The Forsaken Converts of Russia
They observe the Sabbath, practice ritual circumcision, and refrain from eating pork. They survived the oppression of the czars, suffered persecution by the communists and were murdered by the Nazis. Alexander Zaid and Rafael Eitan were two of them. But none of this is enough for the State of Israel, which decided to prevent the descendants of Subbotniks – Russians who converted to Judaism hundreds of years ago – from making aliya to Israel. According to the Ministry of the Interior: They are not Jews..
The villages in this part of the world are similar to one another, containing small stone houses with an aluminum roof and a small entrance way. They all have a brown wooden beamed floor, a freezing outhouse in the courtyard, and a shed nicknamed “The Kitzi Kitchen” that was used for storing food during the winter. The fronts of the houses are lined with green cherry trees. In the spacious courtyards, meticulously cared for grapevines carry clusters of small red grapes which produce sweet grape juice. The leaves falling from the white birch and poplar trees paint the muddy dirt paths with an intense orange color, providing vitality to the otherwise colorlessness of the village.
The people also resemble each other. Many of them are unemployed or earn less than is necessary to support a family. After their workday they set out to their small plots of land behind their homes, in order to work the fields, hoping to earn a few thousand rubles from selling potatoes, onions and cabbage in the local market at the end of the season. In the evening, the Muzhiks (Russian peasants) will finish off vats of Samogan – homemade vodka. Many of them look much older than their actual age and most of them are religious. Their faith in Jesus lies deep in their hearts, despite the fact that Stalin tried to destroy it. And many of them share a hatred of Jews.
In the heart of the ignorance and desperation of this rural area, 700 kilometers south of Moscow, stands a village with the name Vysoki. In order to reach it, one must travel 12 hours by train, and then spend three and a half hours on a fidgety bus, until reaching the small town of Talobia, where Lenin’s large head continues to decorate its main plaza. A small minibus that costs 10 rubles (about one-and-half shekels) will bring you to the only bus stop in Vysoki. This is the Russian version of “When you reach the end of the world, turn left”.
Lubov Yakovlevna (the daughter of Yaakov) Grindeeva was born in Vysoki in 1943. “It was winter at the time and my mother stepped onto the board that was on top of the oven in order to warm herself up when she started having strong contractions”, reminisces Grindeeva. “She started screaming in pain and asked to be brought down to her bed, but the men in the other room asked her to wait ‘until we finish praying the afternoon Mincha prayers’”. Lubov’s mother did not wait and gave birth on top of the oven to a baby girl, the last of 12 brothers and sisters.
“My mother told me that she kissed me, bundled me up, climbed down from the oven and immediately began to wash the floor. That is how it was then. There was no time to be pampered”, Grindeeva says. The Germans had already arrived at the nearby city of Voronezh, less than 200 kilometers away from Vysoki. They knew the Jews lived there, or in the language of the historians: the Subbotniks, those who belonged to the Judaizing sect. This nickname was given to those Christian Russians who, centuries ago – the circumstances and the exact point in time are still a mystery – took upon themselves the Sabbath as a day of rest and lived a Jewish lifestyle.
Despite the fact that in later years a minority of non-Jewish Russians also came to live there, Vysoki was not like other villages. On a wooden gate at the end of the village, a light blue Star of David was emblazoned. Behind it were buried Jewish villagers. On a portion of the gravestones, some of them very old, a Star of David was engraved, and in some cases there were even Hebrew letters. On every Sabbath and Jewish holiday and sometimes on Mondays and Thursdays as well – the days on which the Torah is read – small minyans (quorums of ten required for group prayer) still take place with old people wrapped in prayer shawls. The only Sefer Torah (Torah scroll) that remains in the village was at the center of the last Simchat Torah holiday celebration. On the doorposts of some of the homes Mezuzahs are affixed, containing ancient pieces of parchment. On the “Tenth Day”, as Yom Kippur is known in the village, most of the older residents still fast. Several years ago, they would bake matzah for Passover and no bread would come into the village during the holiday. Pigs did not run around in the courtyards. Today, there are already pigs in the village, but most of the men, even the young ones, are ritually circumcised. When a bus stops at the Vysoky station, everyone knows that whoever gets off there is not a “real Russian”, and many insist on reminding them of that fact.
