I left Minsk, Belarus – blessed be that moment – for America in October of 1992. Afterwards, I visited it twice, in 1994 and 2017, each time leaving the city, my home of 31 years, with the firm intention to never go again. However, in the summer of 2024 I changed my mind and did travel to Minsk. Moreover, seeing Jewish religious life reviving there, regretfully not as quickly and noticeably as it is doing in Moscow, made me want to repeat this pleasant experience.
What had compelled me to make the trip is a book I have been
working on about my late father, Zvi Hirsh Mikhlin, who was a shochet
from 1944 to 1973 in Bobruisk, the small town about 100 miles south-west of
Minsk where I grew up. I assumed that if I could find some confirmation of this
fact – the mention of his name in a publication or any information in a local
historical museum – it would be helpful for publishing my book.
I spent numerous hours in the Main Reading Room of the
Library of Congress in Washington DC, trying in vain to find my father’s name
in one of the dozen books about Jewish life in the Soviet Union. Surprisingly,
my Bobruisk is mentioned in almost every one of these books. It was one of only
a few places in postwar Belarus, besides Minsk, of course, where was a
functioning synagogue. I was thrilled that at least the fact there was a shochet
in the town is proven. My father’s name isn’t mentioned even in a recently
published book about Jewish life in Belarus during the final decade of the
Stalin regime by Leonid Smilovitsky, a Belarusian-born historian, where many
fascinating details about religious life in Bobruisk are uncovered, even the
names and addresses of its 75 religious residents.
Ironically, I knew perfectly well why my father isn’t
mentioned in these books. All of the scholarly works, Dr. Smilovitsky’s
included, are based on the material in the archives of the Council of the
Affairs of Religious Cults (CARC), the unit of the Soviet government that was officially
supposed to look after the needs of the religious part of the population but
that, in reality, did just the opposite; it carried out the Communists’
anti-religion policy. In the corrupt country that Russia has always been, the
documents of that Council are, to put it mildly, far from being a trustworthy
source of information. The bribe given regularly to our district policeman – a
thick envelope with money and a bottle of the best vodka, carefully wrapped in
an old newspaper – to be delivered to the town’s top authorities had completely
shut the eyes of the local CARC commissioners to all my father’s activities,
which included baking matzos in our house during the four to five weeks before
Pesach for several years in a row.
Although I was unable to find my father’s name in the books
published in English, I still had hope, however slight, that I might find it
somewhere in Belarus. And I felt strongly that I had to try, especially as
twelve years ago I bought an apartment in Latvia, where I usually spend my
summers to escape the heat and humidity of the Washington DC area, and traveling
from Riga to Minsk is relatively easy. Several comfortable buses connect the
cities every day.
* * *
Still, everything in me objected to visiting Minsk so
strongly that every summer I’d find a convincing reason to put it off. That
summer of 2024, though, I came to Latvia more determined to make the trip than
I had ever been before. However, when I discovered that all information about
Belarus on the internet was blocked – the country is a partner of Russia in its
war against the Ukraine – and I couldn’t book a hotel there, my enthusiasm soon
dampened. In all likelihood, I’d have postponed the trip again had it not been
for an article my daughter found for me on the internet.
The article was about the historical Jewish places in
Bobruisk. Even though I love my hometown, I knew nothing about its Jewish
places, and surprisingly, I had never been interested in learning about them. But
out of respect for my daughter’s efforts, I began cursorily reading the
article. The very first place mentioned in it made me cry hysterically. The
building that in the old days was the home of the Bobruisk yeshiva, where my
father was a student in his youth, is now the home of a Chabad synagogue. I could
spend a Sabbath in my father’s yeshiva, I thought excitedly, still staring at
the computer screen, and they certainly would know everything about his Rosh
Yeshiva, Rabbi Chaim ben Shmeryahu Garadinski!
Looking back now, I think that the latter was far more
important for me than the former. All his life, my father strived to live
according to the highest moral standards. On his deathbed, knowing that he was
seeing me for the very last time, he proudly told me, “I lived decently (“dostoino”
in Russian); I never told a lie.” I witnessed what it cost him in our
circumstances. It’s hard to assume that it would have been easier at any
other time. My only guess is that for my father, his Rosh Yeshiva was a role
model, and he tried, constantly and mightily, to follow his teachings.
