like 1980’s fashions lingered regrettably long into the 90’s. (OK a bad analogy but you see my point)
Emma asked us whether our experiences in Russia matched our expectations. She told us that she had met another group of Americans, from Atlanta GA, who had unrealistic expectations about Russia and were very surprised. They expected that Russia was very rural and were anticipating seeing bears walking on the streets of Moscow. They thought Russians drink all the time and don’t have access to modern amenities. We told Emma that our experiences weren’t far from our expectations, but we also told her that, not unlike a trip to Israel, we had come to Eastern Europe with the hope and expectation that we would feel some kind of personal connection to the land of our ancestors. And maybe we did, actually, feel that connection. Emma thought this was strange as we aren’t Russian speakers, my family did not come from Russia proper (to the best of my knowledge), and even if our family had come from Moscow itself it would have been generations and generations ago. It didn’t even occur to her that we might have been feeling this nostalgic connection to a Jewish homeland here in Russia, and to me her not thinking about it is as interesting as our thinking about it.
In any case, after tea at the friend’s house we returned to the hotel to sleep in real beds for the night.
FSU Journal Day 6
Day 6
After a quick breakfast, Daniel and I met Emma in the lobby of the hotel in order to go to the market and look for some interesting Russian souvenirs. The first area we came to was reminiscent of the Israeli shuk or an American flea market – stalls of clothes and household goods, people calling out to us to convince us to look at their wares, etc. The clothing that they were selling was all very Russian in the sense that it was much more fashionable-looking than you might find, say, in the US.
When we came to the end of this area, we paid a small admission price to enter the souvenir and antique parts of the market. Emma assured us that the souvenirs are of good quality and are far cheaper here than at the tourist attractions. Stall after stall sold Gzhel ceramics (a folk art produced in the village of Gzhel since 1802 – it is white with blue designs), metryoshka dolls (Russian nesting dolls – the wooden dolls that open up to reveal other little dolls inside), lacquer boxes depicting famous Russian sites or fairy tales, fur hats, birchbark decorative crafts, wooden toys, plates painted with Russian designs, porcelain dolls, and decorative eggs. We strolled past all of these gifts, calculating how many rubles we had and translating the prices to dollars (about 33 rubles to one dollar). Emma negotiated for us as we purchased a little plate, an egg, a box, and some dolls.
Afterwards, we went for a stroll in the antique segment of the market. Emma told us that she loves to walk through here because the different accents and kinds of things people discuss here belong to another time – the people play chess and discuss history among the artifacts of a bygone era. We saw samovars, swords, photographs, wall hangings, dishes, paintings, and much more. As we walked through the stalls some shopkeepers offered to explain their items to us even though they could tell that we had no intention of purchasing anything. As we were poking around, Daniel stumbled upon a beautiful silver yad (what one would use to read the Torah) sitting on a table next to a Bible with a painting of Jesus on the cover. We picked up the yad and examined the details – two little chassids danced around the top. We asked the price, but as $200 was outside our souvenir budget, we regretfully put our find back on the table for another traveler to find someday. Later we also found a channukiah perched on a shelf of decorative items. One of our finniest finds was at a coin stand, where a man was selling, among other things, New Israeli Shekels (yes, the currency that Daniel and I use every day). Daniel was thinking that if the price wasn’t too high, we could maybe make some money off of this, and he asked the price, but it was roughly equivalent to the 10 NIS coin that we would have been buying. The guy was selling half shekel coins for the same price as 10 shekel coins, and we thought that was kind of a rip off for whoever was buying… so Daniel offered to sell the guy some shekels, but he said he had enough. Too bad. As we were heading out of the antique area, Daniel stopped to admire some amethysts that an old man was selling, and found himself (along with Emma) trapped in conversation with the man, who told him about the process of polishing the stones, and about the superstitious beliefs about the stones being able to give health and fortune.
While we were in the market, Emma called Anya to see if David and Jordan had made it to the hotel, and we learned that they were milling around the same market as we were. We met them excitedly and swapped some stories with them about our travels in Lipetsk and their trip to the Ural mountains and the Western edge of Siberia.
