Abbe and Derek led our Friday evening services at Hillel. We were joined by a handful of Russian peers and Joanne translated for them. Services were easygoing, with mixed melodies and David telling the story of his personal connection to the Shalom Alecheim song. We shared our own Shabbat traditions and sang Od Yavo Shalom on our way downstairs to dinner.

Our group had two options for Shabbat morning – a traditional service or a spending time with our local peers.

Temperatures in the shul were uncomfortable to say the least, but a handful of us sweated it out and enjoyed the chance to daven with our people. The service was traditionally led by a local chazzan. Group members communicated with him in Hebrew. One of our men was honored with an aliyah and another lifted the Torah for hagbah.

For those who stayed with the peers, we chatted about our hobbies and passed the time with board games and Jenga.

Maria is a widow and lives alone. One of her sons visits often and she occasionally attends synagogue.  She receives JDC home care twice each week, which she sees as a connection to both the outside world and the Jewish community.  In a room surounded by her late husband’s artwork and furnished with 30 year-old Soviet furniture, she told us her story.

Maria was born in Belarus in 1925. Her city was attacked during World War 2 and she evacuated with her family at age 16. She remembers this date, July 5 1941, as “the day her journey started.”

The family began moving to different villages to avoid bombings. Maria’s father died during this time and she remembers the ground being so frozen that they had trouble burying his body. However, she cannot remember where his body his buried and feels very guilty over this.

Maria and her remaining fanily eventually moved to Birobidjan. She studied Russian Literature at the pedagogical university and graduated with honors. She was invited to continue her education in Leningrad. She submitted her documentation but never heard back, later learning she would not able to attend because she was a Jew. 

Maria became a teacher and married an artist. She moved with her husband and sister to Khabarovsk in 1959 and has lived there ever since. Her sons have become an art professor and a cardiac surgeon.

While telling the story of her journey, Maria was emotional. The pain of her experiences seemed has not softened with the years but she wanted us to hear her story.

Although Maria recalls her Jewish childhood and synagogue fondly, she was not very involved as an adult. She feels that Jews did not become a part of the Soviet State after Stalin’s death and assimilated only as a Russian.

Three of Maria’s granddaughters have gone on Birthright Israel and are connecting with their Jewish ancestry.

We learned more about the three operating areas of the Khabarovsk Hesed:

1. Welfare: The Hesed provides supplementary food cards and medical cost reimbursements to 750 local residents. Unlike earlier years or other countries, they do not provide food packages. The Hesed moved to the card system to give recipients choice in what they eat (though they can’t buy tobacco, pork, or alcohol).  Given a doctor’s note, Hesed will also provide money for medications.

Hesed does not take a recipient’s other family into account as there is no way to ensure what support they provide. The government itself provides mainly pensions and there is no other national organization which provides aid to the community. The Hesed bases its assistance off of the value of existing pension and need, thus ensuring fair distribution of funds.

2. Jewish renewal

3. Children’s initiatives

The Khabarovsk Hesed is independent of the JDC and operates on contract.

In our next post, we’ll talk about some of the aid recipients we visited.

On Friday morning,we visited the Jewish kindergarten to clean up. We started by spending some time playing with the children. Mixed in with the Russians was a Japanese girl who arrived with her family soon.after the Fukushima disaster to escape radiation exposure. There are other Japanese children in Moscow.

The Jewish kindergarten is not wholly private. Instead, there are two groups of the municipal kindergarten who are part of the Jewish kindergarten.  These groups are children are 3-7 and 7-10 years old. Both levels learn Jewish tradition and culture, holidays, and Hebrew.

Our service work took three forms: sweep and scrub the hallways and staircases, move sand for the playground, and clean the play area.

On Thursday morning, we visited the Hesed to learn about the organization and meet some of the aid recipients.

The Hesed is an offshoot of the JDC which distributes funds to the impoverished and elderly. In Khabarovsk, many of these recipients are survivors of World War 2.

With Marina and Joanne translating, we learned the stories of five or six local seniors. Most of them came to the Far East from Ukraine to escape persecution.

Hannah was 11 when she and her parents were brought to a ghetto. Her parents perished there and she escaped with a friend from her hometown. They walked in the forest for two weeks, cold and hungry. They were back in their hometown by 1947 and lived there for two years. At sixteen, she and her friend moved to Birobidjan and ultimately married (they celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on July 21).

Hannah travels to schools to combat Holocaust denial. She tells her story and is thankful that her children and grandchildren have not had to live through a war as she did.

Our first service project was painting the outside of the building that is serving as our home for the week. It is shared by the Hillel, Synagogue, Chesed and serves as the Jewish community center.

A Chesed is a social service provided by the JDC for needy elderly Jews. We had the opportunity to see the Chesed in action – the line wrapped around us as we heard stories from Holocaust survivors.

Painting the facility was noteworthy as a symbolic gesture from our group to the Jewish community of Khabarovsk. We were reminding them that we view ourselves as a global Jewish family – it is important for us to support our comrades.

Seattle is a very diverse community that is home to a population of forty thousand Jews.  JConnect targets young Jewish adults 21 to 32 within the community.  Our programs range from holidays to classes, group yoga, parties, and outreach to local employers.  Most of our participants are not locals, but are transplants to the region for work and school.

Seattle is home of the Space Needle and is known for its coffee (Starbucks is headquartered here), Jimmy Hendrix and Nirvana, and major companies like Microsoft, Costco, Amazon, and Boeing.

2000 young Jews participate in JConnect events each year. This trip represents young adults from all over the country however: seven from Seattle and more from the east coast who couldn’t resist joining us.As we prepared for this trip, we encountered a variety of reactions: concern for our safety, surprise that there are still Jews in the region. We hope to correct misconceptions on this trip and show our friends and families what Jewish life is like in the former Jewish Autonomous Region.

As we embark upon our journey, some of us are excited or nervous… but we are thrilled to meet our sister city and fellow Hillel peers. We are eager to learn about the lives of our counterparts in Khabarovsk and Jewish life in the former Soviet Union.

Khabarovsk airport

Vala waiting for us at the airport

Jconnect group with the jdc bus

View of the amur river

A building in khabarovsk

Night view of the amur

View of Kamchatka from the plane.

Midnight layover in Beijing

Departing for Khabarovsk

My name is Alice Gray. I was born and raised in Seattle. My Grandmother was born in Poland then married an American and moved to Boston, where my mother’s family still lives. I spend my free time reading, cooking, drawing and taking care of my four cats and strange old Subaru sports car. I am an artist: I’m currently studying oil painting and work as a scientific and medical illustrator and photographer. I used to work on an ambulance and enjoy volunteering as an EMT (emergency medical technician) and teaching first-aid.  I think Russian is a beautiful language; I studied it when I was in junior high school, but I’m afraid I have forgotten a lot since that was over ten years ago!  I wish I knew enough Russian to enjoy all the great literature in its original language. I have always wanted to go to Russia, especially Siberia, because it seems so far away. Not sure what else to say, except that I’m looking forward to meeting everyone and tasting genuine Russian borsht.