Israel recognized the Jewishness of Vysoki’s residents many years ago, even if various bureaucrats now refuse to admit it. Over the years, hundreds of them made aliya, with many of them settling outside Jerusalem in the city of Bet Shemesh, which became known as “Little Vysoki”. A few hundred Jews remained in Vysoki; many of whom assimilated and married non-Jewish Russians from the adjacent towns and villages, but there were also many adults that insisted on marrying Jews. Israel now refuses to allow those that intermarried to make aliya. This decision tore apart dozens of families, because in many cases the state allowed the parents to make aliya, but rejected the request of the children who had married non-Jews.
This Thursday, Israel’s Supreme Court will be asked to address this issue and determine if the state has acted lawfully. Among the cases which were brought before the Supreme Court, that of Lubov Gonchareva and her husband Valentine figures prominently. Lubov’s grandfather, Moisei (Moshe), was the last Mohel (ritual circumciser) in Vysoky. In 2005, Lubov’s parents, Rosa and Vasili Shishilianikov, made aliya under Israel’s Law of Return. They were recognized as Jews by the Rabbinate and registered as Jews in the state’s Population Registry. However, the Israeli consulate in Moscow refused to allow Lubov and her husband to make aliya. Lubov came to Israel as a tourist and tried to receive the standing of a new immigrant, but she was refused. The explanation that she received was that by marrying a non-Jew she had lost the right to make aliya.
From the State’s response to the Supreme Court it is apparent that they were talking about a comprehensive decision that applies to all Subbotnik Jews. In February 2008, Interior Minister Meir Shitreet decided that the Subbotniks are not Jews and therefore their aliya will not be permitted, except in cases that are considered to be of a humanitarian nature. Shitreet based his decision on the opinion that was presented to Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar by a delegation of rabbis that visited Vysoki and determined that the residents of the village were not Jews. In addition, Shitreet based his opinion on a decision made by “Nativ”, an arm of the Prime Minister’s Office that is responsible for determining the eligibility for aliya of Jews in the former Soviet Union. In an affidavit submitted by “Nativ’ it was explained that over the course of several years, the practice came into being that Subbotniks who preserved the communal framework (i.e. they had married other Subbotniks) received permission to make aliya under the Law of Return, even though their Jewishness had never been definitively established.
Until the Supreme Court rules otherwise, Lubov and her husband live in Israel with no legal status, no social benefits, nor a work permit. “Over the course of the years, we preserved our Jewishness despite extreme difficulties, and we thought we were Jewish. Now they are calling us Subbotniks and the State of Israel does not recognize our Judaism,” laments Lubov, who is represented by her attorney, Prof. Michael Corinaldi. “How is it possible that my late mother and father are registered in the official documents of the State of Israel as Jews, and I am not recognized as a Jew? I see myself as much more of a Jew than many of those “supposed” Jews that the state is bringing over from Russia. Who has the right to cast doubt on my Jewishness?”
Lubov Yakovlevna Grindeeva, whose children and grandchildren reside in Israel, has difficulty understanding why the state does not recognize the Jewishness of Vysoky’s inhabitants. “Our problem is that Israel sees us a sect; they call us Subbotniks instead of seeing us as Jews and do not allow us to make aliya”, she says, insulted by the very fact that she is being referred to as a Subbotnik.
“Israel brings thousands of new immigrants to Israel from Russia, who just happen to have a Jewish grandfather, and they have absolutely no connection to Judaism at all. But we, who for years have lived here as a closed community and have sacrificed so much in order to preserve our Jewishness, are being rejected,” she says.
“While it is true that some of our grandchildren have assimilated, in their hearts they still have a deep connection to Judaism. If the state will not allow our grandchildren to make aliya, and will not allow them to return to their historical homeland and to live as Jews, they will simply disappear and become completely assimilated,” Lubov says.
