Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on October 2, 2021

Its the eve of Rosh Hashana in a building erected in the 19th century by the Templers, a Lutheran sect from Germany, in what is now central Tel Aviv. A passerby peeking in through a window of the preserved structure will discover that its completely packed. And, unlike other places in the Sarona compound, this is not a place where they sell hamburgers or the latest fashions. Scattered on the tables are High Holy Day prayer books in Hebrew and in a Cyrillic alphabet. Young people, and also a few veteran immigrants, have crowded into the community center and house of prayer inaugurated in late August by Rabbi Yosef Hersonski. Welcome to the new synagogue for Russian speakers.

Jewish Point is the congregations name. The prayergoers here, most of whom immigrated to Israel in the past few years, received their Jewish education largely in organizations that serve the post-Soviet space. As children in Russia, they were sent to Jewish summer and winter camps, and felt that they were part of a large, prestigious community; ironically, many say that they lost that feeling when they immigrated to Israel. Jewish Point enables them to feel at home once again, as two young women one with red braids, the other with a traditional head covering explained to me as they sliced fine cheeses and set the table ahead of a meal for the congregations members, as Hersonski says, using the English word.

His ambitions go well beyond the young people who are newly arrived in Israel. The synagogues festive opening, which took place several weeks ago, was attended by businesspeople, lawyers, designers and a host of media personalities well-known among the countrys Russian-speaking community. The plan is for the small, stylish building to operate almost 24/7, with workshops for the elderly and a shared workspace in the morning, after-school activities for children, lectures and parties in the evening, and betwixt and between, prayer services and classes in Judaism. A community center in the spirit of Jewish Orthodox lite, self-sustaining via crowdfunding campaigns, members fees and sometimes also the sale of tickets to events.

The natural elegance of the Templer structure is enhanced by furniture that projects a sense of generous budgets. But the care taken in material design is dwarfed by the investment in the virtual realm: a well-designed, uncluttered website, lively Facebook and Instagram accounts, a Telegram channel, memes, video clips and meticulously edited photographs. The gist of the message is fashionable Judaism thats fun to practice and in a contemporary Russian style. Judaism thats able to attract the whos who of the community, including the affluent. A solid Lord for solid lords, as the cynics might say, quoting from a 1990s cult book by the Russian writer Viktor Pelevin.

Hersonski, soon to be 44, who immigrated to Israel from Ukraine as a boy in the early 1990s, and made a second aliyah four years ago after spending around two decades in Moscow, is aware of the social criticism, and comes prepared with answers. His working model is based on long years of work with Russian Jewish communities, and he believes it will be effective in Israel as well.

It is important for me to make clear why I work with the cream of the community, he says in our meeting, to which he comes dressed in a checked shirt and torn jeans. The first reason, to be frank, is that its more interesting, and I think a person should engage in what they love. The second thing is this: In Moscow, I saw that the Jewish communities and organizations gambled on the weak population groups. They drew people with food packages and free summer camps, and so quickly reached large numbers. With that model you obtain a mass group, but it is a mass of weakness. Its feasible only if you have [tycoons such as Roman] Abramovich or [Lev] Leviev behind you. I decided in Moscow to do the opposite: first to gather the strong and afterward to help the weak, and I have continued to apply that model here.

Not a rebbetzin

On Rosh Hashana eve, Hersonski mingles with the congregation with a crimson kippa on his head, which he later exchanges for a festive top hat whose brim is curled upward, lending him the look of a 19th-century Russian literary protagonist perhaps Gogols Chichikov, the acquirer of dead souls. Between the prayers, Hersonski offers explanations and delivers short sermons (with the mehitza, the divider between the mens and womens sections, folded) that are spiced with the latest jargon and with references to Russian films.

He makes a point of calling his wife, Masha Khlopovskaya, his beloved. She holds a masters degree in neurobiology, and Hersonski introduces her as not a rebbetzin (rabbis wife), emphasizing that she is a radical feminist. The two met in the congregation Hersonski led in Moscow; she is 14 years younger than her husband, for whom this is his second marriage. When shes not in the synagogue, she says, she can be found in jeans and without a head covering. Nonetheless, during prayers, the mehitza in her husbands shul is intact, and afterward the wine is poured in the courtyard only by the rabbi and two halakhically authentic Jews, to prevent any impurity. Hersonskis roots lie in the Chabad movement, where halakha is halakha.

The Torah scroll in the small synagogue is on loan. Hersonski intends to raise funds for a new one via blockchain technology. In the womens section, its obvious that most of those present arent familiar with the prayer book, either in Hebrew or in Russian, and dont know quite how to behave: when to stand, when to sit, when to say Amen. Hersonski directs the worshipers to the right page and in one of the instructional breaks, remarks gently to a young woman that its best to keep her phone out of sight. When the rabbis wife lit candles ahead of the start of the holiday, one of the women crossed her hands in a Christian prayer gesture. Still, its intentions that counts.

I came from a vibrant Jewish life to a country where I dont know anyone, says Yulia, the young woman with the red braids, who is from Novosibirsk, in Siberia. Its a moment at which you either give up religion or find a congregation like this.

Many of the young Russian speakers who immigrated to Israel in recent years will understand what she means. In contrast to those who arrived with the big wave of the 1990s, leaping directly from the Soviet Union to an unknown country and a tradition that had been almost completely forgotten during the generations of communism, many of those who came during the past two decades went on from summer camp to regular synagogue attendance while still in Russia. They were accustomed to see Judaism and the Jewish tradition as a source of pride. Ironically, in Israel many of them found themselves cut off from the Jewish milieu to which they had become accustomed.

There was nothing in the Russian language in Tel Aviv, says Hannah, a young woman who immigrated from Ukraine. Lets say I go to a regular synagogue, then what about the meal? For the meal everyone goes back to their own home. I am a new immigrant, alone in the country. Where will I go?

The Moscow format of preserving the tradition combined with a secular way of life suited me, says Emma, who made the move to Israel a year ago. I would like to continue with it here, but there arent many options. Either a regular synagogue or this place. This is probably the only place where I, as someone whos been in Israel for a year, can both pray and learn something.

Theres a light atmosphere here, adds her partner, Ivan.

So light that I forgot I was going to synagogue, says Marina, who has been in Israel longer. By mistake, I wore pants.

Matza for Passover

Most of the immigrants of the 1990s arrived in Israel with knowledge of Jewish tradition that ranged from zero to rudimentary. Some of them discovered Judaism here or while they were preparing for aliyah. Others harbored tenuous memories from their grandparents home, or a loose connection to the synagogue in their city, where it was customary to pick up matza for Passover. In Israel, the need to set up a library with books in Russian, a cultural center or a grocery store selling familiar food was far more urgent than any desire to connect with ones roots or attend a synagogue.

A great deal has changed in the three decades since the start of the wave of immigration that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although the hard core of Russian speakers in Israel was and remains secular, processes also occurred of a movement toward religion from different directions. In the early 1990s, the Mahanayim movement was a primary conduit for disseminating knowledge about Judaism among Russian speakers. The movements synagogue, which was established in the West Bank city of Maaleh Adumim, is still active.

Since then additional communities have been formed of Russian speakers, both modern Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox, some of them settlers, as well as other right-leaning initiatives meant to draw Russian speakers closer to Judaism (such as Nekudat Mifgash, meeting point, which organizes visits to the Temple Mount, among other activities). Bnei Baruch: Kabbala for the People, led by Michael Laitman, which has come under fire both from the religious establishment and from the Israeli Center for Cult Victims, is another center of religiosity and traditionalism that attracts mostly Russian speakers. At the same time, liberal Judaism has also found its way to the hearts of Russian speakers. Two Reform communities of Russian speakers are active today in Israel in Ramat Gan and in Haifa.

