Lina Goncharskaya
Anna Perelman, Regional Director of the Genesis Foundation in Israel, is a person of encyclopedic knowledge and original judgments. A conversation with her is an inexhaustible treasure trove for everyone who is on the verge of Jewish identity. After all, it is no secret that for many of us, the Russian-Jewish identity separated by a hyphen is still one of the main cultural myths. Even for those who realize that we were born in eternity, not in the 20th century.
– Anna, in my unenlightened opinion, the Jews of Europe, the Jews of America and the Jews of the post-Soviet space feel very differently about themselves. For some citizens of the former Soviet Union, Jewishness is nothing more than a nationality in a passport.
– Let me argue with you. At least about my generation, the community you have labeled as the Jews of the post-Soviet space, or Soviet Jews, or – as we define this group of people in our foundation – Russian-speaking Jewry. The very definition is somewhat binding, because Russian-speaking Jewry is no longer geographically bound to anything, it is culturally bound. The Russian language in this case is not a linguistic language, it is the language of the culture in which this Jewish community was formed. So, the mystery surrounding this Russian-speaking Jewry does not clearly explain how you, your humble servant and approximately one million Israelis who speak Hebrew today – but joke, talk to each other and quote your grandmother in Russian with a Yiddish accent – have managed to preserve their Jewishness. To preserve it despite the fact that everything was done by the tsarist empire and then by the Soviet government to remove Jewish roots from our self-identity. After all, what is self-identification? It is my relationship to Jewish history, to Jewish heritage, to Jewish culture. Understanding whether it is mine or someone else’s. At some point, the Jewish Russian-speaking community was cut off from the rest of the Jewish world – but for at least four generations, with almost no Yiddish language, somehow raised their children on Jewish values and (until recently) hardly mixed. Did you catch that cute story when you walked into a classroom at age seven or eight, scanned those sitting at their desks – and found native eyes? You were not yet friends with this girl or that boy, but it was clear to you: this one was one of ours. Therefore, we cannot say that we did not feel Jewish. Of course, our Jewishness was primary.
– But perhaps it was so at the level of genetic memory – some kind of collective unconscious?
– This and genetic memory, of course, but our genetic memory is not exactly a biological thing. Remember how Soviet Jews would go into each other’s houses and look at the shelves of books and say: yes, that’s ours. Because the Jewish bookcase in the Soviet Union was different from the bookcase of the Jews of the West, but it was definitely there. You and I had a Jewish bookcase that was very similar. Yes, we had almost no family memory, but we had some very stubborn communal memory. And the Jewish bookcase, and grandmother’s dishes, and Jewish jokes, and our attitudes toward each other, and our desire to be together – all these elements undoubtedly defined our Jewish identity.
I agree with you that the elements of our identity were fundamentally different from the elements that made up the Jewish identity – or identities – of American Jewry, Israeli Jewry, European Jewry, and certainly Spanish and North African Jewry. These elements were so different that we didn’t even realize how different they were – both sides didn’t understand. But not understanding doesn’t mean lacking. The difference was that 25 years ago, when Western Jewry finally realized that they had let their people go, they were disappointed: these people looked like their grandmothers, and even intelligent, and pretty, and smart – but from their point of view, they were not Jews at all. Because the elements that Western Jewry expected to see in us were missing. You and I understand these elements – they are understood within the community; they were passed down from generation to generation, they were important to us, and we cultivated this importance.
– Western Jewry is not easy either, even if we are talking about absolute values. Gustav Mahler, for example, was terribly complex about his Jewishness. It was undermining him from the inside – that’s why he was always feeling sorry for himself, including in music. That’s why his music is so painful. In the end he made a self-deception – he converted to the Catholic faith, ostensibly because he wanted to become director of the Vienna Opera (Jews were not allowed in leading positions at that time). He was acutely aware of his otherness and felt that he was being misunderstood because of his distinctive Jewish appearance and his accent as a native of Kaliste.