Pioneers and Fighters
“The Subbotniks” is a general term for a number of groups of Russian Christians that embraced Judaism, some of whom then underwent formal conversion. All of the researchers agree that the Vysoki descendents belong to one of these groups. Documents from the Russian archives clearly testify to the fact that the forefathers of those that are known as Subbotniks (from the term, Subbot, or Sabbath, in Russian), observed at least some of the Jewish commandments in the first half of the 18th century. The church described the members of the Judaizing sect as follows: They observe the Sabbath as is the Jewish custom, they do not eat pork, they deny belief in Jesus, and they perform ritual circumcision.
In the 1820’s, the persecution of the Subbotniks by the Russian church and state increased, until the majority of them were exiled from the European part of Russia to Siberia, the Caucasus and the southern Volga region. Most of their children were turned over to Christian families and were baptized against their will. The men were drafted by force into the Czar’s army. The exiled Subbotniks established new communities in the regions of their exile.
Since the middle of the 19th century, a portion of them returned to Judaism. Since then these have been divided into two main groups: the Subbotnik Gerim (Hebrew for converts) and Subbotnik Karaites. A significant number of Subbotnik Jews even took an active part in the Zionist movement. The Subbotniks moved to Israel during both the First and Second Aliyah and settled in the pioneering settlements in the Galilee. Amongst these, the most famous are the Dubrovin and Korkin families.
Lieutenant Colonel Yossi Korkin, a descendant of the famous Korkin family, was killed in Lebanon in a tragic accident involving an elite IDF naval unit. Even the legendary guard, Alexander Zaid, is a descendant of a Subbotnik Jewish family on his mother’s side. He was born in the village of Zima in eastern Siberia, where until today there are descendants of Subbotnik Jews who are not being allowed to make aliya to Israel. Stubborn rumors also suggest that former IDF Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan is a descendant of a Subbotnik Jewish family.
Alek Ron, a senior police officer who previously served as Commander of the Northern District, also comes from a Subbotnik family. His maternal grandmother converted at the beginning of the 20th century in Russia and made aliya to Israel with her family. According to him, his grandmother never spoke of her origins. Over the years, his family encountered many people who claimed they were not Jewish.
“When my mother was in school, one of the students insulted her by saying ‘you are gentiles’ ”, he recounts. “When my parents wanted to get married, some people approached my paternal grandmother and said, ‘How can your son marry the daughter of a gentile?’ My grandmother spoke up and did not allow them to denigrate my mother and her family.”
In the 20s and 30s a number of Subbotnik families succeeded in making aliya. During the Second World War, many were exterminated by the Germans, who viewed them as Jews in every sense of the word.
When the Soviet regime was repressing religion and forbade any type of religious rituals, most of the Subbotnik villages, which were quite isolated, succeeded in observing the Jewish commandments discretely, much more so than in the other Jewish population centers in the Soviet Union. However, at the beginning of the sixties, the regime succeeded in suppressing Subbotnik Jewish life in various ways.
In the seventies, the inhabitants of the village Ilyinka, which is not far from Vysoki, launched an effort to make aliya, and even merited a visit from Natan Sharansky and his patron, the scientist and famous dissident Andrei Sakharov. By the middle of the 1990s, most of the residents of Ilyinka had succeeded in making aliya to Israel. Today, just five Jews remain in the village.
Dr. Velvel Chernin, a former Jewish Agency emissary who researched the Subbotniks and now works with the Shavei Israel organization, estimates that some 20,000 Subbotnik Jews and their descendants reside today in various villages throughout the Caucasus, Siberia and southern Russia, with Vysoki being one of the larger ones.
The village was established in 1921 by Subbotnik Jews who hailed from three other villages in the Voronezh district. They had been persecuted by the local Christian population and at a certain stage decided that they would be better off living on their own.
“Our parents lived at the time in villages that were divided into two. One street was for Jews and the other was for Christians”, recounts Eliezer Yakovlevich (68), the cantor of the village. Lubov Yakovlevna adds that “the gentiles harassed them incessantly, and made it difficult for them to support themselves. They did not understand how in the middle of Russia, there were people who could live as Jews”. In response to the persecution, the Subbotnik Jews decided to leave the mixed villages and establish their own towns which would be separate. “Our parents realized that in order to preserve our faith and remain Jewish, they would have to leave”, she says.