Naturally, I wanted to know as much as possible about this Rabbi, and I
immediately felt an urge to visit Belarus as soon as possible.
Eventually, I found a way to arrange to travel to Minsk and then
to Bobruisk to spend the Sabbath in the Chabad synagogue there. I hadn’t,
however, foreseen that the Minsk part of the trip would sap all my emotional
and physical energy. By the evening before I was supposed to go to Bobruisk, I
was so worn out that I called Ms. Galina Dubinskaya, the head of the local chesed
organization, who had made all the arrangements for me, and with tears in my
eyes asked her to cancel everything. Even though, by that time, I already knew
that the Chabad rabbi in Bobruisk had never even heard the name of the Rosh
Yeshiva and that the Bobruisk Historical Museum had nothing specifically about
Jewish life in the town after the war, I still feel sorry for not having visited
the town where I witnessed my father completely devote himself to helping Jews to
not forget their origins.
Since I have never forgiven my former motherland for robbing
me of the possibility of fulfilling my potential – thank G-d, not everything
was taken away, and there is an American part of my life – I was going to do
only the pure minimum in Minsk. I would visit the cemetery where my parents and
my older sister are buried, spend time in the National Library of Belarus and
check their books about Jewish life in Bobruisk, and go to the Belarusian
Historical Museum
* * *
In reality, when the bus crossed the Lithuanian border and I
saw the familiar Belarusian landscape through the window, I realized how dear
Minsk still is to me. It’s the place where I spent five-and-a-half of the
happiest years of my life studying mathematics at the State University, the
place where I got married and gave birth to my two smart children. It was to Minsk
that my parents moved when our house, along with our entire wooden neighborhood
in Bobruisk, was to be demolished to make place for a high-rise development.
And I looked with deep interest at all the positive changes that had happened
in the Belarusian capital since I left it in 1992. My two previous visits
were too hectic to explore the city.
Architecturally, Minsk had become hardly recognizable. The
streets were wider – I didn’t want to think about what was done to the old
chestnut trees and poplars that would, with their blooming, announce the
arrival of the warm season – and were full of cars. I noticed a newly built
church; the man who sat next to me on the bus proudly told me that the people
have become very interested in religion; several new churches had been built in
the city, and the major religious holidays are now the state holidays.
There are several new synagogues in Minsk as well. There
is a Jewish Cultural Center, and the Museum of History of Jews of Belarus is in
one of its buildings. Still, the Jewish religion is a stepdaughter in the
country. Only the Jewish students at the State University in Minsk, more likely
the Jewish students elsewhere also, have a huge problem obtaining permission to
skip classes to celebrate even their major religious holidays. Instead of being
sympathetic to their difficulties, I felt envious of the young generation. They
at least know about the Jewish holidays. In my time, the vast majority of
Soviet Jews not only knew nothing about the Jewish traditions but strove,
sometimes mightily and at all costs, to make sure that no one would know about
their Jewishness.
I was glad to see that it is now possible to buy some kosher
food (though its variety leaves much to be desired) in the Chabad synagogue,
which now occupies the huge and impressive building that replaced the old
synagogue, the only one that had functioned in my time. I met a woman there.
Noticing that I felt free being in a synagogue, she started to talk to me about
her efforts to convert to Judaism – a completely unheard-of phenomenon in my
time.
* * *
Yet the biggest discovery of how dramatically the
position of the Jews in the country had changed after I left was waiting for me
in the National Library of Belarus. I spent a long and very emotional day in
its grand and ostentatious building, a Potemkin village to demonstrate to the
world that the current government really cares about Belarusian culture.
Working in the spacious reading rooms was pleasant and productive. And the
service the librarians provided matched the beauty of the building.
It was the librarian who, after learning the reason for my
visit, recommended that I visit the Museum of History of Jews of Belarus,
gave me its address, and found out when I could visit. There, in no time, I had in my hand
the issue of a historical magazine opened exactly at the beginning of an
article, written in Belarusian, titled “Postwar Jewish Bobruisk.”