– It’s a marvelous example. The point is that Austrian and German Jewry has a very different history. Russian-speaking Jews have a different understanding of the world, and perhaps that is why our significance in modern Jewish civilization is also quite different. “Blame” everything on Russian (in this case, Jewish) hard-heartedness, you can literally trace the hardening of steel: just read Zhabotinsky’s “Samson of Nazareth”, or his “The Five”. I have never heard Jabotinsky or his disciples feel that they were battered “little Jews”: rather, Jabotinsky had the difficulty of identifying himself with illiterate Jews, with the uneducated mass of the shtetl. This brilliant wordsmith chose the Jewish path because he could not help but choose it.
– But Schoenberg, another famous cross-breeder who dreamed of the world “domination of German music” in his own person (thanks to the dodecaphonic method he invented), in the thirties, faced with the first manifestations of Nazism in Germany, wrote to his pupil Webern: “I have decided to be a Jew… and to work for the Jewish national cause”. He returned to Judaism (a rare case) and even published an article of a rather Zionist nature, “A Four-Paragraph Program for Jewry,” in which he called for the establishment of an independent Jewish state. Here, too, there are clear parallels with Jabotinsky, whose views he shared.
– In this sense, it is all the more remarkable that Russian-speaking Jewry removes the boundaries not only of geography but also of time. I feel comfortable talking to Jabotinsky, comfortable arguing with Pinchas Rutenberg or even Dubnov, because I understand their approach to life. To socialize, to learn from them, to think together. And I could go on with this list. We are from this family, we are from the same sandbox as those who created the Jewish state, which influenced the entire Jewish civilization. And we have to explain to our children that they are from the same sandbox. And that it is much more than knowing or not knowing a particular custom associated with a religious cult. When there is an understanding that this is my story and my knowledge that the vast Jewish narrative contains my personal narrative as well. This is undoubtedly the main postulate without which modern Jewry – not only Russian-speaking Jewry – cannot exist.
– Meanwhile, it is difficult to name any serious Soviet or post-Soviet writer (except, perhaps, Babel) whose books could be classified as Jewish prose – unlike, for example, the “hermetic Jewish stories” of the American Philip Roth or the prose of Saul Bellow, not to mention Bashevis Singer.
– And again, let me disagree – American and Soviet writers cannot be measured by the same yardstick, because from the point of view of the development of the process, they are two completely different realities. I do not claim to be a literary critic, but in my opinion, they have only one thing in common: we are a passionate people. And being a people of passion, everything we do, we do out of a desire to make the world a better place. This desire – to share our own with the world, to get out of the shtetl, both cultural and human – is primary in our people. If we are talking about Americans, they were driven by the desire to reach a wide audience that reads English – because first of all, a writer wants to be published and read. And that was fundamental to them. The passionate urge, again, to share with the world what they had. With Soviet writers, it’s a different story. We grew up on Marshak, Kassil, Shvarts, Kataev, Ehrenburg, Kanovich, and so on. Were these writers Jewish? Did their Jewishness influence their work? Unambiguously – they had a Jewish view of the world. Each of them, to a greater or lesser extent, addressed their Jewishness all the time – without banners and banners. So we had to read between the lines from childhood. On the one hand, there was a desire to break out of the shtetl, but on the other hand, how could one break out of oneself? Besides, a Soviet writer was deprived of the right to choose – and despite this, Ehrenburg returned to his Jewishness at the end of his days. But the main thing is that these people, despite everything, remained themselves. And that is what Jewishness is all about – to be oneself, not to betray oneself.
– It seems to me, however, that Russian-speaking Jewry does not exhibit the kind of painful reflection that is characteristic of European or American Jews. Rather, we can speak of a kind of inferiority complex that made Mandelstam or Pasternak shun their Jewishness. Many people in general strive to free themselves from their ethnicity, as Lyudmila Ulitskaya, for example, is doing these days.
