When Alex Kagan was 10 years old, he told his teacher that he forgot his mother’s maiden name.
“Her last name was Israel, and I was so ashamed of how Jewish it sounded, I didn’t want to say it in front of the whole class,” he recalled.
Nearly two decades later, that shame has morphed into strong Jewish pride — as well as a career in the Jerusalem office of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, as the organization’s former Soviet Union director.
Kagan, along with five representatives from World Union offices in the former Soviet Union, visited the Bay Area Jan. 30 to Feb. 8. They came to fund-raise for the organization’s Jewish camp program and to learn about Jewish education, religious programming and working with youth. It is the second such trip for Kagan, 34, but this time the situation is more dire.
“The Reform movement is very, very young in the FSU — it has only existed for 17 years,” Kagan said. “We have a lot to learn and we need money to fund the Jewish programs we’ve created.”
There are many challenges in creating Jewish life and community from scratch in an anti-Semitic, cash-poor climate. For example, there are only six native-born Reform rabbis to serve all of the extensive territory of the former Soviet republics.
The high cost of educating rabbis is the main obstacle, the World Union delegation explained, and one way of getting around it has been to educate lay leaders to run more than 40 Reform congregations built in the former Soviet Union in the last 17 years.
But building a Jewish community takes more than money. Educating and engaging a population that has no Jewish literacy is a tremendous challenge.
The key to World Union’s success has been its youth outreach movement, Netzer Olami, which provides counselor training programs, youth clubs and summer and winter camps. The first Netzer Olami camp began in 1996 with 100 participants; by 2008 there were 1,112 participants spread among 11 camps.
Most members of the World Union delegation attended one of these camps as teens. That’s where Rabbi Misha Kapustin of Crimea, Ukraine, said he “discovered my Jewishness” at age 17.
“All I knew about Judaism was what I read in the booklet provided to me by this program,” he said.
After his experience at camp, he quit law school and began his journey toward rabbinical school. He is now one of the six Reform rabbis in the region.
Other delegation members tell similar stories about camp — of knowing nothing about Judaism as children and feeling a great swelling of pride and community after only a few weeks. They went home and spread their enthusiasm to their parents and the nascent Jewish communities forming in their towns.
“The parents of these kids are the generation who got no Jewish education and are the hardest to reach. We get them involved through their children,” Kagan said.
About 80 percent of kids who attend these camps grow up to join Jewish congregations and raise their children with Jewish customs, Kagan said. The camps are seen as a major opportunity to battle assimilation, the biggest modern enemy of Russian Jewry. Many of the delegation members and camp participants have married people they’ve met through the camp community.
But in spite of the success the World Union has had in the former Soviet Union, the global financial crisis threatens to severely cut donations and financial support for the camps.
Congregations Beth Am in Los Altos Hills and Shir Hadash in Los Gatos brought the delegation to the United States with donated frequent-flier miles so the World Union would not have to dip into its budget.
“We want to keep Judaism alive in the FSU so that Jews there don’t have to emigrate to the U.S. or Israel to live rich Jewish lives among vibrant Jewish communities,” said Shir Hadash congregation member Linda Levenson, who organized the World Union trip. “We want them to practice pluralistic, modern Judaism in their country, with their friends and relatives, among their own culture.”
For more information on Jewish camp programs in the former Soviet Union, contact Cherie Half at [email protected] or Linda Levenson at [email protected].