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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/14795/full/14795/borovichi-jews-get-a-boost-from-bay-area-visitors/ <br /><br /> <b>Borovichi Jews get a boost from Bay Area visitors</b> <br /> Friday, January 5, 2001 | by <p>ALEXANDRA J. WALL </p> <br /><br /><p>The lights of Chanukah shone especially bright for the Jewish community of Borovichi this year, as Jews marked the Festival of Lights together in a new room adjacent to their synagogue. Now named in memory of Rudolph Schwartz, the room underwent a renovation funded by an East Bay Congregation and a San Francisco woman.<br /><br /> Borovichi, a city of 80,000 between Moscow and St. Petersburg, has enjoyed a special relationship with the Bay Area since 1998, when it was the target of a nationalist group, the Russian National Unity Party. At that time, the Bay Area Council for Jewish Rescue and Renewal launched a letter and e-mail campaign to Russian officials on behalf of the Jews of Borovichi.<br /><br /> Six months later, the 500-member Jewish community was granted space in a building for a synagogue. Through the Yad L'Yad program, Reform Temple Beth Torah in Fremont was matched as a sister congregation with the Borovichi synagogue, and members of Beth Torah, including Rabbi Steven Kaplan, traveled there for its dedication.<br /><br /> But as the Russian synagogue was really just one room in a larger building, the Jews of Borovichi still had no place to gather for social occasions. They had no classroom, no library, no place to hold an oneg Shabbat.<br /><br /> So when local residents visited Borovichi in November on a mission organized by the Bay Area Council, they were told that the Russian Jews had been offered a second room adjacent to the synagogue, with one caveat—they had to pay to renovate it.<br /><br /> "There was rubbish on the floor and broken windows," said Marion Schwartz, a retired geriatric mental health worker, who lives in San Francisco.<br /><br /> Schwartz asked the Russians if they had received an estimate for the room's renovation. They had. They needed $1,700, they told her.<br /><br /> "I said, 'Sold,'" Schwartz said. "Put a plaque up in my late husband's name, and I'll give you a check, and you can make the renovations."<br /><br /> Although Schwartz had been involved with the Bay Area Council for a number of years, she said visiting the Jews of Borovichi was "really a revelation to me."<br /><br /> In her congregation, Kol Hadash, which is affiliated with the Northern California Society for Humanistic Judaism, Schwartz is involved in a knitting group. "We send warm things to Russian Jews every year," she said. "The [Bay Area] Council has always taken the things when they go."<br /><br /> Schwartz had been to Russia once before, in 1986. She visited China then, too, with a delegation of American mental health counselors, to investigate how those countries treated their elderly populations. But this was the first time she visited a Jewish community there.<br /><br /> "I wanted to make everyone Jewish," she said. "We're bringing such wonderful services to the Russian Jews."<br /><br /> Noting that the communist regime had banned any kind of religious expression for almost a century, Schwartz said, "These are Jews who have been unable to worship in any way. They don't know how to be Jewish."<br /><br /> More help is on the way. The money donated by Schwartz was not the end of the Bay Area's generosity.<br /><br /> When he returned from the mission, Herman Rosenbaum, chair of Beth Torah's social action committee, gave a talk to the congregation about what he had seen.<br /><br /> Now that there is the space for it, Beth Torah agreed to fund audio-visual equipment for the new library and classroom so their Russian partners can have access to Jewish music and films. This contribution is in addition to $3,700 Beth Torah gave last year to furnish the synagogue.<br /><br /> Rosenbaum said that both attending Shabbat services in the synagogue his congregation helped to furnish and meeting the Jews of Borovichi was "an emotional experience."<br /><br /> Pnina Levermore, executive director of the Bay Area Council, said the effect this relationship has had on the Jews of Borovichi becomes more evident with each visit.<br /><br /> "One grandmother cut through the crowd and presented me with her granddaughter," Levermore said, estimating the girl to be about 9 years old.<br /><br /> Levermore recalled that at the dedication the previous year, Kaplan had blessed this little girl.<br /><br /> Now, the grandmother told her, "Please tell the rabbi 'thank you.' She'll remember it for the rest of her life."<br /><br /> Levermore described another memorable encounter. "The oldest Jew in the community came up to me and showed me a picture of graffiti of a Jewish star with the word Jhid painted on his door."<br /><br /> "'They can't scare me,' he told me. 'We have friends; we're protected. Thank you so much.'"</p> <p> </p>

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