Russia

I just got back from an amazing trip in Russia. Moscow is a phenomenal international city, and St. Petersburg is stunningly beautiful. I was also fortunate enough to be there during white nights, when, due to the summer months, the sun sets at 1130 and there is light until 2-3 am. Two small thoughts about my trip:

1) I visited Lenin's grave. He has been preserved through some sort of embalming process, and is on display in the creepiest room I have ever seen in my life. You stand on line for an hour, then you are ushered into this small, dark room where only his tiny, shriveled body is lit up. It was the first time in my life I truly realized how much Communism was a religion as well as a political and social ideology.

2) Be careful booking hostels via hostel world. Below is the review I posted for my hostel Crazy Duck, in St. petersburg. As a note, 3 am is not late in St. petes----

My friends and I rented a private four person room here. One night we got back at around 3 am when we ran into some guys from New Zealand. My friend Tom went back out with them, as he knew of some cool clubs. At about 8 am, I hear the door open. The next thing I know, some dude is PEEING ON TOM's BED. I smack him across the face, and, thinking it is Tom, scream "TOM. NO. BATHROOM." As he drunkenly stumbles out of the room, when my friend Kevin says "dude, that wasn't Tom." Tom soon returns and we scream "DONT GET IN YOUR BED!!!!!" When we went downstairs to tell reception about our new air freshener, they were a little accusative. Why didn't you lock your door? Well, we didn't think someone would confuse it for the toilet! Best Hostel Ever!

11 Steps to planting a Ukrainian Garden

Step 1: Go to college. Lose yourself. Become convinced you need to do something outlandish in order to get rid of your upper white middle class Jewish guilt. Go out with friends one night senior year and announce you are joining the Peace Corps. Start the application later that week just to prove wrong the doubts milling in your head. Wait one year. Receive your invitation to go to Ukraine.

Sep 2: Arrive in Ukraine. Experience culture shock, followed by immense guilt that you chickened out and didn’t go to Africa and get attacked by mosquitoes every night. Express your desire to the Peace Corps personnel to go to the smallest, most remote place they can find.

Step 3: Begin life in your small Ukrainian village. Realize you have no idea what you are doing. Wake up at 6 with the roosters. Go to the well for water. Head over to school during the summer holiday lull and realize you have nothing to do. Play with small children, because they find you of interest. Teach how to throw a baseball. Build a seat for your toilet. Memorize a poem or two by Taras Shevchenko, the Ukrainian National Poet.

Step 4: Take baby steps. Give English lessons. Have absolutely no idea what you are doing. Learn rules of English Grammar. Refuse to accept monetary payment, taking potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, and various basked goods in their stead. Teach Vannya the guitar. Clean up the trash that litters the side of the road, first alone, then with previously stated small children in tow.

Step 5: Help with the fall harvest. Dig, Collect, Sort. Potatoes, Beets, Hay. Chop Wood. Learn how to seal tomatoes for the winter. Run the soil through your toes. Cut grass using a scythe. Try to gain a sense of what your urbanized ancestors lost some years ago. Take a bucket bath.

Step 6: Invent a project idea out of thin air. Write a grant. Buy some wood. Learn to hammer, nail, measure, cut, sand, paint. Build some trash cans. Tell your English students that in exchange for lessons, they have to help collect the trash. Try to create something sustainable. Fail, try, try again.

Step 7: Notice the cold is beginning to set in. Seal up broken windows. Become sad when days end at 3 or 4 o’clock. Continue giving English lessons until 8 in the evening, for lack of a better idea of what to do with your time. Question your purpose. Have Vannya come ask if he can begin giving guitar lessons to others. Teach some English songs for a big concert. Go Sledding. Go Ice Fishing. Watch your clothes freeze on the line. Have the days begin to get longer. Regain momentum. Start anew.

Step 8: Hear an idea for a new business, to sell produce over the internet to people in Kiev. Decide its time to become a music producer, and start recording an album, the children as the stars. Be approached about an ecological project. Write a grant. Begin to earn trust of people who never trust, speak a language beyond verbs and nouns and conjugations. Push ideas to completion, even when they tell you they cant, even when you tell you you cant.

Step 9: Ask your neighbor for a plot of land. Have neighborhood kids, the ones who clean up trash and learn english and rock out on the guitar, help you dig holes and plant seeds and water tomatoes. Learn how to hoe, the difference between a weed and a cucumber. Identify Potatoes, Beets, Watermelon, Onion, Garlic, Peas, Peppers, and everything in between. Wake up extra early every day, just to see the progress your plants are making. Pray for Rain, but not too much.

