Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 53, No. 42, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 21, 1999 Page: 3 of 24
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IN OUR 53RD YEAR! - THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1999 - TEXAS JEWISH POST
Fea tu res
LEV KRICHEVSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
TULA, Russia — For decades,
Faina and Anatoly Sanevich kept
their Judaism private.
Natives of Ukraine, where they
both survived Nazi ghettos as
small children, the couple spoke
Yiddish to each other at home. But
unwilling to complicate their chil-
dren’s lives, they spoke Russian
with their two sons.
Every Passover they would have
matzah on their table — they did-
n’t hold a full seder — but kept this
fact a secret from their neighbors
and colleagues.
Their need to live double lives
changed in the waning years of the
Soviet Union. *
The Jewish community was
among the First to benefit from the
opportunities provided by Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev’s
policy of glasnost, or openness, ini-
tiated in the late 1980s. The most
obvious benefit was the lifting of
emigration restrictions, which
resulted in a massive wave of aliyah
to Israel.
Those who remained behind
has occurred in Moscow and a
handful of other large cities,
including St. Petersburg.
But the Sanevich family is help-
ing to spearhead the Jewish revival
in Tula, an industrial city that like
the rest of the country is reeling
from the economic crisis that
began last August.
The city of 600,000 has a 3,000-
strong Jewish community, most of
whom work as engineers, doctors
and teachers.
Each year about 100 to 120 Jews
emigrate to Israel and a few dozen
more leave for Germany and the
United States. But Jewish leaders
here say they do not feel the com-
munity is dwindling
This is probably the most strik
ing feature of Russia’s Jewish
revival: Despite continuing aliyah
and emigration, Jewish life touches
more people each year. There is a
widespread belief — which can’t
be measured statistically due to the
lack of reliable sources — that the
number of Jews in cities like Tula
remains the same, even though a
significant number of people leave
each year.
“Our Jewish population increas-
r
►
r
• 4
rr
Photos — Lev Knchevsky/JTA
Tula synagogue administrator Yevgeny Katz displays Torah scrolls
and 150-year-old congregation records preserved by community
members during the years of communism.
m
/
f
Members of a Tula klezmer band perform at the town's Jewish welfare center for
the elderly.
were no less affected by the
changes.
Thousands of Soviet Jews took a
keen interest in what only a few
underground activists, risking jail,
would have dared to explore under
Gorbachev's predecessors.
“All of a sudden, Jews stopped
being one of the best-kept state
secrets,” Anatoly Sanevich recalled.
“We just realized that we could
speak freely about what we had
been forced to be silent: our
Judaism.”
Cities across Russia have seen
Jewish cultural societies and orga-
nizations take the place of the small
circles of refuseniks and Zionist
activists that operatedduring Sovi-
et days.
Jewish institutional life in Russia
has mushroomed since 1989 —
and while there are fewer Jewish
organizations today than in the
early 1990s, those that operate now
are much more professional than
they used to be.
Most of Russia’s Jewish revival
es not through births, but through
new people who have not been pre-
viously known as Jews,” said Faina
Sanevich, the full-time director of
Hasdei Neshama, a welfare center
that serves Jewish elderly and poor.
Inna Bronshtein, for example,
discovered her Jewish identity 10
years ago.
“I saw a Jewish wedding when
my family was visiting our relatives
m Ukraine. Then someone gave
me a video of Israel,” said the 24-
year-old primary school teacher.
“There are few of us here, but we
want to create an environment in
which we and our kids will feel
comfortable,” said Bronshtein, who
* •
is also a leader of the local syna-
gogue’s youth group.
restricted to Jews drafted into the
military. In addition, a limited
number of skilled Jewish crafts-
men, workers, wealthy merchants
and doctors were allowed to settle.
During the first decades of Bol-
shevik rule after
the 1917 Russian
Revolution, the
city’s three syna-
gogues were
closed down.
Many members of
today’s Jewish
community
migrated here
from Ukraine and
Belarus after
World War 11.
Tula does not
boast any high-
profile Jewish
projects that
would make even
local headlines,
and no syna-
gogues have been
rebuilt.
The city’s leading Jewish orga-
nization is the Hcsed center led by
Faina Sanevich. Part of the Amer-
ican Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee-established network
of social and welfare organiza-
tions in the former Soviet Union,
it provides basic services, such as
food and health care, to dozens of
elderly impoverished by the chaos
of post-Communist Russia.
In addition to the welfare center,
Tula has another Jewish address a
home for Jewish culture, where
about 25 children were enrolled
this year at the Hebrew school.
A striking feature of the ongoing
Russian Jewish revival is that it is
increasingly dominated by Jews in
their 20s and early 30s.
Yevgeny Katz, a 37-year-old
Tula, a three-hour drive south of
Moscow, has been a center of Rus- engineer whose interest in Judaism
sia’s munitions industry for cen- has developed only during the past
turies.
Jewish life in this town, known as
the home of tea-boiling urns called
samovars, started 150 years ago,
when the right to settle was
few years, is one of the handful of
Tula Jews — and the only one
under 75 — who can read from the
Torah scroll.
Much of the Jewish activities in
Tula are based at Hasdei Neshama.
which rents a space from a public
kindergarten. The centers clients
take special pride in a local youth
klezmer band that plays every Fri
day night for the Jewish elderly.
At the welfare center club, unlike
most of their older listeners whose
eyes tear up as they hear the group’s
Yiddish repertoire, the young
members of the klezmer band had
no previous attachment to
Judaism. Like other young Russian
Jews, they are just beginning to
experience their heritage and feel
pride in their Jewish identity.
During Soviet days, when local
Jews could only pray in private
homes, the community preserved
three of its ancient Torah scrolls
and much of its synagogue
archives.
Tula’s rabbi, a young graduate of
Moscow’s yeshiva, comes to the
city every weekend and holds ser-
vices in various locations. What the
community calls its synagogue is a
tiny rented space in an old one-
story wooden house owned by the
city.
Faina Sanevich said her major
concern has been getting more
space from the municipality to
house the welfare center, the syna-
gogue and the old-age home.
Like other Russian Jewish com-
munities, Tula must rely on aid
from abroad to fund its basic needs.
In addition to the JDC, a few other
groups have funded some of the
community projects. For example,
the New York-based Jewish Com-
munity Development Fund in Rus-
sia and Ukraine supports several
groups in Tula, including the
klezmer band, which is known as
one of the best in Russia.
Occasional help comes from
Tula’s sister congregation, B’nai
Torah in Fiighland Park, III., with
which Tula is linked through a
Union of Councils for Soviet Jews
program connecting synagogues
in the United States with commu-
nities in the former Soviet Union.
But most of the Jewish programs
here would not be possible without
the help of local donors.
“When we opened up our wel-
fare center, we were looking for the
poor to help them,” Sanevich said.
“When we realized how much it
would cost, we began looking
around for the wealthy.”
Some of the Jewish business-
men take an active part in Jewish
communal life, but there are oth-
ers who do not want their names
to be publicly associated with the
Jewish community.
While the future of Jewish life in
mid-sized Russian cities such as
Tula is unclear, there are signs that
it will continue: Large numbers of
Tula Jews, including many of the 80
percent who are intermarried, are
still taking steps to reclaim their
Jewish identity.
“People need this. Otherwise
why would over 20 kids sign up for
the Jewish kindergarten?" Bron-
shtein asked.
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 53, No. 42, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 21, 1999, newspaper, October 21, 1999; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth754911/m1/3/: accessed August 15, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .