Thanksgiving

About 25 years ago, my Grandfather, Irving Appelbaum, had a heart attack. My grandmother, Cecelia, strong willed Jewish woman that she was (and is), resolved to keep him alive for as long as humanly possible. The staple of this effort lay in putting my grandfather on a very strict diet. No more cigars, no more scotch, no more cheeseburgers. And no more pie.
Cecelia was known the world over for her pies. Well, if not the world, then certainly some percentage of the population who would join my family for thanksgiving every year. My Grandfather accepted most of the restrictions, but on one he refused. He had to have pie on thanksgiving. And so my Grandmother found a not-too-fatty apple pie recipe, and a tradition was borne.
And so year after year in late November my family and I would trek to the airport and fly to Chicago, to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with my aunt and cousins and Grandparents. And year after year we would eat turkey and stuffing and sweet potatoes and cranberries and we would watch football and old home movies and we would be together as a family. And in the end, of course, we would indulge with Apple Pie.
This was my first Thanksgiving away from home. If there were two annual events that marked the consistency of my childhood, it was Passover in New Jersey and Thanksgiving in Chicago. I had missed this past year’s Passover by a nose, but I was so rushed in the jumble of excitement that was my initial few days in Ukraine that the shock of missing it all was hard to find. But this time around I am all ready well into my Ukrainian routine, 8 months in (man how time has flown, and also crept incredibly slowly) and thinking a lot more about home than I used to. It was hard to imagine that I wouldn’t be at the Thanksgiving table, that 22 years of tradition was coming to an abrupt end (or, optimistically, a pause).
The approaching holiday coincided with the fact that these past few weeks have been among my hardest in Ukraine. My workload has begun to spiral ever so slightly out of control. Full days at school, followed by 3-4 hours of English tutoring sessions at night. No one is pressuring me to take on such a heavy workload; I primarily bring it upon myself. But I can’t say no to these kids. My over bearing Jewish-White-Upper-Middle-Class guilt too much.
The perfect storm of stress and the sun setting at 4 O’clock and winter’s imminent arrival and Thanksgiving made me, for the first time since arriving, pretty homesick. I was, therefore, pretty glad when three of my Peace Corps friends, Paula, Julia, and Vanessa, decided to come check out my humble abode in Boyarka for the weekend.
I have a perfect place to host visitors. Plenty of room, extra beds, a welcoming community. The only problem lies, of course, in the fact that there is only one bus a day directly into my village, and it leaves from the Oblast center, Cherkassy, not far from where Vanessa is placed. Vanessa and Julia were arriving together late at night, and they were understandably nervous about finding the right bus. I assured them it would be easy enough. Just ask the bus driver if their name is Sasha or Petya, and if it is, ask them if they know Jeremy, the American who lives in Boyarka. Just a couple of small town folk’.
All worked to plan, and when Vanessa and Julia arrived, we set to work on a presentation, to be given at my school the next day, about the meaning of Thanksgiving. Wanting to balance American cliches of being grateful with historical accuracies of the desecration of a continent’s worth of inhabitants, we hobbled together a brief presentation that covered history, culture, and traditional foods. We topped it all of by drawing a “Thanking tree.” Vanessa sketched a beautiful tree with hanging leaves, and at the end of our presentation, we encouraged people to come up and write what they are thankful for. At first everyone was a bit hesitant, so I wrote down three examples: Cimya, Druzi, i Boyarka. Family, Friends, and Boyarka.
Then the crowd really got into it. First a few of the teachers came up, and then the oldest students, and then a group of seventh grade girls who have developed some affectionate feelings for our fair writer. (Author’s note: When I was in seventh grade, I couldn’t get a girl to talk to me. Now that I’m a teacher, they follow me wherever I go.) It only took a few minutes for the tree to get filled in. What are you thankful for? I was asking. Their answers were beautiful and humbling, honest and embarressing. Druzi, Cimya, Babusia, Zdorovya, Friends, Family, Grandmothers and Health topped the list. But not far behind were scribbled markings saying Dzeremi Natanovich, Jeremy Son of Natan. Our schools technology teacher even took it a bit further: I am thankful for Jeremy, and his parents, and his sister Abby, and his two grandmothers. Thousands of miles away and family was still around.
Its hard to speak for their impressions, but I think Vanessa and Julia were at least a bit jealous of my village. Vanessa and Julia had trained in a small village but now were placed in larger towns or cities, and they missed that whole “everyone knowing everything about you” feel. Paula, who arrived later that day, also lives in a small village, and she enjoyed comparing our various experiences.
While I love life in the small village, it can, at times, become suffocating. I know by face, if not by name, practically every person in Boyarka, as well as much of the surrounding villages. And I am known the region over, for there aren’t many foreigners, let alone Americans, dilly-dallying around this corner of the Ukrainian countryside. The Peace Corps has a set a core expectations they have given to us periodically through our service, and one of them is this: As a Peace Corps volunteer, you are on-duty 24 hours a day. In my village, this is very much the case.
The last few weeks have been exhausting. I have been working non stop, 12 hour days becoming a norm. I am always tired and I never seem to have a free moment to ourselves. I have been speaking and thinking and dreaming so much in Ukrainian that sometimes I forget English words. In the most innocuous way possible, I have been losing it, just a little.
I don’t really drink in my village. I try to always have a smile on my face and a positive attitude in tow. My frat kegger days are far behind me, and would shock any memebr of my community. My pessimistic sarcasm wrought from angst ridden teenage years watching too many Woody Allen films has no place in my new home. My doubts and fallibilities I try to keep hidden. I portray a version of my self I want them to see, for their benefit, for America’s benefit, for the Jewish people’s benefit. I am, at the same time, both more in touch with myself than I have ever been and farther from whom I know I am than I ever could have imagined. A life of contradictions is exhausting.
The girls coming to visit wasn’t just a break. It was a wake up call, a much needed injection of life and purpose and friendship that I desperately needed. Friday night we stayed up late, talking and drinking and laughing. We weren’t trying to escape the moment, however. The lack of running water and the outdoor toilet surely prevented us from pretending we were in some other place. But perhaps we were being just a bit more ourselves than our usual circumstances allow.
On Saturday, after taking a nice stroll through the village, the girls and I got down to business. We had all gathered as much food as we could---a giant fish my neighbor had caught for me, onions, carrots, potatoes, pumpkins, apples, soy sauce, more potatoes, cheese, bread, butter, flour, baking soda, more potatoes---and begin to cook a feast for the ages. We made stuffing and mashed potatoes and vegan gravy. I was in charge of making fish burgers, which was an interesting endeavour that luckily gave no one salmonella. And Julia, at my request, ventured to bake an apple pie. It just wasn’t Thanksgiving without Apple Pie, that much I knew.
We cooked extra food, in true Appelbaum/Borovitz/Jewish style, correctly anticipating that four or five of the locals were going to stop by to get a peak at the American girls. After the food was cooked, and the table was set, we each poured ourselves a glass of wine, and the girls asked that I make a toast. My exact words are long lost, but I can still recall the basic jist:
Its easy to get lost here. Sure my village is small and there are only three roads, but its easy to get lost. We drown in language and swim through this strange culture and gasp for breaths of respite from the comparative insanity of our everyday lives. And so its nice, once in a while, to be among friends, just to remember that we know who, and where, we are.
And so we clanked our glasses and we drank our wine. Some guests came by and they tasted our food and we taught them some english and they taught us some ukrainian. I pulled out the guitar and played some American songs, and then my friend Vitaly serenaded us in Ukrainian and Russian. We played Uno and we told stories, we spoke of our old homes and our new ones, we were thankful for we had, even more thankful for what we have.
And in the end we ate Julia’s Apple Pie. And it may not have been as tasty as my Grandmother’s (although it was damn close) and it may have desperately needed a scoop of ice cream on top. But as delicious as the pie was, what it meant to me to have it was so much more important. My Grandmother’s pie helped my Grandfather live a little longer. Julia’s pie gave me that extra little jolt that I desperately needed to push my own adventure a bit farther into the future.