– You see, next to the inferiority complex – I would put it differently, next to the feeling of exclusivity, of being an outcast – there was certainly a theme of pride. We explained to our children: you have to study better than everyone else because you are Jewish; if you want to be equal, you have to be first. And it was clear to us that if you are Jewish, you can be better than everyone else. What is that if not national pride? For example, if a Jewish young man – in a certain circle – didn’t read certain books, it seemed strange to us. Similarly, to another Jewish community, when we met him, it seemed strange that we didn’t read ancient sources. Yes, there was such an unfilled vacuum. Our Jewishness was a kind of secret history that attracted us terribly, but we knew so little and wanted to know a little more that every sip of knowledge was immediately appropriated.
As for Mandelstam and Pasternak, there have always been bright people in the Jewish people who, for whatever reason, chose a different path in religion. Alexander Men, Anatoly Naiman, Brodsky… And at the same time they chose the anti-Soviet path – the one that was closest to them, the path of Christian tolerance, but it was in any case opposition to the system. You mentioned Ulitskaya, but then we should also remember Dina Rubina, a writer of her generation. Or, among the young, Linor Goralik, for whom Jewishness was and remains very important. It seems to me that choosing a path in religion is a deeply private story. But by no means a phenomenon. Just a complete lack of knowledge, a misreading of the Jewish world, which this generation of writers was deprived of because they were unfamiliar with it. Whereas the writers of the early 20th century – such as Jabotinsky – were not deprived of it. And the choices were therefore quite different. And the books were different. By the way, this is what the Genesis Foundation is working for – to restore a living connection with the Jewish world. Then the reference points will change.
I once had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Rav Steinzaltz. He spoke about the Jewish identity of Soviet and post-Soviet Jews – and, as it seemed to me, he was also a little disappointed with us. Because he remembered the Jews of the shtetl – that Jewry that was destroyed physically, and asphalt was put on top of it, so that it would not be remembered. This physical annihilation led to the fact that we have no memory. Real, ordinary, homegrown, Jewish memory. After all, Jewishness is a very family thing. Someone in the audience asked Rav Steinzaltz: how can we start a conversation about Jewish identity in a non-religious family? And he answered: very simply – hang pictures of your ancestors at home. So that the child understands where he comes from, where his roots are. After the lecture, I went up to him and said: Dear Rabbi, our community has no pictures. I saw a picture of my grandfather for the first time when I was 16. I grew up in Minsk, I am at least fourth generation Minsk resident, I am a very proud Jew, because at the age of 9 I was given to read biblical fairy tales, and at the age of 11 – Anne Frank. We just didn’t have these photos physically – my grandmother and my little mom, on the very day the Nazis entered the city, left Minsk. Without anything – my grandmother only put a silver salt shaker in her pocket and her passport. They could not return. That’s why I never saw pictures of my grandfather, and even more so of my great-grandfather and great-grandmother. There were no photos in many other families either – the war took away the physical memory, along with the lives. It took away the living connection. And this lack of living connection influenced the fact that our Jewishness was almost invented. Invented by us – we sort of understood that we were Jews, but there was less of a normal living connection to this people in our families than we would have liked. This connection, this Jewishness was built by us, intellectually built, on the level of self-perception. And other communities, in other countries, had it. My husband’s sister married a guy with Iraqi roots. And when his grandfather, who is 103 years old, sits down at the table during the Passover Seder, and says: here’s this siddur I got from my great-grandfather, who, according to tradition, got it from his great-grandfather – I’m insanely jealous. But this our invented Jewishness was fueled – by our desire to resist. And it was so strong that we built a serious superstructure on this base – sensual, intellectual, communal. Our children have no need for confrontation. No matter where they live – in Israel, America, Germany or the former Soviet Union.
– But the anti-Semitism remains.
– Of course, anti-Semitism remains, but it is a different kind of anti-Semitism. As long as there is one Jew, there will be an anti-Semite – wise people have said. But a Jew who takes his Jewishness for granted – he is not hindered by anti-Semitism. The wonderful prerogative of Israelis is that we are not interested in how anti-Semites think. We can afford to ignore them.