Those days were at the beginning of the communist regime. Four extended families – Chernich, Voronin, Grindeev, and Bocharnikov – moved to a more rural area and stopped at the site which became Vysoki. “Our parents gathered together sacks of wheat which they used to pay bribes, and that is how they acquired the plot of land of Vysoki”, relate the elders of the village.
Tefillin, Matzah and Ritual Circumcision
Since the majority of Vysoki’s residents were farmers who went out in the morning to work in the field or on the cooperative farm (Kolkhoz), they were forced to pray very early. “My father would get up at four in the morning to pray and then return home quietly in order not to be discovered by the police. He would eat something and then go to work”, says Lubov Yakovlevna.
A synagogue was never established in the village, and all of the prayers took place in homes that were rented specifically for that purpose, or in the homes of mourners. “We would pray there until someone else passed away, at which time we would attend the Shiva house, and continue praying there until the next one died”, recounts Yosef Yakobovich Bocharnikov (63), who made aliya 9 years ago.
Despite Vysoky’s distance from Jewish cultural centers, and the difficulty in observing the religious commandments under the Communist regime, all of the village youth received tefillin (phylacteries) when they reached the age of 13. In the years prior to the war, a number of youths from the village were sent to the Ukraine to study Hebrew and Halacha (Jewish law) in Jewish schools. When they returned, they established the infrastructure for the spiritual life of the village. “I was the fourth son and my father always made sure to get tefillin for everyone”, relates Mikhail Voronin. “But my brother that was born during the war did not have tefillin. Why? Because my father did not return from the war and then everything began to fall apart”.
Yosef Yakobovich recalls how his father was meticulous about reciting a blessing before he ate, how he would ritually wash his hands (“after all we did not have running water, so my father would take a Krushka, a cup, dip it into a pail and pour it over his hands”), and how his mother would not be lenient with her children regarding religious observance. “My mother would slap me in the neck if I would not ritually wash my hands”.
Eliezer Yakovlevich recalls how, as a child, he watched his parents bake matzah for Passover. “Today, they import it from elsewhere but back then we would take a special pail for Passover and in the evening we would place water in it from a well. In the morning, after the water had sat all night in the pails, my uncle would take flour and place it on special Passover plates, and with the water we would make dough, without ever adding salt. Two men kneaded a large amount of dough and then the women would take a rolling pin and flatten it. And I, who was 12 or 13 at the time, would poke holes in the dough with a fork.”
“In the meantime,” he continued, “we cleaned the large oven from the leftover morsels of bread and placed twigs inside and when they finished burning, we removed the wood. Then, using a wide wooden spoon that we kept specifically for Passover, we would place the dough inside the oven and lay it on the bricks. Everything had to be completed within 18 minutes. Once the matzahs were baked, we would save them in closed bags in a special place and we would not eat them until Passover. The house was full of matzah”.
Zoya Zaitzva remembers the special food they had on Passover. “My mother would make food that we didn’t have everyday. We had horseradish and eggs and potatoes, we would dip matzah in chicken soup and grandmother would mumble something. I remember how my father would get the chicken thighs. But I don’t remember the four cups or reciting the Passover Hagaddah.”
Although there was no synagogue, a shochet (ritual slaughterer of meat) and a mohel (ritual circumciser) lived in Vysoki for many years. “I remember how they would place the baby on the pillow and the mohel would come and cut him”, recalls one of the elderly men. The first mohel was Anani Yefimovich Grindeev and after him was it Moisei (Moshe) Mikhailovich Bocharnikov, the grandfather of Lubov Gonchareva, the woman who recently filed the petition with Israel’s Supreme Court. In the mid-1970s, Bocharnikov announced that his “hands are trembling and he is no longer willing to circumcise the males”, so Vysoki residents would travel to the nearby Jewish village of Ilyinka to perform the brit mila (ritual circumcision). After several years, they then began to circumcise their children at the hospital in an adjacent city.
