Call it “Karpas to Kiev.” Or “To Ukraine with Love. “
Whatever name one uses to describe the recent delivery of multilingual haggadot from the Bay Area to Kiev’s Jewish community, the participants involved call it a rewarding experience.
The project was sponsored by the Bay Area Council for Jewish Rescue and Renewal, which sent five Bay Area teenagers last summer to a Jewish camp on the outskirts of Kiev, in Ukraine.
Upon their return, the students were asked to make presentations about their trip to various synagogues and Hebrew schools, and to create a project that would further build on their newly formed, transcontinental relationship.
The result: a Passover Haggadah in Russian, English and Hebrew, and a videotape of seders from both the Bay Area and Kiev.
The 12 haggadot were delivered two weeks ago, just in time for Pesach.
“Passover is the Jewish family experience par excellence,” said Rabbi Josh Zweiback of Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills.
Zweiback, who was one of a handful of adult educators who made the trip to Kiev, said the Jews of the former Soviet Union don’t have a strong sense of Jewish family culture.
“I was really inspired by the Kievan Jewish community’s courage and fortitude,” said Zweiback. “There’s not a big sense of continuity there, but considering the last 100 years of their history — with all the pogroms, Stalinist purges and the Holocaust, it really isn’t too surprising.
“Kiev is the birthplace of Golda Meir, and the idea that that community could blossom again is really exciting,” he said.
Pnina Levermore, executive director of the BACJRR, also sounded an optimistic note.
“Jewish family traditions is a major missing part of Russian Jewish life,” said Levermore, who accompanied Zweiback and Lisa Langer, program coordinator at Beth Am.
“There isn’t the sense of the shared community memory that you have so often in other parts of the diaspora.”
Learning how to express one’s Jewish heritage freely, Levermore added, was among the most profound lessons of the ongoing endeavor.
“A lot of things grew organically out of this project,” she said. “For example, there’s now a group of Kievan students who meet once a week to discuss Jewish philosophy and religious issues. The project was really eye-opening.”
That was true even for Anna Tepermeyster, who was born just outside Kiev and has lived in the Bay Area for the past seven years.
“I was excited to go back and see how things changed,” said Tepermeyster, 18, one of the students who visited Kiev last summer. “But even though I’m from that area, and still hang out with Russian-speaking friends, I was really surprised at the cultural differences between us.”
Tepermeyster lives in San Francisco, where she is a senior at the Hebrew Academy. In the fall, she plans to attend U.C. Berkeley.
“Here everybody’s on an academic fast-track,” she said. “But in Kiev, there’s hardly a word about school — people are just trying to make a living.”
It wasn’t surprising, therefore, that many of Kiev’s Jewish youth don’t know very much about Judaism, or don’t seek out Jewish experiences, Tepermeyster said.
“The whole trip really intrigued me, because it showed how lucky I am to have access to the resources I have now.
“It’s a stepping stone for me — I’m trying to get a lot more involved.”
Levermore also thought of the project as a bridge between the two communities, saying that the eventual goal is to get Kiev’s teenagers to intern at Bay Area Jewish organizations, or perhaps spend the summer at Jewish youth camps.
“There’s a shared heritage and destiny that all of us face, that remains true no matter what stream of Judaism we subscribe to,” Levermore said. “This is about shrinking the distance between us.”