Save the Subbotniks

It is here, in the small snow-drenched town of Vysoki, that some of the last remaining members of a group known as the Subbotniks cling tenaciously, though somewhat tenuously, to the religion of Moses and Israel.

Though their origins are clouded in mystery, the Subbotniks, and all that they represent, demand our attention and our help.

Over two centuries ago, a large group of Russian peasants in the Voronezh region decided to convert to Judaism, part of what historians describe as an inexplicable wave of “Judaizing sects” that appeared on the country’s theological scene.

They came to be known as “Subbotniks,” thanks to their observance of the Subbot, or Sabbath, of the Jews. While it is unclear precisely why they chose to become Jews, one thing is certain: It took a whole lot of guts to defy the anti-Semitism and oppressive discrimination of Czarist Russia, which was hardly known as a bastion of philo-Semitism.

The Jerusalem Post

Indeed, from the very beginning, they suffered terribly for their choice to become Jews. Simon Dubnow, the great historian of Russian and Polish Jewry, notes that the Subbotniks first came to the attention of the czar in 1817, when they petitioned him to complain of “the oppressions which they had had to undergo at the hands of the local authorities, both ecclesiastic and civil, on account of their confessing the law of Moses.” Their appeal, however, backfired, arousing the fury of Czar Alexander I, who uprooted thousands of the Subbotniks and expelled them to the far reaches of the empire.

“The chiefs and teachers of the Judaizing sects are to be impressed into military service, and those unfit to serve deported to Siberia,” read a decree issued in 1823 by Russia’s Council of Ministers. “Every outward display of the sect, such as the holding of prayer-meetings and the observance of ceremonies which bear no resemblance to those of Christians, is to be forbidden,” it continued.

Nonetheless, despite two centuries of forced exile, persecution and neighborly contempt, the Subbotniks somehow managed to survive, hanging on to their Judaism under the most trying of circumstances. They observed Shabbat and kept kosher, prayed three times daily and donned tefillin (phylacteries). They celebrated all the Jewish holidays, from Yom Kippur to Lag Ba’omer, baked their own matza for Pessah, and even managed in some cases to send their children off to study at the great Lithuanian yeshivot in the 19th century.

BUT SEVEN decades of harsh Communist rule took its toll on the Subbotniks, as on the rest of Russian Jewry, presenting them with new challenges in their efforts to maintain their identity.

The Soviet regime sought to force them to assimilate by trying to compel them to work on Shabbat, an effort that proved largely unsuccessful. The authorities also intentionally settled non-Jewish Russians in their midst in the hopes of breaking up the traditional and close-knit structure of the Subbotniks’ communal existence
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This Soviet policy led to a growing number of intermarriages among the community’s younger generation beginning in the 1960s, and a decline in the level of their religious observance and knowledge.

On a visit to Vysoki earlier this week, I attended the Monday morning prayer service, which, though following precisely the Ashkenazi rite, was recited entirely in Russian. The last member of the community who knew how to read the prayers in Hebrew was a 93-year-old man who made aliya two months ago.

Indeed, in recent years, some 500 Subbotniks from Vysoki alone have moved to Israel, where they all send their children to religious schools and live observant Jewish lifestyles. Nevertheless, although there are still another 800 Subbotniks in Vysoki who would like to make aliya, Israel’s Interior Ministry has suddenly begun placing obstacles in their path.

Applicants from Vysoki often have to wait as long as three years before receiving an answer to their requests to move, as the Interior Ministry treats them with suspicion even though nearly all of them have relatives already living in Israel.

In mid-2003, under then-interior minister Avraham Poraz, a decision was made to bar Subbotniks married to non-Jews from making aliya, with the result being that many families, unwilling to leave a sibling or a child behind in Russia, choose instead not to come.

And yet, this policy is precisely the opposite of that being applied in the rest of the former Soviet Union, where the question of who one’s spouse is has no bearing whatsoever on the right to come to Israel.

“It’s not fair,” Lubov Goncharev told me at a meeting in Vysoki. Goncharev’s elderly parents, both of whom are in their 70s, are planning to make aliya at the end of the month, but her request to join them was denied because her husband isn’t Jewish. “I, too, want to make aliya and raise my children to be Jews in Israel, so why won’t the government let me come?”

Indeed, the Subbotniks themselves said they would agree to undergo conversion if it would remove any doubts regarding their status or that of their spouses and children.

But that doesn’t seem to interest the Interior Ministry very much, with the result being that countless numbers of Subbotnik Jewish children are being lost to the Jewish people, possibly forever.

According to research carried out by Dr. Velvl Chernin, an ethnographer who works as a Jewish Agency emissary in Moscow, there are an estimated 10,000 Subbotniks spread throughout several dozen communities in places such as Russia, Ukraine and Siberia. Chernin says that the Soviet-imposed assimilation on the Subbotniks so weakened the younger generation’s ties to Judaism that unless they are allowed to come to Israel, they will largely disappear within a generation or two.

It is simply unthinkable that the Israeli government would allow such an injustice to occur. The Subbotniks braved czarist cruelty and Soviet repression to be Jews, at great risk to their lives and well-being. How can the Interior Ministry now slam the door on them in such a callous and short-sighted manner?

It is incumbent upon the government to reverse the Interior Ministry’s policy and to enable all the remaining Subbotniks to come to Israel. They are ready and willing to do whatever it takes to be accepted back into the fold of the Jewish people and Israeli society, so there is just no good reason not to bring them here.

Though they may look and sound like typical Russian peasants, with the facial features and mannerisms familiar to anyone who has seen Fiddler on the Roof, we shouldn’t allow appearances to fool us.

The Subbotniks are Jews in every respect, and it is time for Israel to bring them home.