Contradictions

It’s been a while.

This entry was supposed to be about exhaustion----about the jam-packed pace of my daily life that has made an perception of hard work I had experienced up to this point seem like a distant memory. But then a day like yesterday happens, a transformative day wedged in the middle of end on end of transformative days. There are some days when I think I begin to understand my surroundings, these people, this experience. And then a day like Sunday occurs, and I begin to come to the realization that I don’t know anything at all.

When I arrived in my current humble abode in Boyarka, Ukraine, I sent out some feelers, via the well-connected network that is the Jewish community, to discover whether I could find any information about any Jews who might live in my vicinity. My endeavours were met with questioning success until one day I received a call from a man named Piotr, looking for “Jemy.” He said he had gotten my name from an American Rabbi named Martin Horowitz (whom I heard of via Rabbi Michael Strassfeld) and identified himself as the head of liberal Jewish communities in the Cherkasska Oblast, where I was placed. He only lived about an hour or so away! I could barely hide my excitement. Here were a group of Jews, attempting to pray right under my nose.

We attempted (in vain) to meet up on a few occasions, but it kept falling through for one reason or another. Finally, we set up a date. In all of Cherkasska oblast, there is only one pre-war synagogue that is currently in the hands of the Jewish community. This is in a small city Zvenaharodka, less than an hour from where I live. The Sunday after Simchat Torah, the day where the Jews complete their yearly reading of the Torah, the whole community was going to meet at this synagogue, to talk, to eat, to pray.

As I entered the synagogue in Zvenaharodka, I was overwhelmed by a familiar feeling, the same emotions that took over the first time I went to synagogue in Warsaw and first prayed with a group of Jews in Kiev. It was this hard to define notion of being home miles from home, a temporary cure for the chronic displacement that makes it so hard for me to stay in one place.

The moment I found Piotr, he embraced me, as if we had known each other for years. He incepted this bond immediately, this feeling that we were two peas in a pod, he and I, that we were brothers, that he was my father, that he was my friend.

Piotr was feeling a bit rushed. Today was a big day, he explained. We are going to read Torah, and we are going to sing, and we are going to conduct a Bar and Bat Mitzvah for three of our teenage Jewish members. But no one could really read Torah and only a few people knew the songs and how in Hashem’s name were we going to conduct a Bar Mitzvah anyway. The serendipity of the moment was borderline hilarious. Finally, I thought, $150,000 and 14 years of Jewish education was going to pay off, not to mention that handy ol’ rabbinical lineage.

And so when the time came to read the Torah, I read the last portion of Dueteronomy, talking of Moses death and the fate that waited the people Israel. I repeated the words, Chazak, Chazak, Venitchazek, Strong, Strong, and may we go from strength to strength. I taught them how to properly roll a Torah scroll from the end to the beginning, I taught them about the circular notion of it all, I read the first few lines of Breishit and I incepted the cycle anew. I chanted for them a tune that many had never heard, I did my best to give them a glimpse of a Judaism they hardly knew.

For this group of Jews were largely uneducated. Many had only discovered their roots in the last twenty years, and those who had known longer often hid the truth. When the three teenagers approached to participate in a ritual that had defined our community for almost two millenium, this coming of age, they were about as clueless as everyone else, about as clueless as I was myself. But I had seen my father go through the motions a million times or two, I knew the basic gist.

