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December 24, 2004
Renewing ties with their religion
Russian immigrants take advantage of the new freedom of expression
that they have found in North America.
SUSAN KREIMER
Two years before emigrating from Ekaterinburg, Russia, in 1997,
Leonid Marder and his wife, Tamara, began observing Shabbat. After
arriving in the United States, the retired couple gradually became
more devout. But for some time, something didn't feel quite right.
Like many Russian émigrés who adopted Orthodox practices
in the United States, Marder had to take the next step in becoming
a Jew. That step was brit milah, a ritual circumcision, more
commonly known as a "bris." On June 21, 2001, at age 66,
he seized the opportunity.
"It's better late than never," said Marder, a former engineering
professor now living in Reisterstown, Md., a Baltimore County suburb
that has a heavy concentration of Russian Jews.
Under the Communist regime, Marder recalled that rabbis who performed
circumcisions were arrested and, in day care and schools, educators
routinely examined children to ensure that boys were not circumcised.
Immigration offered Russian Jews the chance to escape persecution
and renew their faith in Judaism, and many came to realize that
circumcision was a vital part of this reconnection.
"Circumcision is actually a physical bond between a Jewish
man and the Creator. This is what God told Abraham," said Rabbi
Yosef Y. Okunov, the 25-year-old New York program director at Friends
of Refugees of Eastern Europe (FREE), a Lubavitch-affiliated organization
that assists Russian immigrants with their spiritual and material
needs.
Okunov's grandfather was arrested for his Jewish involvement and
was held captive in Siberia. Now, he and his organization, whose
mission is to provide émigrés easy access to a mohel,
a rabbi who performs the ritual under the watchful gaze of a urologist,
have managed to co-ordinate the circumcisions of 13,000 Russian
Jews, the oldest of whom was 82. With private donations, the group
has been able to offer the service at no cost.
In Avigdor Roppoport's case, FREE paid for a room in Brooklyn, N.Y.'s
Crown Heights, where he stayed for three days after travelling by
train from his home in Rockville, Md., before Chanukah last year.
The 45-year-old telecommunications businessman learned about the
organization on the Internet and it was the only place where he
came across information in Russian.
"I decided [to do this] a long time ago when I lived in Moscow,"
said Roppoport, who added that it wasn't easy to explain this in
his new culture. "For Americans, it's difficult to understand
why someone hasn't done it yet."
Rabbi Michael Rovinsky, a mohel and St. Louis-area co-ordinator
for the National Conference of Synagogue Youth, an arm of the Orthodox
Union, remembers a bris in Dallas shortly after moving there in
1990. A 24-year-old Russian, speaking in broken English, taught
the young rabbi an unforgettable lesson. The phrases "Me be
like Abraham" and "Me do cut" puzzled Rovinsky, who
replied: "Excuse me?" Then the young man made himself
clear: "I cut. I do bris."
At that point, the rabbi recalled, "I gave him the knife, helped
him make the blessing and he gave himself a bris. I went to my car
and I cried because here is an individual who knows nothing about
Judaism. He was persecuted his entire life and didn't know what
it meant to be a Jew, and he was so committed and dedicated to want
a bris. This was the only thing he knew."
Yan Brunshteyn, a native of Moldova and a recent graduate of Hebrew
Academy in San Francisco, wasn't religious when he opted for a bris
last fall, after Rabbi Aaron Hecht, who teaches Jewish ethics, law
and history at the Orthodox high school, broached the topic with
him.
"My mom wasn't for it and she wasn't against it. My dad told
me, 'You're crazy,' " Brunshteyn said. "I was hesitant,
of course. It's not an easy decision. But something told me it was
the right thing to do."
Brunshteyn, who is 19 and works as an office administrator at the
school, convinced his nine-year-old brother, Eric, to join him that
day. Their mother accompanied them. The little boy went first, and
his circumcision was done at no charge. Hecht paid $500 for the
elder one.
And so Brunshteyn was among 13 Hebrew Academy students and three
others who had brit milah last year, said Rabbi Pinchas Lipner,
the school's dean. Although its teachers have stressed the ritual's
significance, this was the first time the school made such a concerted
effort. About 90 per cent of the 180 students, from nursery school
through Grade 12, are children of Russian émigrés.
"We know that Jews in the Soviet Union did not have the opportunity
to have circumcision, so we started a program where we teach the
children that circumcision is a critical mitzvah. It's something
very important for a Jewish boy," said Lipner, who, in 1969,
founded the academy that has educated about 2,000 Russian Jews.
While adult circumcisions tend to proceed without complications,
Brunshteyn and his 15-year-old friend, Anthony Goloub, who emigrated
from St. Petersburg, encountered problems. In each case, a blood
vessel was severed by accident, so they came back one at a time
for corrective surgery.
"The rabbi who was doing the circumcisions flew in from New
York and the airline lost his luggage, so he had to use somebody's
else's tools," said Brunshteyn, who missed playing hockey for
a month and a half because of the mishap. "I had a lot of doubts
during recovery time, but I knew I wasn't supposed to think that
way." Once the pain passed, so did the regrets.
Susan Kreimer is a writer living in New York. She immigrated
to Chicago from Odessa, Ukraine, at age 5. This article was previously
printed in the Forward newspaper in New York.
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