When the shochect passed away, the residents of Vysoki continued to be as careful as possible to eat only the permissible parts of the sheep and cattle. “I knew it was forbidden to eat the back part of the cow and so we would sell it in the marketplace”, relates Michael Bocharnikov, the editor of the local newspaper. “When the shochet died, we were no longer able to eat kosher meat, so everyone tried as best as he could to be scrupulous in following the kosher laws. But certainly everyone was careful not to eat pork. “
Many of the boys had Bar Mitzvahs. “In the weeks before my Bar Mitzvah, I learned the blessings in Russian for when one is called up to the Torah. On the Sabbath I was called up to the Torah and one of the adults that knew Hebrew then read from the Torah”, says Bocharnikov.
The Sabbath was a special day in Vysoki. Over the course of many years, until non-Jews moved into the village, the residents of Vysoki had a special arrangement with the management of the Kolkhoz. On Fridays, they would finish work early and the Sabbath day would be dedicated to rest. The missing work day would then be made up on Sundays. The children would also not go to school on the Sabbath. “For many years there were only Jews in the village and the management of the Kolkhoz took this into account and allowed us not to work on the Sabbath. The Sabbath day was more important to us than all the festivals”, recalls Eliezer Yakovlevich.
Zoya Zaitzva remembers how her grandmother lit candles every week for the Sabbath. “At first there were no candles and she would prepare wicks from cotton and dip them in oil. They wouldn’t cook anything on the Sabbath. We would heat up the oven very well before the Sabbath and place the food inside before the Sabbath began”.
Yosef Yakovlevich recounts how his mother would return from work early on Fridays, clean the house, bathe the children and dress them in clean clothes. “Father would go to pray and when he would return we would sit down for a Sabbath meal around the table. Father would recite the Kiddush (the blessing recited on Sabbath eve) using Samogan (homemade vodka) that was made from beet sugar because there was no wine. My mother would serve borsht (beet soup) with a piece of meat. It was much more than we had on a regular day because we hardly ever ate meat during the week. And there were always rolls for the Sabbath made from sweet white flour which my mother had baked”.
In Zoya’s Kitchen
Zoya Zaitzva, in whose home I was a guest, did not have any Samogan. “My mother did not teach me how to prepare it”, she apologized. Zoya refuses to disclose her age. She looks young but she is already a grandmother. So it is in the village, she explains. The ideal age for marriage was 19. Zoya has three grown children, one of whom lives in Israel. Her mother also lives in Israel, but Zoya and her other two children are not allowed to make aliya because of her second marriage to a non-Jew. “My mother always told me to marry ‘someone from amongst your own’, so I returned from my studies in the big city and married someone from the village, but after a year and a half I got divorced because he was an idiot”, Zoya says with a smile. Even her second marriage, this time to a Russian, did not last. “It turned out that he too was an idiot,” she says.
Evening is approaching and Zoya closes the curtains. The heating system does a good job of warming up her small yet meticulously cared for home. Zoya and her mother, who has come for a visit, completed the renovation of the house last summer. Zoya parted with the old oven, tore down some walls and put up light-colored wallpaper. In the bathroom she finally installed a toilet, but she seldom uses it in order not to fill up the cesspit too quickly. She did not give up on the little basement that is hidden under wooden beams at the entrance of her living room, where she stores jars of jam and pickles.
The television is on nonstop. The news continuously praises Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, but there is not a word about how the residents of the rural areas cannot make ends meet.
“It is a hole”, insists one of the neighbors, adding that, “The villages are not considered important at all in Russia. We are like flies in the eyes of the regime, far from the eyes and far from the heart.”
We are sitting in the kitchen. Instead of samogan, Zoya offers me a cup of excellent cherry wine that she prepared by herself. Zoya is unemployed for a few months already, and barely subsists on her mother’s pension of 3000 rubles a month, which is the equivalent of 111 dollars. In order to register her son for studies in a military academy, she had to use some connections via her brother, who is a senior military intelligence officer who lives in Moscow, and pay under the table. She didn’t have the necessary funds, so she traveled to Moscow to earn some money by cleaning streets. Now she hopes that her brother the officer will be able to pull some strings and get her a job at the local train station. Zoya dreams about the first paycheck that she will get, how she will buy presents for everyone, and maybe even a small car for herself. “This is how it is in Russia. Everything is based on who you can bribe. Nothing has changed,” she says.