If in the 1990s around 95 percent of the immigrants from the former Soviet Union termed themselves secular, surveys conducted at the beginning of the 2000s found that fewer than 30 percent declared themselves to be so, says Dr. Julia Lerner, an anthropologist from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev who studies religious streams among Russian speakers in Israel. A 2010 survey conducted by the sociologists Larissa Remennick and Anna Prashizky, from Bar-Ilan University, showed that about a third of Russian speakers categorize themselves as atheists or agnostics, another third as believing but not necessarily strictly observant Jews, 20 percent say they believe but dont adhere to a particular religion, 9 percent identify as Orthodox Jews and 6 percent as Christians.

There are very diverse streams of religiosity among Russian speakers, Lerner notes, ranging from Haredim and religious Zionists to messianic and evangelical-Christian sects. Many of these streams are based on New Age concepts of self-development culture and the cultivation of a certain lifestyle. Today people talk about drawing close to religion in terms of searching for happiness, self-discovery, personal development but the Russian speakers are especially influenced by this. For them it is a new Western language.

Hersonskis project is aimed, to begin with, precisely at those who do not hesitate to define themselves as secular. As Oleg Ulyansky, a digital-marketing adviser who has assisted Hersonski, says, in a phone conversation, Everyone knows I am an atheist. I dont attend synagogue at all. If there is a kosher restaurant and a non-kosher one, I will always choose the non-kosher one, because we need to support them as well. But I think that every Jew needs a synagogue to one degree or another, even if they dont go to it. A person needs a synagogue several times in life circumcision, bar mitzvah, wedding, death. People need tradition.

People lived in the Soviet Union without that tradition, and all was fine.

Ulyansky: My father was not circumcised, but only Jews visited our home in Donetsk [Ukraine]. It was amazing. And we talked about Jewish subjects and Jewish books. It was a very singular situation that emerged in the Soviet Union, where you were constantly reminded that you were a Jew. And besides that, we did have a tradition, after all: the Soviet tradition. You know, we celebrated Novy God [Russian for the secular New Year], but everything is artificial about the way its marked here from the weather to the atmosphere outside.

Oliansky says he does not intend to go to Hersonskis synagogue as a house of worship, but also does not rule out the possibility that he will attend lectures or parties there. Ive already been to one lecture, but it bugged me that Yossi insists that everyone wear a kippa. Whats the big deal? Did someone die? The last time I wore a kippa was at a funeral.

Old Believers

Yosef Hersonski was born in 1977, in the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk, to a mixed family: a Jewish father whose roots were in the city of Zhmerynka, Ukraine, and a Russian mother from a Christian family with roots in Siberia. Growing up, I didnt have a defined position or identity, he says. The religious side actually stemmed more from my mother. Her parents are adherents of the Old Believers [Eastern Orthodox Christians who have been persecuted for centuries], so there was a lot of pro-Jewish Christianity there. For example, there was a lullaby: Rain, rain, go away, we will go to the River Jordan. There were moments when my mother was the main Jewish person in the family. When my father wanted to eat lard in Israel, she would say to him, What, did we come here to eat pork?

Young Yosefs path to Judaism began to be carved out even before the family immigrated in 1990. When I was 13, my father took me to a synagogue for the first time. It was magical for me. I was never a battered Jewish boy. Most of my friends werent Jewish. I wasnt miserable. But in the synagogue, I suddenly felt at home, everything suited me. There was a shaliah [emissary] sent by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and there were yeshiva students from the United States, and it was simply incredible they were so smiling and open-minded. Today, I understand that they were Americans and we were battered Soviets. So it was simply the festival of life.

Hersonski often skipped school in order to pray. It was just magical for me. Very soon I started to wear a kippa, which I only took off in school, because I was afraid. He was circumcised at a Chabad summer camp, without his parents consent. Once the family had moved to Israel, he attended the yeshiva in Kfar Chabad, near Ben-Gurion Airport, and he underwent formal conversion and even went to see Menachem Mendel Schneerson during the last Jewish religious fall festivals in the Rebbes life, in 1993. It was an experience he describes as a combination of mysticism and psychiatry: There was a drive there with all due difference like in the stadiums where people saluted Hitler.