Step 10: Wake up with the sunrise and go to the well. Feed the dog. Cook some Borscht. Teach English. Record Vannya’s new song. Write a business plan and translate it into Ukrainian. Build a Bench. Learn something. Head for your garden, your land. Hoe some weeds. Feel the sun on your chest and the earth under your feet. Stand and admire. Realize you have returned to something, the joy in planting a tiny seed in the ground and watching it grow to something huge and wonderful and hopefully delicious. Be proud. Forget about Africa, and about guilt, and about the myriad of your villages problem. Work the land, work on yourself. Learn Something.

Step 11: Repeat, if necessary. I guess that’s why Peace Corps is two years.

One year in

School’s out for summer.

Its hard to believe I’ve been here a year already. While the days have occasionally gone by in an arcanely slow motion, the year has positively flown. It’s difficult to fathom that I am half way through my service, and I am forced to wonder: what, if anything, have I really done?

One of my favorite parts about Ukraine is its reverence for tradition. At every Ukrainian School, on the first of September, a ceremony known as first bell is held. The new first graders are marched in on the hands of the new 11th graders (Ukrainian schools have no 12th grade of high school), ushering in the year to come. Today we experienced the last bell, with the eleventh graders completing their final day in the institution that they have been attending for the majority of their lives.


Probably the most jarring aspect of the first and last bell ceremonies is the outfits that the girls are required to wear. They are a uniform somewhere between a catholic school girl and a french maid. From 1st grade to seventeen year-olds, all the girls are clad in too-short skirts and white ribbons in their hair.

But, the truth is, after a year at school, I’m not shocked by much of anything any more, let alone the dress. Somewhere around the 4th grade, all girls decide, with the aid of their mothers, that it is their job to wear to school as scandalous clothing as possible. Of course this is not a rule across the board, but the vast majority of middle school girls and above wear skirts that I will one day refuse to let my daughter wear outside of the house. As long as the appropriate regions are at least mostly covered, any outfit seems to be kosher.

After the last bell, the teachers all got together in the lunch room for a meal, which is code for getting absolutely wasted. The school’s director, the town mayor, and the local doctor were all there. When I refused to take shots of vodka with them at 11 in the morning, all three questioned my manhood. When I told them I had work later, they laughed at me. Cancel your english lessons. Forget about your work. Its time to drink!!!

Vassil Ivanovich, the school’s physics teacher, and I were the only ones not to really partake in the revelry. We had a grant application to fill out, and then I had english lessons to give, and really, all in all, there was work to be done.

As long as I have already lived here, there are still cultural elements I find it hard to grasp. If a teacher in my school growing up had ever been caught drinking while supposedly “on the job,” they would have been immediately fired. Here, it is those who don’t drink who are excluded from the group. But, again, the shock is gone. I knew there would be drinking at school today. And so I made sure to have pre-scheduled work on the horizon, because I just dont feel like drinking at 11 am.

The worst part is, I had really hoped that more of the teachers would be excited about some of our projects. One project idea is to create a web site, to sell our farm produce over the internet to consumers in Kiev. Another involves the creation of an ecological classroom, where out students would learn about the functions of different plants and their possible healing effects. And yet a third is our ongoing trek to create a music album.

While the teachers are often “supportive” of my project ideas, only a small handful (Vassil Ivanovich, his wife Olha the Ukrainian teacher, my school’s Director Mikolya Petrovich, his wife Tamila who is my Peace Corps Counterpart) continuously put in any real effort to help. Even if they really see the benefits of a project, they are reluctant to do much more than the bare minimum.

And thats why too many of my projects fail, too many of my dreams just fail to get off the ground. Because as confident as I can sometimes seem, I just can’t do it alone.

Don’t take this the entry the wrong way. I have no regrets. And I am happy. I just wish I could do more, I wish I could transform this place into something wonderful. Do I put smiles on the faces of children? Yes. Do I teach English? Yes. Will some of my students be better off for having known me? Probably. But the village is still the village, and will still be the village in five years time. I wanted to be, in the words of our President, the change that I believe in. I haven’t come close.

My biggest shock since coming to Ukraine? The mountain which I must conquer in order to tinker with even the most minute of problems. School is out, one year has passed, and I am much the wiser. But is anything different?

Maybe I am reaching to high. Or maybe I am not trying hard enough. Or maybe as time goes on, things will improve, they will get easier. Momentum will begin to flow and suddenly we’ll be on the path to a new promise. I hope this happens. But I don’t know.