Several days ago I had mentioned to Emma that I would be interested in seeing the place where the Moscow Yiddish Theater had once performed, and so today our first stop was to be the theater and the synagogue nearby.
When we arrived at the synagogue, two older woman greeted us, saying “Chag Sameach!” We went through a security check and at the other side a traditionally dressed man addressed Daniel, Jordan, and David in Hebrew, asking where they were from and if they would like a tour. Our translators looked on as he spoke to us in Hebrew, telling us the history of the building. It was erected in 1883 by the Jewish railroad baron Shmuel Poliakov – it had once been his home. During that time, public synagogues were not permitted in Moscow, but because Poliakov was so influential, he was allowed to open the synagogue so long as only his family would attend. He had a very small family, but he included on the list of those permitted the names of many of his friends as well. I don’t remember the whole history of the building, but as I understand it, the synagogue was closed during the soviet era and reopened as a chabad house, which is how it currently functions. Around the original building, they have constructed a larger structure with classroom and offices, so that the outside of the original building remains, encased in the later structure. In the sanctuary, the man giving us the tour showed Daniel, David, and Jordan that there is a trap door on the bimah that leads to an exit, so that if there is any trouble, the congregants will be able to escape. This is no idle threat, another Lubavich synagogue in Moscow, the Marina Roscha synagogue, has been subject to fire in 1993, bombings in 1996 and 1998 and a stabbing in 2006. This makes Jewish life seem pretty bleak in Moscow, but the synagogue enjoys a large rate of participation (too large, from the perspective of the progressive Jews we talked to) and seems to be a vibrant, active community. When we left, Anna and Emma were very angry though. They told us that the Chabadnik who had spoken to us had pulled them aside and offered them money in order that they would bring their friends to the synagogue. When they told him that they were Reform and that they didn’t think it was appropriate to pay their friends to participate in Judaism, he told them that he would give them the money and they could give their friends presents for participating instead. They left in a huff and spouted to us their frustrations about Chabad and its manipulative outreach strategies. They told us that they are shocked by this idea of Judaism and proud of their Reform practices.
From the synagogue we walked to the theater where once performed Solomon Mikhoels in the famous avant-garde Moscow Yiddish Theater. There wasn’t much to see there beyond a plaque on the wall, but we spent a few minutes reviewing the history of the place, and you can imagine I was tickled to be doing some Yiddish tourism! In brief, let me answer two questions: 1) What was the Moscow Yiddish Theater? The Moscow State Yiddish Theater (which you can read all about in a terrific book by Benjamin Harshav) was founded in 1919 in Petersberg and moved to the new capital of the Soviet Union, Moscow, a year later. Given what we know about the suppression of Jewishness in the Soviet Union it may come as a surprise that such a thing as a state-sponsored Yiddish theater ever existed, but Stalin’s policies shifted dramatically from his initial encouragement of national/ethnic cultures in ways that were in support of the Soviet project to his later insistence that all Soviet citizens must conform to the same patterns and ideals. The theater was founded by Alexander Granovsky, and as a sophisticated avant-garde theater, it became a symbol of secular Yiddish culture in the USSR and the world over. It performed mythical abstract pieces based in Jewish folklore and folk life. Two of the most famous participants were Mark Chagall, who designed sets and costumes for the productions, and Solomon Mikhoels, a very talented actor and director. The theater closed in 1949 a year after Mikhoels was murdered in a Stalinist purge. 2) Who was Solomon Mikhoels? Solomon Mikhoels was a great and famous actor and director for the Moscow State Yiddish Theater. He was also the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, supporting Stalin against the encroaching threat of Nazism. He traveled around the word trying to garner support for the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. After the war, Stalin became suspicious of Jewish contacts with other Jews outside of the USSR and with Jewish self-expression generally. He closed the Yiddish theater and the Jewish Anti-Fascist committee, eventually executing all but two of its members. Mikhoels was the first to be executed, in January 1948 in Minsk, in a staged car accident. He received a state funeral.
