Oleg was one of the most vocal proponents of revitalizing Jewish culture in Birobidzhan. He told us there were promising signs: Sunday school classes (taught by Oleg) had started up again, a new cultural center had opened, and School No. 2 was not only offering Yiddish classes again, they were also putting on a Rosh Hashanah pageant the following week.
Yet it was hard to avoid the feeling that this was too little, too late. With no rabbi, no functioning synagogue, and no prospects for getting either anytime soon, how much longer could the city’s Jewish community survive?
For that matter, how long could Birobidzhan itself survive in the face of its shattered economy? In the four years since the collapse of the USSR, factories had closed down, thousands of people had lost their jobs, and many who were still working hadn’t been paid in months. With its tree-lined streets and small-town feel, Birobidzhan wasn’t without its charms, but the lack of employment and a persistent sense of malaise were like a cloud hovering just overhead.
This place was dirt poor, and what little money did trickle in went straight to Sokhnut, an organization whose main purpose here was to help Jews get out. “No one wants to invest any money in this city,” Oleg said bitterly. “The easiest thing in the world is to leave, to quit. But there will always be Jews in Birobidzhan, and we must make it possible for them to have a normal spiritual life. Someone must be here to take care of those who stay.”
This, we discovered, was the central question for Birobidzhan’s Jews in 1995: Stay, and work to revive the city? Or call it a day, and move to Israel (or Europe, or North America)?
Sokhnut director Mikhail Diment, a weary-looking man of 60 whose office was decorated with a large Israeli flag, spent every day working to help people leave. “We are the one race that knows exactly where it came from,” he told me. “We are linked by faith, by the Torah. And Israel is our homeland.” Those who wanted to leave, he said, should feel no guilt for doing so.
Author David Waiserman, who was born and raised in Birobidzhan, was dismayed by the mass exodus. “The Jews who are leaving this city are leaving for one reason: economics,” he told me. “They got a call from somebody in Israel who said, ‘Hey, Moishe! Get over here and have a look at this place! They got nice cars here, and great food!’ So the people go.” He paused. “But my parents built this city. They are lying in its graveyard. How can I just pick up and go? This is where my roots are.”
Maria Shokhtova, a Yiddish teacher at School No. 2, told me that during her childhood in Ukraine, her father prayed “every morning and every night. He knew all the rituals, and we used to go to the synagogue.” But these days, she didn’t do any of those things—and she didn’t know anyone else who did, either. “I live in a little village called Waldheim with my daughter now,” she told me. “When we first came to Waldheim, it was all Jewish. Now you can hardly find any Jews there.”[1]
Alexander Yakubson, a 48-year-old lawyer, was truly torn about what to do. He and his family had emigrated to Israel in 1991, then returned to Birobidzhan three years later to find it a changed place. “When we left Russia in 1991, the economy was more stable, the factories were still working. There was almost no crime,” he said. “When we returned last year, the picture was totally different. There are so many unemployed here now, so many people are poor. Now the Russians envy the Jews in this country, because the Jews can leave.”
“My wife wants to go back to Israel,” he said. “I’m not sure what I want.”
Hearing the anguish in his voice, I couldn’t help but think that perhaps when you have two homelands, you really have none. Because you never know where you truly belong.
I titled my 1995 story “The Last Jews of Birobidzhan,” and as the 2005 trip drew near, I expected to find little more than a ghost town here, at least in terms of Jewish culture.
On the day David and I arrived, we took a taxi to the little synagogue to see if it was still standing. It was—and Boris Kaufman was there too, looking the same in his long white beard and yarmulke. Boris told us that he still held services, though he no longer allowed the worship of Jesus Christ. “There were several women who wanted to do that,” he said, shrugging. “But in 1996 or so, I told them we had to keep to Jewish religious traditions here. So they left.”
But the bigger news, by far, was that Birobidzhan had a new synagogue. And for the first time in decades, it had a rabbi—an energetic young Israeli named Mordechai Scheiner, who’d arrived in 2002.
This was truly surprising. And the new synagogue complex was even more so: not only was there a beautiful new sanctuary, there were also Sunday school classrooms, a small museum, administrative offices, and a library. The synagogue had a Torah and specially designed ceiling lights that formed a Star of David, and the Sunday school had a computer classroom outfitted with ten brand-new computers. All of this was funded by government and private sources, including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in addition to Russian organizations—and enough money had been earmarked to keep it open a long time. It seemed that the Jewish Autonomous Region had been saved.
And yet… and yet… a different reality emerged when I tried to track down the people I’d spoken with in 1995. Boris’s mentor, Oleg Shavulski, who’d railed bitterly against those who left Birobidzhan, had moved to Germany. Maria Shokhtova, the Yiddish teacher, had moved to Israel. David Waiserman, who’d told me, “This is where my roots are,” had left too, emigrating to Israel. And Alexander Yakubson, the lawyer who’d moved to Israel, then back to Birobidzhan, had returned once again to Israel.
In fact, only three people I’d spoken to in 1995 hadn’t left: Boris Kaufman; union leader Yakov Sherman, who had unfortunately suffered a debilitating stroke; and—most surprisingly—Mikhail Diment, the Sokhnut director who’d spent the whole of the 1990s trying to get his fellow Jews out.
Judging from my admittedly small sample size, it seemed that the exodus from Birobidzhan never really stopped. Yet at School No. 2, a whopping 600 students were now enrolled to study “the languages and culture of the Jewish people”—up from just 100 in 1995. Not all these students were Jewish, but many were. The school’s director, Liliya Komissarenko, told me that this was one of the most telling signs that Jewish culture in Birobidzhan was experiencing a true resurgence.
“But how is that possible, with so many Jews still leaving?” I asked her.
“The more Jews that leave, the more that are left here,” she replied. I looked at her blankly. Was this a riddle?
“Now, many more people here are discovering and embracing their Jewish roots,” she explained. “These are people who, before, had no interest in their Jewish heritage. But now they’re acknowledging who they are.” In other words, Jewish families who’d gone underground during the Soviet era were now, finally, coming back out.
Many others confirmed this. Albina Sergeyeva, director of the Freud Center, told me, “Ten years ago, many of those who left didn’t want to proclaim themselves Jewish. Now, people call themselves Jewish, and they talk about how their grandmothers and great-grandmothers practiced the Jewish faith.” Lev Toytman, who’d come to Birobidzhan as a boy in 1934, said, “After 1917, people forgot who they were. Especially those born after the 1930s and ’40s, they were Pioneers and Communists. The synagogues were closed. But now people will say they’re Jewish. Things have changed.”
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