Malka Haguel on the Rod’N’Ya Project and how finding your roots on your own helps you feel connected to “strange people with paisas”
This year the international youth project “Rod’N’Ya” (which stands for “Rod and I”) was launched in the CIS, which is implemented by the Israeli institute “Am Azikaron ” with the support of the Genesis Foundation and in partnership with the Jewish youth organization “Hillel”. During the project 120 participants from three countries (Ukraine, Belarus, Russia) and 6 cities (Kiev, Kharkov, Minsk, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg) for a year immersed in the study of their family history. We talked to Malka Haguel, Program Director of the Am Azikaron Institute, about the peculiarities and importance of the project, the most interesting stories of its participants and how Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian Jewry are connected.
What is the special feature of the program?
The specificity of our program follows from the specificity of our organization. Therefore, I will first of all tell you a little about the Am Azikaron Institute. ” Am Azikaron means “ People of Memory” in Russian. The Institute restores the memory of Jewish families and clans, puts all this information into a national database of family history, processes it and analyzes it. After that it leaves all the information in open access – so that those who want to know about their family, about their clan and about their historical place in the general structure of the Jewish people, can do it. What we do not do as a matter of principle – we do not provide services. It is impossible to address our institute and say: “I am from such a family, from such a place, I would like, please, genealogy for 2 or 38 generations”. This is called genealogy – or Jewish genealogy – and this is what we do to a minimal extent. Now there are quite a few organizations in the world that work in this very field. What we emphasize is education and outreach.
Firstly, we want to explain to people that family information that has been passed down from generation to generation and has finally reached them must be recorded – it must not be lost or disappear forever. We want people to realize that it is very important and extremely interesting to learn something about their roots. Sometimes it can be completely unexpected information that changes the way you look at your own family.
Second, we invite everyone who wants to do this and who is interested to participate in our educational programs. In the course of such participation, people themselves can learn how to record and research their own family history. And for those who are really interested in such activities, we offer an opportunity to seriously study their roots. Our educational projects include working with Russian-speaking communities in the CIS, with the Taglit program. Actually, our educational activities started with Taglit in 2007. As part of this program, we hold a seminar called “Generations”. The essence of it is that during the theatricalized interactive performance, which we hold in Tel Aviv Museum of Diaspora, the participants learn about the origin of Jewish surnames, and then each of them receives an individual certificate about the origin of his surname. This year we managed to go beyond the Israeli seminar by launching the “Rod’N’Ya” project in the CIS.
Who is the project aimed at?
“Rod’N’Ya” is an educational module. It is designed for kids who have already been to Israel through the Taglit program, returned and, inspired by the fact of their connection to the Jewish world, want to expand their knowledge and understand how their Jewish ancestors lived. The Generations Seminar at Taglit is our most massive program to date, giving kids their first information about their Jewish roots. Over the past six years, nearly 20,000 people have received their Jewish family tree.
“Rod’N’I-it’s a play on words: “kin and I.” That is, “me and the clan to which I belong”. The project is designed to teach any “dummy”, a person who knows nothing at all and understands neither genealogy nor history, how to conduct research. From literal interviewing of relatives – what to ask, what to pay attention to in photos, how to look at these photos – to some initial knowledge of Jewish onomastics, geography, tradition, Jewish legislation, basics of work with documents.
Is the topic of genealogy of great interest to young people? A “pilot” version of the project is now underway. In this “pilot” format, ideas are tested. And the test has shown that the project is extremely interesting to the public. About 600 people from most countries where there is a Russian-speaking Jewish diaspora signed up to us (for today the project is realized only in Russian). And this is despite the fact that the recording of the participants was not widely advertised.
By the way, the pilot version of the project is in Russian for a reason. The Genesis Foundation supports many Russian-language programs, because Russian Jews are the very public who, on the one hand, due to their spirituality and desire for spirituality, will understand the importance of these connections; on the other hand, these are the people who, unfortunately, throughout the twentieth century were deprived of the opportunity to know where they come from. And when you realize that these strange people, with strange paisas, with the same squint in photos from years ago that you have, are without a doubt your blood – you begin to feel a connection to this people.
If the “pilot” was a success, do you plan to repeat it next year? Yes, we plan to, with new enrollment starting in winter/spring 2016. You can sign up on the project page here www.jewage.org/rodnya.