At the least, however, I can surely say I am happy. Life is good, although stress is abound. I am busy, busy trying, busy failing. The sun is shining, the grass is green, and there is work to be done. What else does one truly need?

My Birthday in the village

Bubbe

I’m long overdue on blog entries----I’ve got lots to say about my post-Soviet Passovers and the Peace Corps freedom seder, and I’ve had some really extraordinary experiences cultivating the small plot of land my neighbors have given me to plant. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention something about Bubbe, who died early Tuesday morning.

Bubbe, Yiddish for grandmother, closely tied linguistically to the Ukranian Babusia, was not my relative. Frankly, I don’t know how to describe my relationship with her, if the sum of our interactions even constituted a loose definition of that term. Bubbe was my friend Jeff’s grandmother, and she was tough as nails.

I don’t know how old Bubbe was, or where she was born. I’ve got bits and pieces of her biography scattered throughout various stories I’ve heard over the years. Her legal name was Tilly Gittelman, but even though she was not my grandmother, I always called her bubbe.

Jeff lived about five minutes away growing up, and we spent a lot of time together. Sometimes too much time together. We rode our bikes around town, we played basketball in the park, we meandered around the local mall for hours. And every time, there was bubbe, warning us to take a helmet, or a cell phone, or a full body styrofoam suit incase we fell.

Bubbe never went to a doctor. Not in years, at least. But she must have been pushing ninety when she died, proving most anti-aging techniques tenuous at best. Bubbe simply had this unbelievable will to live, a refusal to get sick, a refusal to die. For a woman who couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds, she had a mental strength that I’ve rarely seen.

Everyone will likely always remember where they were on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I was in Jeff’s living room, scared shitless, waiting, because Debbie, Jeff’s mom, Bubbe’s daughter, hadn’t yet returned home from her office on the 64th Floor. She never did.

I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to fully verbalize what happened in those few months. But I do know that somewhere, somehow, Bubbe, and her husband Ralph (or in the Yiddish Zayde) decided they were going to stay alive to help raise all the kids. Jeff was 14, and he had siblings as young as 9.

Here we are, almost ten years later, and they did it. They woke up early every morning and firmly planted themselves within the confines of Jeff’s house at 19 Clarkson Court, making lunches, running errands, dropping off at after school programs. They gave up everything, and they got even more in return.

At the time, they were occasional complaints. Her chicken often needed salt, and the nagging could be a bit much. But I can guarantee that ten, twenty, fifty years from now, Jeff and his siblings will remember they had a Bubbe who loved them, and who showed it, in her own tough, stubborn way.

Sometimes I am walking around in my village, and I see a woman with a hunched over back and little hair and bad eyes. And they are lugging a bucket of water or a pile of hay or occasionally a live chicken. I always offer to help (well, sometimes not with the chickens) and they almost always refuse. They’ve been doing this for some time now, they tell me, and they can take it a little bit farther. This is the picture of the Ukrainian Babusia, never quitting, strong of spirit, an unspoken power. They go to the well every day because that is was Babusias do.

Bubbe raised children for 60 odd years, first her own, and then her children’s children. She cooked and cleaned and nagged and helped and taught and warned and loved. And when people told her to stop she kept going, because that was just what Bubbe’s do.

What Peace Corps Service means to me

This is in response to a prompt for a Peace Corps Ukraine Essay contest, "What does Peace Corps Service mean to me?" Here is my half-witted response:




Somedays I wake up in the middle of the night, and I’ve finally got it. That one magic idea that will transform my small village, the magic pill that, if I just get them to swallow it, will cure all of our problems. I am too excited to reenter my sleeping state.

And other days I hear my alarm beep and fail to move. Its cold and dark outside of the covers. My self-described brilliant idea has been shrugged off once again, a pill not just to hard to swallow but one that they won’t even send to trial. Outside my covers await another day of little progress.

But most days I wake up even before my 6am alarm, because the roosters next door are crowing and then the dogs start barking and then the tractors start moving. The sounds of a country morning is an obstacle that I have yet to overcome. I sometimes find myself yearning for that urban clatter of my beloved New York, taxis raging and pedestrians bustling and the subway rattling beneath many stories that aren’t my own.

Every day I wake up, though, every day I head to school and I teach some English and show a few students a new chord on the guitar. And I’ll be in the middle of a breakthrough, explaining the difference between “the” and “an/a” to a twelve year old, when my director will barge in to my office, telling me to take a break so we can sip on some chai.