In the morning I tasted the small potatoes that Zoya fried along with a small piece of carp that she cured on her own, and then I went to pray. When I left the house I noticed two small holes on the inner doorpost of the living room. “There was once a Mezuzah here,” Zoya said as she pointed with her finger to the niche that was left in the wood.
Exactly ten men were gathered in the small stone house which was heated beforehand. The prayers had already begun. Eliezer Yakovlevich, the cantor, quickly recited the morning blessings, followed by “Shirat Hayam” (“the song at the sea”, which was recited by Moses and the Israelites after crossing the Red Sea) and the “Shma Yisrael” prayer. The prayers were said in Russian, as the last of the villagers who knew Hebrew had already made aliya to Israel.
The flow of Cantor Yakovlevich’s reading of the prayers was truly amazing. The worshippers, some of them wrapped in prayer shawls, with caps or fur hats on their heads, knew exactly when to stand, when to sit and when to respond ‘Amen’. They no longer use the old tefillin (phylacteries) that they received for their Bar Mitzvahs. Each uses a prayerbook whose pages are divided into two – one part for the Hebrew prayer and the other for the Russian translation. When it comes time for the Torah reading, Eliezer passes by everyone as he holds the Torah scroll, in order to give each of them a chance to kiss it.
Lately, the holding of the morning prayers cannot be taken for granted, except for the Sabbath and holidays. When Eliezer heard that I wanted to come for prayers, he had to organize a minyan (prayer quorum) and call his friends. The village has hundreds of Jews, but only ten arrived for the prayers and they are all retirees.
After the morning prayers I pop over to the local school to see what level of Judaism remains among Vysoki’s youth. Lubov Yakovlevna has run the school for 46 years and has no intention of leaving. Jews, Christians and even a few Muslims study in her school. “We do not teach Jewish identity here. This is a Russian school”, she says, “but my presence here does influence the children even though it is absolutely forbidden for me to openly introduce Jewish elements”.
Sixteen year old Alina Chernich finishes high school this year. She spent a year in Israel with her parents and brother until they decided to return to Russia. Chernich has decided to return to Israel after she finishes her university studies. She is careful to observe the Sabbath but admits that Jewish matters remain with her grandparents and parents and that she, so to speak, has distanced herself from it to some extent. “I will marry whomever I like”, she says, “whether or not he is Jewish”.
Lubov Yakovlevna forgets her official role for a moment and becomes an impassioned and patriotic Jew. “If the children stay here, they will become Russian because they have no other choice. If the State of Israel will not save the Jewish youth of Vysoki, their assimilation will be complete.”
They thought we were rich
The fear that the Communist regime would discover that Vysoki’s residents were observing a Jewish lifestyle was great. “It is not only that we prayed quietly, in order that no one should discover it, but we even performed Jewish wedding ceremonies at midnight. I remember that even in the hospital they tried to dissuade us from circumcising our children. And in fact there were some that stopped doing so. However, I and many others continued. Why? If I am circumcised, I want my children to be. I always remember the words of my late mother who told us that we were different from the Christians and that we have a covenant with G-d”, says Yosef Yakovlevich.
Yakovlevich adds that all the villagers were poor. “All the parents went out to work at first light and returned after sunset, but we were happy. Our parents earned very little, all they had to eat was black bread, but that was enough. Everyone was very friendly and helped each other out.”
The strong work ethic of Vysoki’s residents and the great emphasis they placed on the education of their children only served to strengthen the loathing and anti-Semitism around them. “All of the neighboring villages were jealous of us. They thought that we were rich. They wanted us to live exactly like them, and not develop ourselves. But we worked hard in order to give our children a brighter future and that apparently bothered them very much”, recalls Yakovlevich.
Mikhail Voronin relates that the high school students with whom he studied in the neighboring village “would smear pig fat on my lips and shout ‘Jew, Jew, eat pork’. They hated us and told us on more than one occasion that if the Germans would come to the region they would kill us and that they, the local villagers, would assist them in finishing us off. So what could we do? We prayed and worked harder- that’s all”.