After completing his yeshiva studies, he went as a Chabad shaliah to Ukraine, where he served assistant to the rabbi of Odessa, went on to rabbinical studies at 77 Eastern Parkway, in Brooklyn, returned to Israel and found himself in a military prison, charged with draft evasion. Eventually, he was drafted into the air force, and after his discharge, in 2002, was sent by Chabad as a shaliah to Moscow, where he remained for many years.

I didnt want to leave Israel, because Im a Zionist, Hersonski says. But as a rabbi, I would have made 3,000 to 5,000 shekels a month in Israel [around $750 to $1,250], and I didnt know how it was possible to live on that money. And its important for me to live well. I Russia, I was offered $3,000 a month. That was money I never even imagined existed. I didnt even succeed in wasting the whole of my first salary.

What did you find when you returned to Israel years later?

Israel has changed for the better since then, but in many senses its hard for me here even today. The mentality is more conducive to me there. The architecture is more conducive. The dimensions of the market there, where you can earn the same money with less effort, are more conducive. The weather there is more conducive. In Israel it really bugs me when Im addressed as mami [sweetie]. In a certain sense, I think the Israelis have stopped being sabras. The Russians are the new sabras: thorny and not smiley on the outside, but filled with soul when they open up.

Unlike veteran Israelis.

The sabras here are the opposite very positive on the outside, and inside Its very hard for me with the insularity, the fears. Theres a certain defensiveness: Theyre afraid and they really are very closed.

And in Moscow you felt openness?

At the beginning of the 2000s, Moscow made a huge leap. As Israelis, we were used to coming to Russia and Ukraine as citizens of a first-world country to third-world countries economically, technologically, morally. But that changed so acutely that today, even though Russia has been on the decline for many years, in many spheres its ahead of Israel by a few heads, if not by many leagues. Despite the startup nation. In Moscow there are an incredible number of talented people who are constantly aspiring to improve. Their world isnt closed: Everyone with a head on their shoulders is welcome there. In Moscow people learn from one another. Stagnation throws you back, so I stay in touch with people from there.

Dirty money

How is the new synagogue funded? With all due respect for crowdfunding, the rent in upscale Sarona and the design of the facility necessitate donors with deep pockets. According to Hersonski, 10 percent of the synagogues budget comes from the Georgian-Israeli billionaire Mikhael Mirilashvili, who made his fortune in part from the casino business and who served time in a Russian prison for kidnapping. Another 12 percent comes from a person whose name Hersonski refuses to divulge.

Is there anyone from whom you would decline to accept a donation because of the nature of their activity?

Of course. If its clear that the money comes from crime, or if the donation will distance Jewish Point from our concept.

But the principle that motivates you is that if you dont know that the money comes from robbery, you wont ask unnecessary questions?

I once heard from a Jewish activist something that at the time seemed to me open to argument, but the more time that passes, the more correct it seems to me. He said that when dirty money goes to charity, it becomes clean. This money feeds needy people, provides education to Jewish children, and that makes both the money and whoever gave it, honest.

In other words, money laundering in the ethical sense of the term.

Laundering, not in a satirical sense. It really does clean the money. I had an offer that could have solved all my financial issues, but I refused, because cooperation with that person would have forced me to convince at length people whom I call high-quality people with self-respect and moral values, that the money should be accepted.

Hersonski left Russia at a disadvantage, and his departure was accompanied by drama. In 2017, after several years of harassment by the authorities, he was expelled from the country. Two years earlier, he had been detained for interrogation and released, emerged victorious in a few legal suits filed against both him and the community he headed, on technical grounds (such as supposedly supplying Moscows population registry with false information), and in the end he was barred from entering Russia. At first he considered appealing, but finally dropped the idea after getting an unequivocal message to that effect from a senior Chabad figure in the country. When you live in Russia you absorb whether you want to or not the spirit of slavery. So I let it go, for the good of the community.