As we sit there drinking our very Ukrainian tea, I tell him of my new plan, to build a recycling factory or sell our produce over the internet or run a feminism camp or produce our own music album or start a school newspaper. He always supports me, but I’ve begun to think he finds my idealism, this American “can-do” attitude, a bit amusing.

And I’ll stop in one of the two local stores on my way home, and the local prodavetz will ask me about my day. I always produce a huge smile and force out a “fantastichno,” and she’ll laugh heartily in return.

The walk back home is long, only one long street crowded with the same faces. There is Slavik, 13 years old, whose parents don’t much care for his whereabouts, and he, in turn, doesn’t care much either. There is Nazar, just barely four, who always seems to find himself eating something he picked off the ground, which have ranged from a piece of an old tire to a small pick axe. No one is around to tell him how hard it all is to digest.

I walk farther to find Sergei, a 22 year old who lost his two front teeth in a battle with the street, collapsing after a day-long drinking session. He has no job, save the bottle. Just past him is Baba Natasha, lamenting the village’s downfall. I go a little farther to see Sashko, in the eleventh grade, smoking his 5th cigarette of the day.

And just when the road seems endless, I come to Yanna, beautiful, precocious, seven year old Yanna. She’s just beginning to string letters together into words. “Dog,” she says, as a local canine attacks my leg. “Snow,” she said in the winter, “Sun” now that it has begun to get warm. “How are you,” I ask her, “I am good, thank you” is her reply. “Koly mi yidem do New Yorka,” she asks, when are we going to New York. “Zavtra,” I tell her, tomorrow, always tomorrow, always the day after.

Tomorrow will surely arrive, and I’ll wake up in the very same country in the very same village in the very same bed with the very same thoughts and ideas I had the day before. Hopes of miracles begin to vanish, dreams of grandeur dissipate with the morning fog. Slavik will still kick the stones and Sergei will fail to kick the bottle, and my director will still smile at my newly concocted plan.

So we all wake up just the same, except maybe, just maybe, Yanna wakes up a bit different. Another word learned, another letter’s sound mastered. And in 20 thousand tomorrows, maybe she will come to New York, and she’ll point to the dogs and the snow and the sun, and she’ll grab my hand and look in my eyes and say, in perfect english, “we are good, Jeremy. Thank you.”

Jewfriends

I first met Stephanie in that mecca of American Jewish geography that is the string of American-targeted bars lining downtown Jerusalem. I was sitting with a beer, talking with my sister, Abby, and my friend and fellow PCV, Stephanie Somerman. I noticed at an outdoor table not far away a girl whom I recognized from college, Laura. After a couple of awkward “hey, we weren’t really friends in college but we ran in the same crowds and now we’re in the middle of Jerusalem so maybe we should say something” glances, I walked over to say hi.

It turns out Laura was working for the American Joint Distribution Committee as a Jewish Service Corps Volunteer. The JDC is an organization that supports Jewish communities around the globe, not to mention other worldwide humanitarian efforts. Laura was serving her one year term in Jerusalem, but other volunteers were serving around the world. Including, as it turned out, in Kiev, Ukraine. For sure I’ll put you in touch with them, she said.

Five minutes later, she reappeared, Kiev-based volunteer in tow. Stephanie, meet Jeremy. Jeremy, meet Stephanie.

I was ecstatic. I had also been drinking (it was my vacation!) She told me that she lived in Kiev with her husband, Arieh. She also told me that she had running hot water and that she had yet to poop in a hole. We are living in two different countries, I thought.

I told her I would be in Kiev in about a week, that I landed late on a Thursday night. She insisted I spent the Shabbos, the Jewish Sabbath, with her and Arieh. I gave her my phone number in Ukraine. Lo and behold, she called.

Coming back from Israel was a tough moment for me. As I was sitting on the tarmac, I couldn’t help but think to myself: Damn. Its not that I don’t enjoy my time in Ukraine. Its that in Israel I was one among many. In Ukraine, I am one and one alone.

Its hard to explain the chemistry the three of us had when we sat down in a room together that first time. I think, perhaps, it was a reminder of how much we really missed our homes. Because for the first time in a long time we were around people who were alot like us, someone who was normal and cool and english-speaking but also able to make a reference to a deceased famous Rabbi that the others present found hilarious.

I returned to their place a few weeks later, this time with my friend Avital. I’ve known Avital probably 15 years, but we didn’t have our first conversation (that I remember) until perhaps 7 or 8 months ago. She sent me a facebook message, telling me she had just gotten accepted to the Peace Corps and was headed to Ukraine. I told her that it was the best decision she would ever make. You’d have to call her to check the veracity of the statement.