Place the Tallit, the prayer shawl, on your head. Repeat the blessing. Say Amen. Collect the fringes of the shawl, and wrap it around your finger. Bring the fringes towards the words on the Torah scroll, touch the words (with the shawl, not your fingers!) and bring it to your lips. Kiss the word of God. Repeat the blessing, after me. When I finish, repeat the process once more. And let us say, Amen.

Then, in the best Neal Borovitz imitation I may have ever pulled off, I recited the Birkat Cohanim, the preistly blessing, my Tallit on my head and my hands stretched out in a manner that would have made Leanord Nimoy proud. May God Bless you and protect you. May God be kind to you and be gracious to you. May god smile upon you always, and bless you with peace. And let us say, Amen.

There were a plethora of amazing things about this experience, not the least of which was not only was this my first pseudo-rabbinical experience, but it was entirely in Ukrainian. As I returned home from synagogue that day, I was imbued with a feeling of warmth. I felt really, truly happy. I looked forward to being with my new family sometime soon.

Life is hard in the village. Obviously I already feel like an outsider, the sole American. Yet the compounding of being a Jew, the ultimate outsider, can sometimes make this issue even more difficult.

I have often spoke fondly on these pages of my School Director, a man whose ideas and energy in many ways keeps this town moving. He is a good man, an honest man. He is also a Ukrainian man, and thus, on occassion, enjoys a drink or fourteen.

On one of these oh so special nights, he paid me a visit at my house. He proceeded to give a brief lecture on Ukrainian history, focusing heavily on World War II, the great famine, tragedies, death, destruction, and other happy topics. Somehow he segued into a discussion of communism, and Marx, Engels, and Lenin began to play into the discussion. Then he threw it at me, with the force a cannonball: “Jeremy. chomu bci yiverei abo anheli abo demoni.” Jeremy. Why are all Jews either angels or demons.

Suffice it to say I didn’t really have an answer for that question, or even an answer of how to respond to that question, or really any idea of anything to say at all. I guess in a way he was complimenting me, as I’m assuming he does not place me in the demon category. But there are honestly so many levels to that statements, so many language barriers and culutural barriers that prevent a serious discourse. I didn’t know what to say. So I said nothing.

There is one family in the village over, the Verhulatsky family, who are exceptional exceptions. The family is guided by two brothers, one of whom has four children, the other who has seven. Six of these eleven students are at the top or near the top of their class. The others have either completed school or are under the age of 6. Nearly every member of the Verhulatsky clan comes to me on a weekly basis to have an English lesson. On Wednesday nights at six, one of the families comes to me in full tow: The first grader Luba, the fifth grade Lesya, the eighth grader Kolya and the eleventh grader Yuri, not to mention the father, Vitaly.

During our last lesson, the father asked me if my mother missed me. I responded with a bit of a joke, saying that my mother was a classic Jewish mother, and that she had been missing me since I left the womb (I swear it was only a joke, Mom!) This joke was followed by an awkward pause, and suddenly I realized: They had no idea I was Jewish. I hadn’t been keeping it a secret, but I hadn’t exactly been advertising it, either.

We began to have a discussion about religion, and God, and Jesus. They were a bit incredulous about the fact that I didn’t believe Jesus was the son of God. He was the messiah, Vitaly told me. You must acknowledge this.

I said that for me, when the messiah comes there will be peace on earth.

He told me that Jesus told us he would be back.

I responded that if Jesus comes back, I will be the first to admit I was wrong.

He retorted that then, it will be too late.

I stopped the conversation there in its tracks, knowing it can’t be leading anywhere good. I said that all people have the right to their own beliefs, to their own set of doctrines, to their own personal relationship with God. One thing works for me and something else works for somebody else. They were temporarily satisfied, but I could shake this notion that somehow I was now different in their eyes.

I had known for some time now that this area used to be heavily populated with Jews. In my village alone, 623 Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. No one seems to know, however, where they were killed, where they were brought and shot or burned or drowned or who knows what or why or when or how. I had often asked my Director for more information about it, but his hesitance was often quite clear. There were places to see, things I could witness. Later, he said. Not now.

Last week, Piotr called me. On Sunday, he told me, there would be a conference in Korsun, his home city, about the Holocaust. He had arranged a ride for me, he had set it all up. He looked forward to seeing me there.

He gave me the number for Oleksander, a name that was to serve as my transportation for the even. We arranged to meet in my village center at 830 in the morning. I didn’t think it would be hard to find him, because, well, its pretty rare that there are cars and/or people in my village center.

My suspicions prevailed, and as soon as I saw the blue Sovietsky style sedan pulling into the village, I flagged him down. As soon as he saw the funny looking American with the messenger bag, he stopped. I got in, we exchanged pleasantries, and went on our way.

It took a few minutes into the car ride for us to get to the juicy stuff.

“Ti Ivreyi?” You are a Jew?

“Tak. Ya Yivreyi. a vi?” Yes, I am a Jew. And you?

“Moye Tato bulo. Ale ya chrestiyan.” My father was. But I am a christian.

The adamance with which he emphasized the last part of that statement left quite an impression on me, one that lingered for the rest of the time together. He did not seemed ashamed, like some Ukrainians I have met, of his Jewish lineage. But at the same time, he wanted to be clear that he was a Christian, that he believed in Jesus, that he wasn’t quite one of me, not anymore.

He began to tell me what he knew of the Jewish communities that used to exist here, what he remembered and what his father had told him. When he grew up, there had been four Jewish families in Lisyanka, my regional center, and one in my village itself. This was post war, post genocide, post destruction. Almost all had since fled to Israel. I asked him about the war itself, about the Jews who had been killed. He slowed down the car and looked away from the road, into my eyes.

“Meni Treba tobi pokazati schos.” I need to show you something.

