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July 13, 2007
Restoring a Jewish presence
Streams of Judaism are competing for survival in Ukraine.
LORNE MALLIN
This is the last in a three-part series on Jewish Ukraine.
Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny beamed from the bimah of the revived synagogue
in the seaside Crimean town of Evpatoria as he looked out at pews
full of local Jews and a boatload of foreigners from our Klezmer
Heritage Cruise.
"Now we know that Jewish life is rebuilt here, and your trip
here is another reassurance that synagogue buildings will never
be closed again," said Dukhovny, who is Ukraine's chief rabbi
of Progressive Judaism, a fledgling egalitarian movement in a country
where Chabad-Lubavitch is by far the major player. Reform Jews in
North America are part of the global Progressive Jewish movement.
The 97-year-old brick building is a symbol of the revival of Jewish
life in Ukraine after the end of Soviet rule in 1991. Like hundreds
of other synagogues, Ehiya Kapai Synagogue was closed decades ago
by the Communist party. It functioned as a sunflower seed oil plant
and was returned to the Jewish community in 1999. Local and foreign
sponsors paid for the rebuilding and it was rededicated in 2005.
About 160 of us from the cruise ship Dnieper Princess, which was
docked in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, came there for the dedication
of an aron kodesh (the holy ark where the Torah is kept)
that was financed by the Beth El Reform congregation in Virginia.
Arriving in four big buses, we caused quite a stir. Every police
officer in Evpatoria was assigned to security for the biggest tour
group ever to hit town. Even an ambulance was on standby outside
the synagogue gates.
In an emotional ceremony, the head of the congregation, Raisa Shepavalova,
carried a Torah scroll under a chuppah through the sanctuary as
people reached out to touch it as she passed. After speeches, the
community's lay leader, Evgeny Tzvi Perevozchykov, placed the Torah
in the wooden ark.
"To see this tiny Jewish community ... continuing to fight
to keep their identity, despite everything they must have gone through,
was really an eye-opener," New York clarinetist David Krakauer
later told me.
To celebrate, Krakauer and the rest of the professional musicians
on the cruise played a concert, boogieing on the bimah in the synagogue
and then leading everyone out into the courtyard, where we all danced.
Krakauer said it was the most moving concert of the cruise for him,
and Dukhovny told the crowd it was a homecoming. "The music
which your ancestors took from Ukraine to Canada or to the United
States, this klezmer music, you are bringing back," the rabbi
said.
Music plays a central role in Dukhovny's own congregation, Hatikvah,
in Kiev. One Friday night service I attended was largely led by
a lay cantor, Mike Urisman, 27, who played guitar and guided the
25 or so people there in prayers with tunes composed by such Jewish
songwriters as Debbie Friedman and some of his own. It was a thrill
for me to lead a chant during the service.
The Ukrainian capital is Dukhovny's home turf. He was born there
57 years ago. His mother was the daughter of a Chassidic rabbi and
she taught Dukhovny and his brother to keep Shabbat. At 44, Dukhovny
switched from a career in the sciences to attend Leo Baeck College
in London, the Progressive rabbinical school.
His offices and synagogue are in a rented space a few steps below
ground level. Dukhovny said that, with the formerly Jewish buildings
in Kiev all claimed by Chabad and other Chassidic groups, it's difficult
to attract wealthy patrons to his synagogue and help it prosper.
"Rich Jews don't want to pray in a semi-basement," he
said.
"Saying to business people in Kiev that the Reform movement
in North America is the strongest and widespread and that Chabad-Lubavitch
is a small sect - they do not believe me, seeing the gold, silver
and marble of the Chabad synagogues.
"The constant challenge for the movement is that many of our
programs are under-budgeted," Dukhovny said. The movement can
financially support only 16 of its 47 communities.
Still, Dukhovny emphasizes the positive. "The main success
of the Progressive movement in Ukraine is that the movement was
able to build a strong presence," he said. "[It] presents
another way how to be Jewish, opposite to the ultra-Orthodox view
that there is the only one way how to be Jewish."
He explained that the constitutions of the congregations, which
are part of the Religious Union for Progressive Jewish Congregations
of Ukraine, open their membership to people who identify as Jews
and can document they have Jewish heritage somewhere in the last
three generations.
With an intermarriage rate of about 80 per cent, Ukrainian Jews
are highly assimilated. Estimates of the Jewish population range
from a low of 94,000 to as many as 500,000. Thousands emigrate every
year to Israel and the West.
Dukhovny, one of only two Progressive rabbis in the country, said
his movement, which serves about 15,000 people, has trained lay
leaders and para-rabbis, built Netzer youth groups, opened eight
pre-schools and six Sunday schools and owns six synagogue buildings.
Among the 240 registered Jewish organizations in Ukraine, there
is a minor Conservative and Modern Orthodox presence, but Chabad
is the largest, with more than 100 communities. Chabad moved quickly
to revive Judaism in Ukraine and has opened thriving day schools.
There are Jewish community centres, welfare services, Holocaust
memorials, museums and summer camps in Ukraine, plus a Jewish university
in Kiev. When our cruise group visited the five-year-old Jewish
museum in Odessa, it made an impression on Ronnie Tessler, who was
the first executive director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education
Centre and was instrumental in developing the new Jewish Museum
and Archives of British Columbia.
"Visiting the museum was a very poignant experience,"
she said. "The sorry condition of the building the museum is
housed in is disturbing. It is obvious from the size of the museum
and the home-made appearance of the exhibits that their work is
being accomplished on a very tight budget by a small staff."
Ukraine has a rich Jewish history, going back to the sixth century
CE, when the Khazars ruled the region, with some evidence that predates
the Christian era. The Polish-Lithuanian Empire governed from the
14th century until the expansion of the Russian Empire in the 17th
century. To contain the Jews, Russia imposed a Pale of Settlement
that included much of present-day Ukraine.
The rebirth of Jewish life has not been without tensions. There
are rival Jewish umbrella organizations, even rival chief rabbis
from Chabad, competition for Jewish facilities returned by the government,
pressure from Messianic Jewish groups and rising levels of anti-Semitism,
with increasing reports of violent attacks on Jews and damage to
Jewish property.
Lorne Mallin is a Vancouver writer, editor, graphic designer
and Jewish chant leader. His website is lornemallin.com.
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