Avital and I were both a little Jew-starved. Avital lives in a big city with a huge Jewish community, but it just wasn’t the same as back home. I live in a small village, and I am Jewless.
Friday night, we headed to the house of Raphael and Devorah Rutman, a British-American-Chabad couple who live in Kiev. Their apartment is absolutely stunning; I felt as if I had momentarily left Ukraine and stepped into Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The spread was possibly more stunning. The next five hours I was imbued with course after course, stuffed to my hearts content. The Rutman’s and their guests were a bit intrigued by me, by my story. Not a lot of nice Jewish Rabbis sons from New Jersey have ended up in small Ukrainian villages, I suppose. So we talked about toilets and we talked about Torah and we talked about what it means to be a Jew. And as I was talking, I felt at home.

The next day, as the Sabbath was reaching its close, Avital, Stephanie, Arieh and I were just sitting around their kitchen table, relaxing, waiting, talking. We could have been anywhere in the world. We were in Ukraine, of course. But we could have been anywhere.


Stephanie is 22, and Arieh is 24. I haven’t spent time around a lot of married couples my age. Thats probably because most of my friends aren’t married. But if their marriage is any indication of what its like to be young and wed, then just tell me where to sign on. They are so in love, that sometimes the unintentional mushiness has to be broken with an awkward joke. There are moments when they remind me of my parents---her criticism, his ignorance---that are exactly the sort of moments you wish you could freeze frame, to remember why you fell in love in the first place.

Avital and I returned soon afterwards. As I was packing my bag the night before, Stephanie sent me a very important text message: “BRING LAUNDRY.” By this point, we had almost developed a routine. I would arrive at their place and set aside my dirty clothes, which Stephanie and Arieh would at some point lovingly launder. I would then step into the shower and remove the mildew that had been growing for the past few weeks. They didn’t make me feel like I was intruding. They didn’t make me feel like I didn’t belong. Quite the opposite, in fact. Make yourself at home, Mi Casa Es Su Casa, Moya Xata Tboya Xata. Habayit Sheli zeh habayit shelcha.

Avital and I had returned for the Jewish holiday of Purim. The Rutmans’ were having their annual party, which takes place at the Kiev Hyatt, George Dubbya’s hotel of choice. The four of us dressed up as dominos, where all black with white circles denoting our respective numbers. It really wasn’t that funny. But we thought it was hilarious.

Theres a problem, though. Because now I’ve developed this crutch to my Peace Corps experience, this small little enclave that although obviously not quite the same feel disturbingly close to the home I always knew. Arieh and Stephanie simply understand me, they understand where I come from. And, after a visit to my village where they used the outhouse and milked a cow, they understand a bit of what I’m going through. Yet every time I go to their place, I’m already planning the next time I can come back. Its bad, in some ways. I really want to devote as much of myself to my site as I possibly can. But sometimes, my head isn’t wholly there.

This past weekend, my cousin, Sam Tallman, came to visit for a weekend as a respite from his current journey in Prague studying abroad. I was going to get a hostel, but Stephanie and Arieh were aghast. No hostel. No way. Your staying with us.

Sam and I had the best time. We went to Babi Yar, the site of the mass execution of Kiev’s Jews, and we went to the World War II museum, which was an architectural site to see. We went to the Pecherska Lavra, where monks lay entombed underground, and we went to Independence Square, where Ukrainians stood draped in Orange just a few short years ago. We also had a Friday night dinner at Arieh and Stephanie’s, and stopped by the Rutmans’ for dessert on Saturday. In true style, Raphael Rutman asked Sam what he was doing for the Jewish students in Prague. After an interesting back and forth, Sam ended up bringing back a huge box of Shmura (hand made) Matzah to celebrate the Passover feast.

I came back to my site on Sunday, and I got straight to work. I’ve got about five projects in the works right now. I also have to move, because my landlord is coming back. Time to breathe is scarce. But I’ve been strangely productive this week, imbued with this injection of energy that I can’t exactly describe. I know where it came from.

Because I know I’ll return for the Passover feast and I’ll yet again feel that energy and vibe and homeliness. I’ll take a shower and do my laundry and eat some Matzah and talk about famous dead Rabbis. And then I’ll come back to the village and repeat the whole cycle again. When all the village offers is more work on the horizon, when the breadth of my task seems to daunting, its nice to have a bit of an escape, a dose of home. And I just want to thank Stephanie and Arieh for allowing me to be a part of theirs.