He took us down a side road of the main one, and then from there pulled onto a dirt path that could hardly be called a road at all. He drove us into the woods, and I briefly considered the notion that I was about to be dragged into some abandoned cabin and forced to perform some acts straight out of the movie “Hostel.” Instead, he stopped in the middle of these woods, right near a small gated off area.

As we approached it, he tried to paint a picture. Here there was a well. Here is where they lined them up. They threw the old people in the well first, saving the children for last. They thought if they didn’t throw the children in first, the parents would cooperate. One by one they drowned them, shooting the few with the courage to run. One by one until they reached 300, they killed all the Jews of Lisyanka they managed to round up.

There was a small monument there, a tablet sized stone commemerating the event. On this spot, it read, the fascists drowned 300 members of our community.

I was shocked it didn’t say Jews. Oleksander was more upset by something else.

“Tse ne bulo fashisti. Ukrayintzi robili.” It was not the fascists. Ukrainians did this. Ukrainians killed these Jews.

I wasn’t shocked. I had hear this story before. But to a certain extent I had convinced myself it wasn’t true. Not these people, not in this village, not in my place. Here we had a good relationship. Here we were friends. Here...it just wasn’t like that here.

Turns out it was.

Oleksander and I continued on our way towards Korsun, Our range of conversational topics varied, from what he does in Lisyanka (he is in charge of the electrical grid) to his family (wife, two kids) to whether or not his siblings identify at all with Judaism (they don’t.) He asked me why I didn’t believe in Jesus, and whether or not there were alot of Jews in America who did believe in Jesus. He asked, I answered and on our conversation went.

When we arrived in Korsun, I was immediately embraced by my now old friends. We were glad to see each other, and we did what Jews always do when they meet up: We ate.

While I originally thought the conference was about the Holocaust in general, it turned out it had a much more specific theme: Jewish Heroes of the Soviet Union. This refers to Jewish soldiers who received the coveted “Heroes of the Soviet Union” medal for their service in World War II. Think Congressional Medal of Honor, but perhaps a bit more prevalent.

The whole day, weirdly enough, seemed to a mix between a celebration of their Soviet Heritage and a celebration of their Soviet Heritage. Different community members stood up and rattled off the accomplishments of various Jewish soldiers, how they proudly served their country in the war. And more often than not, that person’s history was included with a sidenote, that their family was all killed while they were out at war. These people were celebrating a country that at best failed to protect its Jews and at worst willingly participated in their annhilation. They sang the Soviet anthem and danced Soviet dances and reminisced about the good ol’ days bread was cheap and dissent was forbidden. What was I missing?

Towards the end of the conference, a man stood up dressed in full army garb. He is currently a Colonel in the Ukrainian army, and was an officer in the Soviet Army before that. He also had some sort of Jewish genealogy, although precisely how much he was a bit reluctant to say. He spoke of his own army experiences, his own knowledge of Jewish war heroes. But he kept beating around the bush about his own Jewish identity. He didn’t seem to want to talk about it, not too much.

Later on, after the conference, Piotr offered him a Jewish calendar. He refused. What if someone saw?

It was important to this colonel, this army man, that the contributions of Jewish soldiers be recognized. But he did not want to be thrown in with their sinking boat. He was deathly afraid that others would paint him for another stinking Jew.

At the end of the conference, Oleksander stood up to say a few words. He talked a lot about Germany, and how the German government admitted its atrocities during World War II and has tried to rectify some of them. This includes a policy in the 60s and 70s of allowing free immigration to anyone of Jewish descent. Most of the takers were people who were then living in the Soviet Union. Oleksander spoke of the German President visiting the state of Israel in the early 50s and openly weeping. He spoke of repentance, and forgiveness.

Look at the German country, he decried. Look at their economic success, at their business success. Look at how much they have been able to accomplish. They, a country who has admitted their mistakes and tried not to repeat them, has flourished. Ukraine, on the other hand, a country that has made it policy to turn a blind eye to any event where they are not themselves the victim, Ukraine, he told us, is stuck in the mud.

There was something very Christian in what he was saying, some Baptist tied belief in confession and forgiveness. And while I don’t prescribe to the ideology, and I don’t think that Ukrainian’s owning up to their past will change economic fortunes, he was making a point. This is a country with a very subjective view of the past. People on the left have one subjective view and people on the right another but overall few seem to be able to remove their emotions from their viewpoints, something I can strangely empathize with. Ukrainians have a selective memory. And for most, their Jewish past is something they’d like to forget.

While Oleksander was talking, he also identified himself using his patronimical name, as the son of Volf. The patronimical name is widely used in Ukraine---in fact, in school I am known as Jeremy Natanovich (Natan being my father’s Hebrew name). He wanted people to know that his father was Volf, his father was a Jew. Later on, when I was relating the story to my director, he mentioned that he knew the man, but that he often went by the name Oleksander Vassilovich, not Volfovich. With jews he was a Jew. With the gentiles he was one of them as well.

There are a lot of contradictions here, a lot of double sided coins and a lot of trickery and a lot of not being everything that it seems. Much of it I don’t quite understand. Are they anti-semitic or are they remorseful? Do they love my people or hate them? Is it fear or shame? Is it loathing or respect? Did we kill Jesus, or was Jesus a Jew? Am I an angel, or am I a demon?

I had to move recently to another house in my village. I was having a plethora of problems with my landlord. He wanted more money, he wanted me to take care of his yard, he saw this American, and possibly this Jew, and dollar signs flashed in his head. My landlord’s wife kept telling me to use less gas (when it is freezing outside), to use less light (when it gets dark at 4). There were problems.

The whole situation was stressing me out, so my director decided to find me a new place to live. My new house is much nicer than my old one (albeit still no running water, and the outdoor toilet needs some work.) I do, however, have a “sink,” where you pour water in the top, it comes out a faucet, and then drips into a bucket at the bottom. I’ll send video when I can, but it pretty much ahs changed my life.