The title of the article made me feel beside myself
with a flood of emotions. To have something related to Jews in a scholarly
magazine was completely unthinkable when I had lived in Belarus. And with my
sensitivity, just seeing the word “Jewish” in the title of an article was
enough put me out of my mind. How much more so when I found that the article
was about my Bobruisk during the time when my father played an important role
in the lives of the local Jews. I almost lost my breath. It was too much for me
to handle! I drank some water, a bottle of which is always in my handbag. I
tried to calm down and to recite my favorite poem by heart, an effective remedy
for such a situation. Still, I couldn’t read the article; the tears in my eyes
blurred the text. Anyway, I have no time to read the article right now, I
thought. I should make a copy of it to read later ran through my mind. And this
idea, surprisingly, returned me to a sense of calm. I slowly stood up from my
desk to look for a copy room. When I returned, several books with the
words Jew and Bobruisk in their titles were waiting for me at my desk. I found,
in one of those books, the full name of my uncle, my father’s younger brother,
and what had happened to him during the war.
* * *
I didn’t remove the paper folder with the copy of the
article from my handbag while in Minsk, and as I boarded the bus back to Riga,
my excitement during my visit to the library was completely forgotten. To be
honest, I didn’t hold much hope of finding something interesting and
informative in the article. I didn’t open it for a good couple of weeks after
returning to my Latvian apartment. Every day, seemingly, I had something more
important to do than read the article. To be honest, I just didn’t want to be
disappointed and ruin the upbeat mood I had brought from Minsk. When I did
begin to read the article, I was elated to see that its author, Dr. Irina
Romanova, had employed a completely new approach to her historical research.
She quoted the material of the Bobruisk branch of the CARC quite extensively.
However, fully realizing the dubious and limited value of that Soviet era
information, she conducted an oral-history expedition in Bobruisk to interview
and record the testimonies of 76 of its Jewish residents who either were
children when their families returned to their hometown after its liberation
from Nazis or were born shortly afterwards.
Since I too grew up in Bobruisk after the war, I read
with deep interest each quotation from these personal testimonies. Many of the
interviewees had lived in a Jewish neighborhood and had Jewish classmates and
friends, while I never had any. None, though, had any interest in religion,
even those who grew up in a family where a mother or a grandmother tried to
lead an observant life. Some even hated their religious relatives. At the same
time, some individuals proudly reported that they still fasted every Yom
Kippur, not because of the religious significance of the day but rather because
their mother would fast and had taught them this custom when they were small
children.
I expected that the interviewees would recall the problems of
coming back to their pre-war apartments and the difficulties their parents faced
trying to return to the same jobs they had before the war: The bitter and open
antisemitism that became a state policy only after the war. What I didn’t
expect and what really surprised me was that, for many families, being a Jew
meant adhering to some religious practices: not to eat pork, for example, or to
soak and salt any meat before cooking it. And one testimony, especially the
exclamation mark at the end of it, even brought tears to my eyes: “My family’s
meals usually were similar to the meals of all families around us. However,
during the first day of Pesach, we must eat either matzos or chicken
slaughtered by a shochet. It was done not because we were religious,
rather to declare that we are Jews!”
My selfless father was perfectly aware of the importance of
his tireless efforts.
* * *
I had
accomplished my mission and had done the research for the book about my father
in Belarus, but completely unexpectedly, now I’m dreaming about visiting Minsk
again! Actually, I caught myself thinking about it while leaving it back in
2024. I want again to be with the people I had met only because of my inability
to book a hotel in Minsk online, which turned out to be a real blessing in
disguise.
Assuming that I’d find a place to stay upon arrival, I
bought tickets to Minsk. Only afterwards did I notice that every day the
Russian radio station in Latvia was reporting about incidents along the
Belarusian border with its western neighbors, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland. It
was a real threat of closing the border at any moment. I didn’t want to cancel
my trip. Yet I couldn’t go without having the phone number of somebody in Minsk
for my children to call in case of an emergency.