– And what about a modern young person from the post-Soviet space?
– The existence of the state of Israel affects this young man as well. Realizing that there is a shared narrative in which his personal narrative exists, he becomes part of a nation that is no longer some hunted down, humiliated, perpetually beaten nation – he becomes part of a nation, a people, a culture, a civilization that goes back thousands of years in the history of the entire modern world. With roots in the Middle East.
– Anna, how did you come to this realization yourself?
– I am a math teacher by first education – I graduated from Minsk Pedagogical Institute. Shortly before graduating from the institute, I seriously started studying Hebrew and Jewish tradition, and unnoticeably I came to the idea that I should work with Jewish children. It suddenly became very clear to me: if I had to work with children (and I loved working with children), they should be Jewish children. And with the help of friends – a company of enthusiastic people who cared about Jewish identity, with the help of the Jewish community, we founded the first Jewish Sunday school in Minsk. Which opened in 1990 and had 270 students. As you understand, there was no Internet at that time – all the students came to us only by word of mouth. Imagine: still quite a Soviet Union – and the children came to our school on Sundays, and it became a real life for them and for us. I was the school principal, and it was a wonderful time. I continued to finish my pedagogical institute, I did as much math as possible – but the most important thing for me was this story.
Then I came to Israel and I realized very quickly that I didn’t want to go to school to teach math, and somehow I still had the urge to work with Jewish children. I worked in various fields related to Jewish education – and then went off to get a second degree. My Israeli alma mater is Tel Aviv University, the Renakati School, specializing in organizational and industrial management. In my case, management of multicultural organizations, that’s how my thesis was built. I worked in different structures, but in the end I was lucky enough to get into a team of like-minded people. I came to work at the Genesis Foundation five years ago, thus combining all the knowledge, skills and understanding we talked about. What is remarkable is that I still have a teacher’s perspective – I look at the world, at working with a team, with people, first of all, from the perspective of how you can make what you do important for another person. Probably, mathematical thinking also played its role. After all, math is not just a gymnastics of the mind, math is a language. Just as Jewishness is a language. Every culture is a language. And, if you will, a code. And it is the task of a generation to pass on that code in its integrity. I don’t think we realize enough that we are not doing enough to pass on this code. That is why we come to a strange situation when children born in Israel do not realize their connection to this land, to this country, to this people.
– At first glance, however, it seems that our children are attached to this country, they cannot imagine themselves outside it.
– Then let’s take geography out of it. And let’s take the attitude toward our amazing chance to be the majority in Israel. Our children have grown up as free people who don’t care about anti-Semitism at all; wherever they are, they are Israelis, and that’s the point. The question is whether they are aware that this does not go without saying. To live in this difficult country, one must understand very well: a) why I need Israel, b) what Israel is for me, and c) what I have to do with Zionism and the Jewish state. Israel is a very interesting substance. When you understand why you are here, it becomes part of you. You can argue with it, but you feel comfortable inside this substance, because you are also part of it. And our children know little, understand little, and because the shaky connection to their Jewishness is often missing in our community, it is very easy to change their attitude towards this country once a trigger appears. The Genesis International Charitable Foundation is dedicated to the transmission of such a holistic code. I came here when Sana Britavskaya was the head of Genesis in Israel – it was she who created a serious educational approach that permeates everything the foundation does – in our country, anyway. Our approach is to create a community within this system of coordinates (Russian-speaking Jewry and its heritage) on the basis of the Jewish past, Jewish history, understanding of our role and responsibility, creating an active society that realizes that being Jewish means not only going to synagogue, but also helping your neighbor, becoming a participant in the life of another person.
– Isn’t that a utopia?
– No, it’s really happening. Another thing is that a fairy tale is soon told, and things are done bit by bit. During the 7 years of the Genesis Foundation’s activity, we have supported hundreds of projects in Israel alone, and projects do not grow out of nothing. We are, in fact, inconvenient people. A natural continuation of those cruel Jews. That’s why our children are becoming more and more active, they know that they have to get up and do something. And if we add to that an understanding of our Jewishness, everything will fall into place.