This week, my director and I went over to my old house with my landlord, so we could walk through the house while they complained about how much they had to pay for electricity and heat and how much of the house they needed to repair. They were hurling accusations at me, telling me I was wasteful and despondent and irresponsible. I paid them their money and walked out of the house, too upset to deal with them any longer.

My director drove me back home, and he could tell I was upset. “Tze ne bulo ty.” It was not you. It was them.

He gave me a wide variety of consoling words, telling me how much good I was doing, how hard I was working, how much everyone appreciated me in the village. Then he brought up the landlords. Jeremy, he said, “Ty Yivreyi, ale voni Zhid”. You are a Jew, but they are Zhids, a derogatory term about Jews inferring they are cheap. Think of it as the Ukrainian version of the German “Kike.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. He was this man, who cares about me, who likes me, who was trying to console me. And how does he do it? By comparing those who work against me to my own ancestors. He tries to make me feel better by using a racial slur against my own people.

Some days the insanity and the contradictions and just everything I can explain and fail to comprehend becomes too much. But I think what I’ve learned is that I need to let some stuff slide. Intentions matter more than words. Maybe the past is dark and maybe the present is biased, but if I can laugh in the face of generations old anti-semitism, the future can’t be so bad.

62 years ago today, Decauter Illinois was rocked by the news that Cecelia and Irving Appelbaum welcomed into the world a baby daughter, Ann Harriet. History Hasn't been the same since.

Sorry I couldn't speak to you on your birthday, but I hope that Ukrainian kids trying to sing to you in english will serve as a sufficient replacement.

CATS

Hey all,

So about six weeks ago a couple of cats showed up on my doorstep. I gave them some food, and they decided to stick around. I named them Jeff and Ben, in honor of msr. Kaplan and Strassfeld, who have done quite a job calling me and keeping me sane these last few months. Then it turned out that Ben was a girl, so the kids started calling her Bella. Go figure.

ANyway, my cats are insane. They refuse to understand the notion of a litter box and so they poop all over the house. I lock them outside and they climb through windows. They are smart and devious and I love them dearly.

Heres a quick clip of my cat Jeff and an interaction he had with a possum. My counterpart explained that when cats kill animals and leave them on your doorstep, they are offering you a gift. Thanks, Jeff!

Jeremy Teaching!

Hey all,

This is a video of me teaching! And my 2nd graders! Enjoy!

Trash Pickup

Here is a slide show of my completed trash pick up project. It went great! More to come soon!!!!!

The round of applause was thunderously rowdy, men whooping from their seats, refusing to let the clapping hands cease. Usually there comes a moment where an applause naturally dies down, where there is a general consensus that enough praise is enough. Not here, however. For here these men were bearded Hasidic Jews, and it was God they were praising.

This was my first Rosh Hashanah in Ukraine, the Jewish new year. Rosh Hashanah has always been an important holiday in my feeling, this beginning of the Jewish high holy days. Even during my years at University, I almost always flew home for Rosh Hashanah, missing classes and even a football game or two.

Here I found myself, in almost the geometric center of Ukraine, a land steeped in Jewish history, praying in a converted warehouse with 1,000 bearded pious men and bald Sephardic Israelis and wayward Modern Orthodox teens searching for a way to God. In the tent up the hill were another 1,000, as eclectic as we, with another 30,000 or so wandering the streets, grouping together, forming Minyanim, prayer groups, impromptu and in some ways more meaningful.

When I was interviewed during my Peace Corps Training about the site where I would live for the next two years, I requested only one thing: to be close to a Jewish community. No running water? no problem. No english speakers? Bring it on! But I have always needed and will always need a place to pray, a place to be with my fellow Jews. For unlike many other religions, while we certainly can pray alone in Judaism to fulfill the full breadth of our requirement we must pray in groups of ten. For the Orthodox it is ten men; for more liberal Jews, such as myself, any ten Jews will suffice. The Jew needs a community, even a small one. I am a Jew, and thus I am no exception.

As soon as I received the name Boyarka in that slim White Manilla Envelope that contained little of use but much too be imagined, my regional manager, Iryna, approached me to assuage any fears I might have.

“Jeremy,” she said, “you are only two hours from Uman.”

Uman? What the hell is Uman? The name sounded familiar, to be fair, but I couldn’t quite place it.

I pressed Iryna for more, for any more information she might have on this community. “All I know,” she said, “is that every year a bunch of bearded Jews with hats come to Uman for their New Year celebration.” The plot thickens.

It didn’t take much investigation to find out the secret to this small Ukrainian city. Uman is centered about half way between Kiev and Odessa, and is most famous for two thigns. The first is Sofivka Park, a giant memorial of grandeur landscaping that was built by a Polish nobleman for his mistress whom he killed for sleeping with his son. (Follow all that?)

The second is that it is the place where the body of Nachman of Bratslav, the old Hasidic Rebbe, lay interred.

Anyone who has ever been to Israel, especially to Jerusalem, has undoubtedly seen the graffiti along the walls. Na. Nach. Nachma. Nachman. Nachman Me-Uman. I remember learning on my twelfth grade trip to Israel that the followers of the Hasidic Sect believed that if every Jew in the world were to say his name as such, he would return in Messianic form.

Nachman of Bratslac was born in 1772 in the heartland of Hassidic Ukraine. Hassidim was a movement founded by his great-grandfather the Ba’al Shem Tov, and it emphasized a revolutionary spiritual approach to Judaism. Personal communication with God became a must; being in touch with one’s Nefesh, or Soul, became a prerequisite. Nachman saw himself as the inheritor of his Great Grandfathers legacy. He often times claimed his own brilliance and even alluded to his own messianic nature, and believed that he and he alone held the truest and most direct path to God. He also suffered from bouts of melancholy, if not depression, and often times struggled with his own growing influence. At his height, he stood alone against the all of the Hasidic Rebbes in Ukraine, creating a revolution within a revolutionary movement, ever the more controversial.