And how exactly does the training take place?
The project is not only educational but also community-based. It is carried out in several stages. First, we work together with the participants to reconstruct the history of their families and connect this history with the history of the family as such. We familiarize them with the concept of Jewish kin, its heritage and its characteristics – from migration to recurring names and more. At the end of this stage, the best and most active participants go with us on an expedition to the places where their clans actually originated – Germany and the Czech Republic. This expedition, by the way, will take place in early September. The thing is that we – Russian-speaking Jews – are mostly descendants of Ashkenazi Jews, who have long lived in the Rhineland. This journey is very personal – we will try to trace with each participant how exactly he or she is connected to this or that place. After all, we are not just going to the well-known places where Ashkenazi Jewry was born. The point is that the 25 participants of this expedition are really connected to these places, their roots can be traced back to the times when Jewish communities flourished there. The expedition participants will walk the same places and streets where their ancestors walked. The idea behind the expedition is not Jewish history per se, not abstract Ashkenazi Jewry, but the personal stories of these participants in this or that place. We are trying to make a person feel connected to Jewish history, to the Jewish people through the concrete history of his family and clan. This concreteness is precisely what creates a situation where a personal view of history or the Jewish people begins to change. It is one thing to have an abstract Jewish people and Ashkenazi lineage in the town of Speire, but it is another thing if my ancestor nineteen generations ago walked these very streets. The feeling is completely different. It is this feeling that our project is dedicated to.
What happens after the expedition?
We hope that when they return from their trip, inspired by both the history of Israel and their own families, they will be equally inspired by all things Jewish and will want to share it. And we have already outlined exactly how they will do that. Some participants have prepared very interesting community projects, during which they will work with the theme of family history with audiences of different years: elderly people, youth, children.
What is the history of the Jewish community in Ukraine?
Speaking about the Ukrainian community, it does not make sense to speak only about Ukrainian Jews. To say that there is Ukrainian Jewry, Russian Jewry and Belarusian Jewry is, by and large, not very correct. We have an advantage – we work with history, numbers do not scare us. We work with the memory of the people, which exists for 3500 years. Today’s Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian Jewry 30 years ago was one Soviet Jewry, which suffered from the same fifth point. 115 years ago they were one and the same Jewry of the Russian Empire, “foreigners and foreigners” and these people could not leave the world’s largest ghetto called the “sedentary line”. And 300 years ago it was Polish Jewry, which was one of the most privileged strata of the population of the Polish-Lithuanian principality and had the same privileges as the gentry. And 400 or 600 years ago it was Bohemian Jewry, and 800 years ago it was Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewry. So, I repeat, there is no such thing as Ukrainian, Belarusian or Russian Jewry. These are the same Jews. Moreover, if we talk about the two largest Jewish communities in Russia – the Jews of Moscow and St. Petersburg – St. Petersburg Jewry has its roots mainly from Belarus, and Moscow Jewry – from Ukraine. So we didn’t just pick these three countries for our project.
What were some interesting cases during the project?
Especially important for the participants was the opportunity to have heart-to-heart talks with relatives or to re-establish relations with them. A girl from Moscow met with a large part of her family with whom she had lost contact more than 30 years ago. Another participant from Kharkov, for example, restored relations with relatives from Israel, with whom she had not communicated for 23 years – her religious uncle did not want to do this because his niece’s mother was not Jewish according to halacha. But in the end, the meeting took place and there was a very heartwarming family reunion.
Documentary discoveries became great discoveries. In Minsk, at a master class on working with archives, right at the class, by a happy coincidence, a participant was able to get from our lecturer a family list for 1894, where his ancestors were listed. This is how the young man found out what his great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, and the whole big mishpucha[family] were called. A participant from Kharkov found letters from her grandmother’s cousin in the Museum of Jewish History in Odessa. Another participant found a record of a marriage between her great-great-grandmother and great-great-grandfather after a long search, and another participant found two marriage certificates for his great-grandmother – and learned that she had been married twice, which was never mentioned in the family. And someone started receiving emails with smiley faces from his grandmother. In general, the participants learned a lot of new things, became closer to their relatives, and found new ones.
And numerous American, Israeli and Argentine relatives were discovered, the guys created huge family trees – the smallest turned out to be 150 people and the largest 500.