– One of your most important projects is Taglit, of which you have been an active partner and sponsor for several years now.
– It is a partnership of which we are proud. To begin with, Taglit is a very successful project that captured Jewry at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries like no other. It has existed since 1999, within its framework tens of thousands of young people from all over the world come to Israel every year – this, I think, is just an incredible achievement. If we talk about Russian-speaking kids, since Taglit has been supporting the Genesis Foundation, we’re talking on average about four thousand participants a year who – I would label it that way – touch Israel. The question is how to make this meeting, this touch very important – so that it leaves a mark, and not just a 10-day trip. It was on the basis of this mutual desire that the Genesis Foundation met with Taglit. We proposed, in addition to funding the trips, to change and expand the educational program. For example, together with Taglit, we started training instructors to accompany groups of young people. It is one thing to be accompanied by a random person; it is another thing to be accompanied by someone who, first of all, knows a little more than you do, and secondly, who has formed his own attitude toward Israel. So we began to organize an annual educational seminar to train such instructors. The next project – unique, in my opinion – was the genealogy seminar. Today every Russian-speaking participant of “Taglit”, passing in the Museum of Diaspora (“Beit ha-Tfutzot”) the way from the Babylonian exile to the beginning of XX century, understands very clearly where, at what stage his family appeared in this river, how and under what circumstances his family name appeared, how, most likely, his ancestors lived and what they did. Even if this young man is from a mixed family, I have no doubt that when he encounters himself in Jewish history, it cannot leave him indifferent. This marvelous work is done by the genealogy institute “People of Memory” (“Am ha-Zikaron”), also our serious partners.
In addition, we are oriented toward understanding that Russian-speaking Jews are a complex community. From all points of view. First, it is very pragmatic: we try to let maximum information pass through our brains. Unlike American Jews, it is difficult to touch us with “schmaltz” – cheap sentimentalism; in our case, “schmaltz” does not work. Therefore, in our case we need to touch very serious things, to familiarize and build the base of Jewish history on the existing history of the ancient world. We need to show a Russian-speaking young person those archaeological excavations, those significant places in Israel, which will connect his consciousness with what he already knows about. For example, with ancient history – Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome. But at the same time, he must be shown modern Israel, our culture, our art. We don’t want these guys to say: “I see, Israel is archeological excavations, camels and guys with paisas running around. We’re an amazing country, with an incredible mosaic of everything – people, opinions, tastes, smells, cultures. That’s why young people who come to Taglit go to theaters, listen to Israeli music, and meet the people who create this culture. We have been supporting Taglit for almost 6 years now. And every season we change, create new elements, check what works, what doesn’t work, to try to make it even better, so that these Russian-speaking kids see that there are many of us and that they are part of the Jewish people. In Jewishness, if you don’t move forward, you don’t just stop – you start moving backwards.
– As part of the Taglit project, you can only visit Israel once?
– Yes, but there is also such a wonderful fair, which allows you not only to get to know more about Israeli culture, but also to realize: what can you do after Taglit? After all, Israel, it seems to me, is impossible not to be infected by it. The only question is how long this “virus” lasts. You can come to your gray everyday life and in a week forget about everything. Or, if something really touched you, you can stay inside this system of coordinates. That is why there is a project “Masa” in the Jewish world, which allows those who are touched to come and try themselves in Israel – for a period from two months to a year. Within this project, the Genesis Foundation has also developed a large standardized project for all Russian-speaking participants – Masa Israeli. In addition, we cooperate with Jewish organizations in the post-Soviet space (this is a kind of “post-Taglit”) – so that the guys who have been to Israel, not just return and get lost, but still find their way in Jewishness. You know, you can see Israel without us – with a passing glance of a passerby. But you can’t share your attitude to this country without the Taglit team. So these are real ten days that rocked a young man’s world.