Rav Nachman also holds an intense following of very intense followers. Breslav Hassidim, as they are called, stretch their influence across the globe and believe that Rav Nachman himself will return to usher in the Messianic age. They read his writings and follow his teachings and even are rumored to hold on to some of the Rebbe’s secrets that he only divulged to his most devout students.

When I told my friends and colleagues in my village that I was considering heading to Uman, they were all extremely supportive. But they also all made comments, I hear anti semitic jokes sometimes, even from people i have grown to love and respect. Its jsut an ingrained part of life here, as unfortunately linked to the Ukrainian mentality as assuming that the next winter will be even harsher.

I really had no idea what I was going to do when I got to Uman. All I had was a play to stay with another Peace Corps Volunteer who lived in the city. I had been there once before, so I knew my way around a bit. As I headed towards the town center to meet up with Joseph, my fellow American (and a non-Jew from Arkansas), I saw two dark skinned men in Kipput approaching in the distance.

I approached them and, in my best Hebrew, said, “Slichah, Adoni, aval ani mechapes meekom tefillah.” Excuse me, sirs, but I am looking for a place to pray.

I threw them for a loop, I think. They did not expect this blond haired fellow with the classic Ukrainian plastic-bag-serving-as-a-suitcase in tow to whip out some words in their native tongue.

They asked who I was, and I told them. An American in Ukraine, a Jew in a tiny village once imbued with Yiddishkeit long since voided. I got a flattering response from them, to say the least. “Atah Tzaddik.” You are a holy man.

One of them was named Shaul, the other’s name escapes me. But Shaul gave me the low down on services, how to get there, what time to go. It starts at 5 am, he said. Later than 7 and you’ll struggle to find a seat. Plenty of places to pray, plenty of fellow Jews to pray with. Shaul also expressed some interest in my village. He took down my number, and we made very rough and idealistic and naive plans for him to come back to my village with me. It all seemed so normal, fellow Jews bonding over shared experiences and shared values.

I set my alarm for 6 am, and I was on my way to the synagogue, which also happens to surround the grave of Rabbi Nachman, by half past. I didn’t precisely know where I was going. But I had confidence in my Ukrainian and in the fact that no one was going to try and beat up some 23 year old American who was asking for directions to the synagogue.

Eventually I heard it, the wails. And soon after I saw it, the men draped in white robes and curly beads, peis draped in front of their ears so as not to disobey the ancient decree. And the forelocks were many and the hats varied but I saw them, and as I followed them there were more and more, and as I went after them the Ukraine around me began to immediately transform.

Have you ever been to Me’ah She’arim, the religious neighborhood in Jerusalem? If you haven’t, then unfortunately I have an entirely insufficient vocabulary to describe to you the spectacle that is the square kilometer or so surrounding Rav Nachman’s grave. Men in long beards praying on street corners, Hebrew advertisements for day time excursions to Odessa and Berditchev, schedules of flights back to Israel and the appropriate necessary shuttles. I was in a different world, a Jewish world, and yet I was still in Ukraine.

Eventually I found a place to pray, a large converted warehouse with a Torah instead of a stone grinder standing in its center. I open up the prayer book my mother sent to my small Ukrainian village, and I began to pray. It is an Orthodox prayer book, and I am unfamiliar with much of the liturgy. The men around me are swaying and muttering and shouting, all of it in ecstasy. It is hard to find my place. But every now and then a familiar prayer will be sung or a Psalm I recognize will pop up in the page and these moments serve as a beacon, bringing back to where I am supposed to be.

And then when I least expected something I never expected, the men around me began clapping. It was mild and then thunderous, rowdy. It was combined with whooping and sheer joy. It was counter to most of Judaism’s taboos. A service is not a place for clapping, I had been taught. We don’t clap. We pray. Why here? Why now?

The confusion of the collection of moments became a bit much for me, so I cut out of the service a bit early (this was at 230, by the way, after a solid 7 hours or so of constant prayer). My soul was tired, and I wasn’t quite sure that this was where I belong. I decided to go back to the city center, back to my friends place. Something about being with another AMerican, another Peace Corps volunteer, felt more familiar than this group of bearded Hassidim. This was a new emotion for me. I was surrounded by a sea of gentiles, and yet I felt out of place in this small reserviour of Jews.

Dozens of policeman were surrounding this Jewish compound. The Jews are good for Uman’s economy, and they cops are under strick orders to make sure no trouble rears its ugly face. I approach one of the policeman, and ask, in my best Ukrainian, the best way back to center.

Jak ty znayesh nasha mova?” How do you know our language, he asks. Sure, some of these folks know Russian. But Ukrainian? Who the hell are you?

I brisk over my biography, that I teach in a small village school about 2 hours north. It turns out he has heard of my village. We begin to talk about places we have been, tourist sites we have both been forced to see. And all around us the Jews are staring and the other policemen are staring. Why is our brother in his Kippah, why is he talking to this policeman, and so jovially? Why is our comrade in arms making nice with this invading Jew?

EVentually the policeman sends me on my way towards the city center, and I weave my way through Hebrew signs and bearded men and Ukrainians with ID badges so people know its OK that they are there. And every Jew I see, I greet them with a hearty “shannah tova.” A Happy New Year. Most of them are surprised, surprised that I am one of them and surprised that any one spends their time on such casual pleasantries in such and such a day and age.

One man eventually stops me, hearing my accent, seeing my clothes, wanting to know my story. His name was Yitzhak, he was an Israeli from Tel Aviv, and he insisted I come to his house for a bite to eat. I tried to refuse, but I secretly knew it was to no avail. Jews are like Ukrainians, in at least this on sense: if they ofer you food, there is no way to say know.