I had lost contact with all my friends and classmates from
the University shortly after my first visit to Minsk. I felt uncomfortable
asking for help from friends or relatives of my Russian-speaking friends in
America. As a very last resort, I emailed Rabbi Calev Krelin, the former Chief
Rabbi of the Main Synagogue in Riga, asking if he knew somebody who could help
me during my stay in Minsk. Almost immediately, I saw his reply in my inbox.
“Call Rabbi Michael Walakh. He is now the rabbi of a synagogue in Minsk. He is
my student and a wonderful person. Please mention that I gave you his number.”
Not without trepidation, I called the Rabbi and introduced
myself. His immediate and encouraging response, “We’d be glad to see you in
Minsk; our synagogue has several guestrooms,” made me forget all my misgivings.
By the end of our conversation, I had the phone number of the historian who
recently wrote a book about Jewish life in Bobruisk. I had the phone number of
the Chabad rabbi in Bobruisk several hours later. That was only the beginning,
an introduction to my fortuitous and fascinating discovery of the current
Jewish religious life in Belarus and in the entire Russian-speaking world.
Indeed, I began to realize the dramatic changes in the
Russian-speaking Jews’ attitude toward religion the very moment I entered Rabbi
Raichenstain’s synagogue, named, very appropriately, Lech Lecha. Rabbi Walakh
is his assistant. Dragging myself to my room after a long and tiring night
spent on the bus from Riga, I was nevertheless able to notice that the entire
wall of the narrow hallway to my room was covered, from the ceiling to the floor,
with shelves crammed with books. Several steps further, I was ready to jump in
excitement. All the books are written in Russian!
Rabbi Raichenstain, originally from Belarus and himself a baal
teshuva — he became interested in religion while a student in then-Leningrad
– has been creating a synagogue that perfectly fits the current religious
situation. During the week, they only have a minyan for Shacharis on Mondays
and Thursdays. Yet the entrance of the synagogue is always open. Some men come
just to daven, if not with a minyan then at least in a quiet place surrounded by
shelves of sacred books. Some come to talk to Rabbi Raichenstain or, as
everyone calls him, Reb Mordechai. One of the rooms in the synagogue is his
home. With several guestrooms and a professional cook on its staff, the
synagogue is a welcoming place for any Jew who might need to spend a day or a
night or even four nights, as I did, or just to be in a friendly environment
and have a hot, filling meal – a big pot of chicken soup or pieces of chicken
with one or two side dishes are always waiting for them in the kitchen. And
there is always some food to take home from the never-locked refrigerator.
Actually, people, mainly lonely men, use this
opportunity – but not only them. I met a family with four small children,
all looking like the residents of the most religious parts of Israel, who
actually arrived from Moscow to spend their annual vacation in Minsk. The
mother and the children stayed in the synagogue for several hours, while the
husband looked for a place to rent.
I met a young man who regularly works a couple of weeks in
Minsk and flies back to Moscow, where he lives with his wife, to work for the
next couple of weeks there. Yet, this Thursday, the customer service of the
Moscow airport, after checking his passports (he holds both an Israeli and a
Ukrainian one), without any explanation put him in a small room packed
with other unfortunate travelers to wait more than ten hours for the next plane
back to Minsk. On Sunday, after arranging to work in Minsk for the next couple
of weeks and still greatly frustrated with how to deal with the bizarre
situation, he moved out to a hotel close to his job.
Talking to people I met in the synagogue and listening to
their stories gave me some understanding of the current Jewish life in my
former motherland, absolutely unknown to me before the trip. Their willingness
to share their stories left me with the impression that some of them come to
the synagogue just to meet a sympathetic person to talk to. If nobody else is
available, they talk to Nadia, the cook, a quiet, private yet very friendly
woman. She is always ready to lend an ear to anybody needing to unburden
themselves, even on an exceedingly busy Friday, when she arrives at about 9 a.m.
to prepare and serve a very festive Sabbath dinner and leaves at about 11 p.m.,
after making the room, which serves as the women’s section of the synagogue,
ready for the morning service. She prepares and serves three festive meals each
and every Sabbath, never knowing in advance how many people will come. For the seuda
shlishit, which I spent in the synagogue, there were about three dozen people.