Gradually, the special social fabric which Vysoki’s residents had worked hard to create for themselves began to fall apart, and along with it went the strict Jewish lifestyle they had maintained as well. It wasn’t just the Communist ideology which denied the existence of G-d that led to the assimilation of many of Vysoki’s residents. In the beginning of the 1960’s, the authorities ordered the Kolkhoz to unite with a local agricultural institute. As a result, Vysoki’s residents were forced to work and send their children to school on the Sabbath. “They told us that whoever does not come to work on the Sabbath will be punished. And do you think we had a choice?” said Eliezer Yakovlevich. Later, a number of homes were built in the village and non-Jews were settled in them. Some are of the opinion that this was an intentional policy aimed at eradicating the Jewish presence in Vysoki.
And then came intermarriage. For decades it was clear to the young people of Vysoki that they must marry only among themselves. “The belief was that Vysoki was a separate breed from the non-Jewish Russians in the area. Our parents instilled within us the importance of maintaining our Jewish identity and that this could only be done by marrying other people from Vysoki”, says Mikhail Voronin. But Vysoki was after all just a small village with a few hundred inhabitants that was largely cut off from other Jewish communities. After the frequency of marriages with second- and third-degree relatives had peaked, there was no choice but to marry non-Jewish outsiders. The process of assimilation intensified further with the departure of the young people to institutes of higher learning outside of the village.
A deep sadness was apparent in the eyes of the newspaper editor Bocharnikov when he considered the changes that had taken place in the village of his birth. Of the 1200 residents today, 400 are not Jewish. Many of those that did not relinquish their Jewishness nevertheless now have family ties to non-Jewish Russians. Bocharnikov says that even though as a member of the Communist party he was an atheist, his Jewish identity is deep and firmly rooted. He too was called up to the Torah and received a pair of tefillin, and he also remembers his father participating in prayers and his parents commemorating the Jewish holidays. And he also heard the promise from his grandfather that the day would come and they would all return to the Land of Israel.
“When I was a boy, the village was united by shared interests, an identity and a common heritage. And we all had a similar lifestyle. Almost all of us were related and the village was virtually a closed entity. As we grew up, many of us became atheists in line with the communist ideology, but our environment did not allow us to forget that we were Jewish. This no longer exists today in Vysoki. The communalism for which Vysoki was so famous is no more, and the young people have strayed far from their heritage. I know less and less people in the village, and assimilation is rampant. If they don’t allow us to make aliya to Israel, there will be no remnant left of the village’s magnificent past,” Bocharnikov says.
On the way back to Voronezh, I stop at the central bus station in the small town of Talubia and buy coffee and a slice of bread with cheese. The saleswoman at the hat stand notices my foreign accent and asks me where I come from. I tell her that I am from Israel and I just got back from a visit to Vysoki. “I hate them, the christo prodavtsi (those who sold Jesus), those Jewboys that live there. They just work all the time, trying to make more money. They are rich, as if they are better than us,” she says.
“It isn’t good to work?” I ask her.
“Let them just get drunk like us,” she laughs.
Ma’ariv (Sof-shavua Weekend Supplement)
November 28, 2008
Accompanying article:
“We can not turn our backs on them”
The Subbotniks’ legal battle is being financed by the Shavei Israel organization, headed by Michael Freund. Freund is convinced that the State is mistaken in its approach and declares that he will use all available means to bring about a change in the government’s position.
“The Subbotnik Jews survived Czarist oppression followed by Communist persecution, and many were even murdered by the Nazis. Yet they continued to cling to their heritage. We can not turn our backs on them. Our goal is to convince the State to allow anyone among them who wishes to make aliyah to do so. And as for those who wish to remain there in Russia, we want to help them to continue to live a Jewish life.”
Freund learned of the Subbotniks’ plight several years ago. After visiting the community, he sent educational emissaries to Vysoki to help the youth learn Hebrew and Jewish history. His organization will soon be sending emissaries to a village of the Subbotnik Jews in Siberia as well.
At the same time, Shavei Israel is also financing the legal struggle of Vysoki’s residents to make aliya to Israel. “We now have a small window of opportunity. If we do not act now, they might disappear due to assimilation. It is a terrible tragedy that no one else seems to care about what might happen to them,” he says.