Yitzhak is fascinated by my presence in Ukraine. Why wouldn’t you teach English in Israel, he wonders? Why help these strangers, who hate us, before you help your brothers? It is a question I have gotten before, many times, and the truth is I’m still not sure of the answer. But I tell hom that I walk around in this village that used to be filled with Jews, as a Jew, and I am imbued with a sense of Yiddishkeit. I tell him that the people in my village accept me as me and like me as me and they also know I’m a Jew and theres something in that, as well. I tell him I am a one-man anti-semitism fighting team, and I tell him that if we are to do as our tradition teaches us, to be a light to the nations, well then we may as well go to the darkest places in the hope of making the biggest impact. I tell him all this, and he is intrigued, and he calls my work holy.

He then makes a request of me. There are Ten Psalms, he says Ten Psalms that Rav Nachman felt were the Ten most important Psalms in the bible. Our Rebbe wanted us to say these Psalms on the New Year. Say them, he implored me. Say them, and your holiness will only be greater.

Unsure as I ever was whether or not such shenanigans really work, I say the Psalms anyway, partly to be a good host and partly because I simply enjoy Jewish prayer. And saying these Psalms in this place did feel just a bit magical, a mixture of tradition and mysticism that struck the right chord. But as I finished the Psalms and handed Yitzhak back his book, I noticed that his place was a mess. He was renting it, I knew, from a Ukrainian for an exorbitant price. And in his mind this price allowed him to treat it like his trash can. He showed me the utmost hospitality, because I was one of his own. These dirty Ukrainians, however, only deserved to pick up the trash after him.

Yitzhak’s mindset was seemingly shared by many of the Hassidim in town. Litter isn’t exactly a foreign concept to this country. But it truly pained me to see Hebrew writing on bags of potato chips, on water bottles, on candy wrappers, strewn across the Umanian landscape. They didn’t care. They simply didn’t care that this was still God’s earth, that these were still people. Even if we are the chosen people, isn’t that more a place of responsibility than a place of privilege? Doesn’t it mean we have to do more, not that we are simply better? How can our moral compass change depending on the person and who their mother was and who her mother was, as well?

The next day, I decided not to return to the religious services. Instead, I went to Sofiika Park, a monolith of nature that is the other famous part about Uman. My friend Stephanie, another Jewish volunteer whom I knew from the University of Michigan, came to meet me in Uman, and we went to the park together to participate in the Tashlich service. Tashlich is probably one of my favorite services of the year, because U can really feel its impact immediately. On the second day of the new year, Jews take pieces of bread and throw them into a body of water, physically casting away their sins. I always try and think of specific people as I throw these crumbs into the sea, of things I’ve done wrong and of how I can be a better son, a better brother, a better friend, a better human being. Its hard work, sometimes. But it helps.

So there Stephanie and I are, and I’m chanting some Hebrew and wearing my Kippah and Ukrainians are doing there best to stare. And yet I don’t care, because I am in the process of purifying my soul. And they don’t really seem to care, its just that its interesting and something to look at. And I throw my bread into this Ukrainian water and I feel better, and so does Stephanie. Sometimes its just nice to get the things that are bothering you about yourself off your chest.

And suddenly I remembered the clapping again, bringing holiness to a place that was void. And these sins I was throwing in to the water was a form of clapping itself, a tacit admission that this place is as much my home as any other place. I am a Jew and an American and also a human being and I am as imperfect here as I can be anywhere. But in this thought I was seemingly alone.

We were in the midst of ten days of forgiveness and yet these Jews had no interest in forgiving. These Ukrainians 60 years ago had watched the murder of their brethren, and some had participated. This country was full of jew-haters. This country was less than. This country was their toilet. These Hassidim, these so called righteous men, are clapping, but making only the bad kind of noise. They are ignorant to the disruptive impact they have on other people’s lives. They don’t care who they are hurting. They are clapping, and they think that is enough.

But was the clapping itself truly enough even for Nachman? Was it the act itself, or was the act simply a symbol for courage under fire, for letting your voice be heard in a hostile environment? Is the clapping similar to the sound of the Shofar, the ram’s horn, which signaled the ancient Israelites to approach the battlefield, to attack? Judaism does not have very many passive symbols; our holiest book, the Torah, is often referred to as being alive.

Nachman, in addition to the clapping, placed a huge emphasis on being alone, and confessing one’s sins out loud. He was a very tortured human being, constantly feeling as if he was not measuring up to God’s expectations of him. As a young boy, he used to enjoy rowing a boat to the middle of a lake, alone, and sit there all day, discussing with God his internal pain, his failures, his shortcomings.

A few years after Nachman died, not far from where he lived, was born a young man, Taras Shevchenko, who over the course of his lifetime would evolve into the voice of the long suppressed Ukrainian people. Shevchenko is more than a literary icon, more than a figurehead. He is a part of every man, woman, or child who calls themself a Ukrainian, he is more ingrained in the consciousness than Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln put together. Shevchenko is not only a part of Ukrainian culture, he embodies it.

As a prt of my cultural integration in my community, I have begun studying some of his poems, albeit mainly the ones they usually teach in fourth or fifth grade. Recently I was reading one, and a passage caught my eye:

I sit in a boat
In a body of water
And there I will be alone
With only the sky to listen.

Two men, a few generations and a wide cultural gap apart, spouting the same ideas, the same philosophies, philosophies that were also being echoed on Walden pond half a world away. Two men, Nachman and Shevchenko, two strains of a similar mentality coming to fruition in the breadbasket of the world. And yet I can’t help but wonder how few people have read both these philosophers in their native tongues, or even at all.