It was more people than for the two previous meals and many more than expected.
Nadia magically organized and set up two or three additional tables. One of the
rabbis always gives a talk before this meal, and many people, some with teenage
children, come especially to listen to it and to spend time – many stay until
after havdala at about 11 p.m. – in the company of like-minded people.
Both rabbis use each mealtime to deepen the participants’
understanding of the weekly parsha. They ask many seemingly easy
questions, give thought-provoking riddles, and put related pictures above the
Sabbath schedule to discuss the details of them. Surprisingly, many men
actively participate in this way of learning. On Wednesday evenings, Rabbi
Raichenstain gives a parsha class for women, and they also actively
participate in it.
* * *
In fact, nowadays, many Russian-speaking Jews are seriously
interested in learning about Judaism. As Reb Mordechai told me, he spends a lot
of his time preparing and giving lectures for Russian-speaking Jews all over
the globe to listen to online. He also publishes a quarterly magazine with
amazingly interesting articles about the history of Jews in Russia.
I was delighted to see that young people have become
interested in Judaism. As I already mentioned, many of them know about Jewish
holidays and make efforts to observe them. There is a secular Hillel that meets
regularly at the Jewish Center, and, according to the schedule I saw on the
wall, their study is rather serious. The Lech Lecha shul is putting a lot of
effort into attracting young people as well. Rabbi Walakh leads a youth group, which
meets in the synagogue every Wednesday evening. Yet, regretfully, the majority
of regulars of the synagogue are in their sixties or even older. And it’s
perfectly understandable. As soon as a young person feels somewhat ready to
lead an observant life, he or she moves to Israel. Now, it’s so easy to do!
A young man came to learn with Rabbi Walakh one afternoon.
After finishing the learning, he began to discuss the prospect of his
employment in Israel. He recently received an airline pilot diploma. Rabbi
Walakh lived in Israel for several years and knew the situation there well.
Rabbi Raichenstain also returned to Belarus after many years spent in Israel.
As I understand, parts of their families continue living there. Yet, both men
feel that they can do more for the Russian-speaking Jews in the Diaspora than
for those living in Israel.
Rabbi Raichenstain, as my father in his time, firmly
believes that eating kosher food even occasionally makes a huge positive impact
on a Jew, and therefore the highest level of kashrut has been
established in Lech Lecha. It comes with tremendous efforts and, certainly, at
a cost. Bread, for example, according to the Russian age-old tradition, is
supposed to be on the table for every meal. Yet in the synagogue, it is served
only for the Sabbath meals and only the bread and the challahs that Nadia bakes
every Thursday. (I turned on the oven and made the bracha on the dough
when I stayed there.) Moreover, as there isn’t much trust in the kashrut
of the flour sold in the stores, a small electrical mill was bought to make
flour from the wheat grains that grow under the rabbis’ supervision on an
agricultural farm not far from Minsk. Rabbi Walakh showed me a short video of
the grinding process. This flour is also used for baking matzah for Pesach,
which the community does for themselves.
They don’t use any dairy products, just chicken, frozen fish
bought in a grocery store, and vegetables that don’t require checking. In order
to not depend on the meat delivered from Moscow, Rabbi Walakh took the
opportunity during the time of the pandemic to study shechita online at
the Chabad Yeshiva in Moscow. Later, he flew to Israel to receive an official
certification to perform it. Afterwards, the synagogue made the arrangement
with a local chicken farm, and now, twice a year, before the High Holidays and
before Pesach, he, with a group of helpers, goes to that farm and prepare about
400 of the choicest birds to freeze for use during the following months.
As the number of Jews who come to the synagogue is growing,
it became necessary to have more space to accommodate the bigger crowd, and the
entire floor of an office building was recently purchased. The place where I
stayed, also in an office building, was a rental. The new place requires some
renovation. Hopefully, the synagogue will be in its own home when I, with G-d’s
help, visit Minsk again.