So, we snapped a few photos, and then we headed to lunch. On the way, we picked up a gingerbread cake, which we are told is a terrific Russian treat, and decided that when we returned to Israel we would have a tea party with it to celebrate the end of Passover. Over lunch we talked about David and Jordan’s trip – we learned about the vibrant Jewish communities they met, and the great need that these communities have for more support. They spoke to us of a para-rabbinic leader of a community who really wants to go back to school but feels he cannot leave because there is no one to replace him and the community will fall apart without him. We learned much about tensions with Chabad. But we also learned a lot of positive things about creative and energetic communities, students going to youth programming, multi-generational rich and warm Jewish life. I asked David if people there seemed as keen on leaving Russia as the young people of Lipitsk seemed to be, and he answered that making aliyah was not something that the students there really talked about. I feel somewhat relieved about this – and then I wonder if the relief is appropriate.
After lunch, we met a friend of Emma and Anya’s, Sveta, and together we visited the Kremlin, a fortress that was built on the intersection of three rivers (only two now remain) – the city of Moscow forms rings around the Kremlin itself, which was the original city, dating back as far as 1147. The Moscow Kremlin has long been the center of Russian statehood, where tsars and hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church lived. The walls, which were built in 1367-1368 were originally white stone, but were rebuilt in 1485-1495 in red brick by Italian workers (Italians were better architects than Russians) who were all executed upon the completion of the city so that they would not reveal its secrets to foreign powers. At the beginning of the 18th century, Peter I transferred the capital of Russia to St. Petersberg, but the tsars continued to be coronated in Moscow. In 1917 yhr Soviet government transferred the capital back to Moscow, and it remains the center of Russian government to this day. Since 1992 the president of Russia lives inside the Kremlin.
We bought tickets to see the famous cathedrals of the Kremlin, and we walked through church after church with paintings on the wall that read like cartoons of stories of Jesus and of various saints, especially St. George. We saw collections of jewelry and church artifacts. In one of the cathedrals, we saw the tombs of statesmen and church officials, some dating back as far as the fourteenth century.
We noticed that the time was going faster than expected and hurried to St. Basils Cathedral in order to get in before the closing, but to no avail. We were just a few minutes too late and the only attraction we were able to see was the entertainment of Emma arguing with the security guard. Nevertheless it was certainly impressive to catch one last look at the outside of this ornate and unusual building.
In place of a tour of St. Basils we went to a chocolate shop so that Daniel could have one last hot chocolate. We joked and laughed over chocolate flavored tea and coffee, and had a terrific time of it. We worked on perfecting our reading skills, tentatively sounding out words spelled in Cyrillic.
Then we went for a casual walk through Moscow. We passed a Russian bath house and went in for a peek. The walls were ornately decorated, but as we climbed the stairs and saw men sitting in towels, we decided to head back down. Daniel and David continued on and were amazed at what they saw – men lounging in towels and dining together on expensive food and drink. Baths are apparently a Russian institution – nowadays especially among the wealthy.
We walked through an area that used to be quite poor but has been renovated a bit – it is located between a convent and a monastery and no one knows why crime was so rampant in between these institutions. We walked past the KGB buildings and Emma told us that her aunt spent two years in the building followed by three years working in Sibera because she had written a letter to Golda Meir. After she returned from Siberia she continued with her activist work and one day she received ticket to Israel in the mail with the message that she was to leave in 24 hours and could not return.
We had dinner at a sushi restaurant that we stumbled upon on our walk. We spent a long time there laughing and joking, teaching silly American slang to our Russian friends, etc. As it started to get late, we took the metro back to the hotel and bid farewell to Emma. She gave us a small gift on our leaving, and we exchanged e-mail addresses – I hope that we will keep in touch.
We left early in the morning for the airport, where we said goodbye to Anya and flew back to Tel Aviv. We were surprised at how familiar Hebrew seemed after a week in Russia!
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