When I returned home to Boyarka, one of the first calls I received was from Shaul, that nice Israeli man I had met on the street. I was excited that he had called, albeit a bit late. I was already home, I told him. If he would like to visit my village he may, but it would be a bit difficult to reach.

He asked me if I knew any village girls he could meet.

Because this was his trash can, his toilet, the sanctity of these women did not matter. Shaul was looking to praise Rav Nachman and he was looking for a good lay, and I’m not that confident it was in that order. This was in the ten days of repentance, the ten days when were are supposedly being judged by God. Shaul’s God, when it comes to Ukrainians, apparently looks the other way.

After I heard from Shaul, I headed to the house of Tamilla, my counterpart, and Kolya, my Director. We talked about my trip, about the experience, my impressions. Then they showed me an article in the newspaper. Two Ukrainian men were beat up by the Hassidim. The Hassidim thought they were being robbed, although they weren’t. Not, that I’m sure, most of them cared to ask, after they got caught up in the mob mentality of beating on a couple of Jew haters. They blame them for the fact that 70 years ago none of them asked why, none of them said stop. But who among US asked why? Who among US said stop? And yet these are my brothers, my achim, moyi brati.

Tamila and my director did not have very nice things to say about these Hassidim, these righteous men. But they didn’t just call them Hassidim. They called them Jews. They were not talking about me, I knew. They liked me. But those OTHER Jews, they are bad people. They cheat and they steal and they hurt and they don’t care who gets in their way. These are bad Jews, they say. These Jews are bad.

And so I say the Psalms of Nachman and I commit Shevchenko to memory. I try to understand Nachman’s relationship with God and Ukrainian’s relationship with each other. And I try to understand if I can bring some holiness to this place, infuse some Yiddishkeit without becoming a hated Jew.

The other night I headed to my Director’s house to drop off the money for our project. We received a $500 grant to build some trash cans, and try and clean up our village just a little bit. It was another one of those moments where I remembered how lucky I was to have such a strong partner in my Director. As soon as I handed over the cash he sat me down. “Nam Treba Napisatee Bizness Plan.” We have to write a business plan.

So there we were, writing down how much tools would cost and how much wood would cost and how long we have to do it in. Then he looked at me and exposed himself, just for a moment.

Jeremy, he said. There is a monument in the village over, a monument built to the holodomyr. The great Ukrainian famine. Millions starved to death by Stalin. Scar on Ukrainian history. There is a monument, Jeremy, and no one ever goes there. They just drop their trash there as they pass by. Lets build a table, and some benches. Lets build a trash can there. Lets clean it up. Whats the point of a monument if no one ever goes there to remember?

I readily agreed. It was still in tune with the project’s ecological theme. It was still making this a cleaner place. And it was important to him.

About an hour later, after eating dinner and watching some Russian TV that forced me to read the Ukrainian subtitles, my director went back up to me. Jeremy, he said. We could also build a Pamyat, a Memorial, at the Old Jewish cemetery. Who the Jews were. What happened to them. What was here.

I never brought this up to him, I never said that this was something I wanted or needed. He might make anti-semitic jokes sometimes, but he wasn’t talking to a Jew. He was talking to me, and he knew this was important to me, and he wanted to show that I was important to him.

I was in Kiev the day before Yom Kippur, wandering around with my friend Rachel searching for the El Dorado of Chinese Restaurants. She suggested we ask outside a music shop where a groovy Ukranian dude was smoking a pipe. He didn’t know where the restaurant was, but we went inside anyway. A man approaches me, says his name is Sasha. I tell him that I live in a small village and while I have a guitar, I’m in the market for another one. I’ve been trying to teach some kids to play, but it’s hard when you only have one.

We get to talking. Where is your accent from? America. I have relatives in America! So do all Ukrainians. My relatives are Jewish. I’m Jewish. So am I.

The next ten minutes are a blur, us comparing synagogues in Kiev, playing Jewish geography, talking about our favorite Rabbis. We start throwing Hebrew into our Ukrainian and English mix (he lived in Israel for 8 years). We are talking about our identity and our heritage and our religion and our atonements. He asks me how much I wanted to pay for a guitar. I said 400 hriven. He grabs one guitar. It says 600 hriven. Take it, he says. I can’t, I say. You are right, he says. Take this more expensive one instead. And a free bag to boot.

I don’t know how to repay you, I said. Achi, he says, Mi Brat, he cries, my brother, he proclaims. You don’t have to. You are doing good work.

In our parting words, after exchanging numbers, we wished each other the traditional Yom Kippur wish. Gamar Chatimah Tovah. May you be sealed in the book of life.

And here was Sasha, a man who had lived in Israel and yet chosen Ukraine as his home, a man who has read Shevchenko and yet surely knows of Nachman, a man who identifies as a Jew to a strange American he meets in his store. Sasha showed me I do not have to choose this world or the other, I do not have to be either a Jew or an American or a Ukrainian or one of them or one of us. Life can be much more inclusive, if only we open our hearts and minds to let it.

So I forgive the Hassidim for their Hatred and Intolerance, I forgive the Ukrainians for the Past and their Ignorance, I forgive Shaul for his over active Labido and I forgive my Director for his anti Semitic Jokes. What other choice do I have?

And so instead of concerning myself with symbols of things past I will continue to immerse myself in the actions of things present. I will keep giving guitar lessons and keep teaching English and keep throwing around the baseball and keep building trash cans and keep making the Ukrainian famine as important to me as it is to them, and keep on being proud that I am a Jew, and keep on lighting the candles every Friday evening.

This is how I choose to clap, this is how I choose to bring holiness to a place. And maybe, if I clap loud enough, the Hassidim and the Ukrainians and Shaul and my Director and the Jews of the world and the bigots of the world, maybe, just maybe, they’ll begin to start clapping, too.