Hersonskis expulsion took place following Russias 2014 conquest of the Crimean Peninsula, amid a generally more stringent attitude toward foreign activity. They started to persecute anyone who wasnt Russian, and they simply forgot to tell me to apply for citizenship, otherwise I would risk deportation. Besides that, I personally didnt like what was happening in Russia.

Did you express that feeling publicly?

I didnt go to demonstrations. I didnt give money to [opposition figure Alexei] Navalny or similar organizations. I did not issue formal declarations as the rabbi of a congregation against Putin and the government, based on solidarity and organizational loyalty and the understanding that if I did something wrong, other Jews would be beaten up afterward, not me. So I thought everything was fine. At some point the chief rabbi of Russia, Berel Lazar, said to me: Yossi, the time has come to be a patriot, and whats wanted is a sincere patriot. Alexander Boroda, the president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia, and No. 2 in Chabad in the country, told me an anecdote about Alexander Voloshin, who was the bureau chief for President Yeltsin and also of Putin at the start of his presidency. When he was asked whether he was aware that his conversations were being tapped, he replied, But I dont say anything anyway.

And you said?

I didnt understand how seriously things should be taken, and I allowed myself to make comments between whose lines it was clear what my opinions were, and also on the social networks.

Hersonski did not receive support from Chabad, and the rift with the movement only grew more acute when he returned to Israel. He relates that when he offered his services to the Chabad shaliah in Tel Aviv, he was rebuffed. There are no Russians in Tel Aviv, he was told.

Jewish Point is out to prove the opposite.

Inconvenient understanding

A modern congregation, open and with style these words, which appear intermittently on Jewish Points website (in Russian), set a liberal standard that Hersonski is doing all he can to meet. That means, for example, a commitment to feminism, as far as Jewish law allows, and tolerance for the LGBT community.

I do not express myself in favor of the LGBT community, he says, but I speak out sharply against discrimination directed at them. I am in favor of welcoming LGBTs with a smile and in favor of not considering them bad because they are LGBTs. Yes, I think that ideally humans are straight. LGBT is a complex story to which I dont have an answer. As long as you think gender identity is a deviation, you have it easy. You say, Lets relieve that person of the deviation and he will be normal. The problem is that my close acquaintance with LGBT people and with studies on the subject have led me to the very inconvenient understanding for many religious people that its not a deviation. Its nature. The same God who marked it as an absolute evil and as something thats not right, also created them like that. In other words, a gay man likes men in exactly the same way I like women. Its like calling sexuality itself a sin. Thats not right, and its not right in Judaism, either.

So what do you do about it?

Theres nothing to do. It is what it is. Can you change someones identity or their tendency? Its impossible, you know.

Clearly, questions on issues such as the attitude toward the LGBT community, feminism and the clash between Orthodoxy and modern life bother Hersonski far less than the question of where Russian Jews are headed and where the Russian Jew Yosef Hersonski is headed. He laments the Moscow he lost, but says that that Moscow no longer exists. He is critical of Israel and blesses the fact that he returned to it, but doesnt rule out the possibility that in another few years he will find himself in a different place.

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the rabbis missed out on a generation, he says. They didnt find a way to sculpt a new Jewish identity, so the majority assimilated. From my point of view, closing the circle today amounts to finding a new tikkun for this matter. Closing another circle is related to the question of why, before the war [World War II], the rabbis didnt tell Jews to leave Germany or the Soviet Union. It is very important for me to say at the right moment: Jews, flee from there. Its best for them to heed that, but at least for them not to say afterward: Why didnt you say something? Now I have my finger on the pulse ahead of issuing a call like that. I may already be a little too late.

Read the rest here:

With a 'stylish' spin on Judaism, a Tel Aviv synagogue beckons the Russian-speaking elite - Haaretz

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