//essays//
Spring 2018
Returning to Kiev
A Complex Portrait of Diaspora Identity
Felix Rozenberg
“Where did the Jews go after crossing the Red Sea?” I was asked at age six after I finished flipping through a picture book version of The Prince of Egypt. I rolled my eyes, contemptuous of a question with such an obvious answer: “Kiev!” I replied.
It took me a few more years before I learned that Kiev was not the Promised Land. In fact, the Kiev that my parents and brother were born in was far more similar to Egypt in the Exodus story than to the Land of Israel. Growing up, I was never sure whether to feel sentimental towards Kiev, the home of several generations of my recent ancestors, or if I was supposed to view Kiev and all of Ukraine as a land of affliction.
With merely 60,000 Jews left in Ukraine, a fraction of the community that once existed, can Kiev, as the capital, still be a Jewish cultural and national center as it was in the days of my parents and grandparents? My parents made me aware that they emigrated from Ukraine because of its anti-Semitic culture. Anti-Semitic prejudice was common on the interpersonal level and whispers of pogroms still existed in 1990. The best universities had effectively barred Jews and limited their advancement. When those Jews yearned for better lives and made efforts to leave the Soviet Union for the United States, Canada, or Israel, the government deprived them of exit visas and jailed many. Despite that dark past, I grew up hearing about the many joys of my parent’s Jewish lives. I did not know any Russian-speakers who were not proud Jews. The Ukraine of my brain produced icons of Israeli and Jewish society such as Golda Meir and Natan Sharansky. The famous play Fiddler on the Roof is set in Anatevka, only 31 kilometers from Kiev. Somehow I forgot that the play ends with a reluctant emigration, much like that of my parents in 1991.
Modern Kiev shattered my illusions when my family returned — for the first time in over 25 years — for the Bar Mitzvah of my American-born cousin. I had maintained a vision of Kiev for my entire childhood and anticipated what my return would be like. Even though I had never visited Kiev, I imagined getting off the plane and feeling as if in my homeland. I subconsciously thought that the entire country would be so happy to see me and that they would all apologize for the culture of anti-Semitism. Our only relatives in Kiev are my dad’s brother and his family, as well as, my mom’s cousin and his family. To this day, even after my trip, it is strange to imagine that such close relatives of mine continue to live in a country where anti-Semitism pervades.
As we prepared to walk to the Brodsky synagogue — the other operating congregation in Kiev shares my family name, the Rozenberg synagogue — for the Bar Mitzvah ceremony, I clipped my kippah onto my head just as I do when walking to synagogue in the United States. Less than a second passed before I felt hairs being pulled out of my head. I turned around to see that it was my Ukrainian aunt who had pulled the kippah from my head. “It might enrage some crazy Ukrainian nationalist and you can never know what they could do to you,” she admonished. This did not align with the vision I had of being warmly greeted by all of Ukraine. I didn’t understand why we came all this way to celebrate a Bar Mitzvah in a country that my family left over 25 years ago because of the anti-Semitism, and yet people were still afraid to be openly Jewish. If we returned, it was presumably because something had changed. Had anything changed? If not, why did we come back?
I told my aunt and my parents, who sided with her, that I didn’t want to go to this simcha, and that I would never go to synagogue again if I had to enter through the backdoor. I ended up walking on the opposite side of the street from my parents because they refused to walk with me as I wore my kippah. No Ukrainian nationalist assaulted me, and I raged at my family’s embarrassment and fear.
I had not envisioned such a poor “homecoming.” There was no apology for the anti-Semitism of previous centuries, nor did I see a thriving Jewish community in a transformed, 21st century city. I felt conflicted for being ashamed to affiliate with Jews who lived in fear, and this experience brought to mind the tendency among American Jews to be up in arms at the slightest anti-Semitic remark or symbol. In Kiev, on the other hand, Jews still fear their compatriots. In American cities, especially New York, a kippah is one of dozens of religious symbols we see in a given day. In Ukraine, it amounts to a bullseye.
I have come to think that I was wrong to assume that being afraid to openly identify as Jewish in Kiev revealed a weak Jewish identity. Elie Wiesel famously describes the plight of the vulnerable Soviet Jews in his 1965 work, “The Jews of Silence: A Personal Report on Soviet Jewry.” Shocked to see a massive celebration of Simchat Torah outside of a mostly inactive Moscow synagogue, Wiesel questioned where those Jewish Muscovites were during the remainder of the year. Wiesel asked a celebrant why he cares about his Judaism despite rarely practicing. “Apparently you live in a country where Jews can afford the luxury of asking [these] questions,” the man replied to Wiesel. “Things are different here. It’s enough for a Jew to call himself a Jew. It’s enough to fulfill one commandment or to celebrate one Jewish holiday a year. With us, being Jewish is not a matter of words, but of simple endurance, not of a definition but of existence.”
This struck me deeply. I am forever grateful to my parents and the heroes that fought for Soviet Jews to have the right to leave for a land where they can feel comfortable to be Jewish publicly. Kiev turned out not to be a promised land like I had imagined. I was naive to think that in this new century, anti-Semitism would be a mere scar in the Ukrainian national memory. Turns out, it is an open wound that still bleeds.
It took me a few more years before I learned that Kiev was not the Promised Land. In fact, the Kiev that my parents and brother were born in was far more similar to Egypt in the Exodus story than to the Land of Israel. Growing up, I was never sure whether to feel sentimental towards Kiev, the home of several generations of my recent ancestors, or if I was supposed to view Kiev and all of Ukraine as a land of affliction.
With merely 60,000 Jews left in Ukraine, a fraction of the community that once existed, can Kiev, as the capital, still be a Jewish cultural and national center as it was in the days of my parents and grandparents? My parents made me aware that they emigrated from Ukraine because of its anti-Semitic culture. Anti-Semitic prejudice was common on the interpersonal level and whispers of pogroms still existed in 1990. The best universities had effectively barred Jews and limited their advancement. When those Jews yearned for better lives and made efforts to leave the Soviet Union for the United States, Canada, or Israel, the government deprived them of exit visas and jailed many. Despite that dark past, I grew up hearing about the many joys of my parent’s Jewish lives. I did not know any Russian-speakers who were not proud Jews. The Ukraine of my brain produced icons of Israeli and Jewish society such as Golda Meir and Natan Sharansky. The famous play Fiddler on the Roof is set in Anatevka, only 31 kilometers from Kiev. Somehow I forgot that the play ends with a reluctant emigration, much like that of my parents in 1991.
Modern Kiev shattered my illusions when my family returned — for the first time in over 25 years — for the Bar Mitzvah of my American-born cousin. I had maintained a vision of Kiev for my entire childhood and anticipated what my return would be like. Even though I had never visited Kiev, I imagined getting off the plane and feeling as if in my homeland. I subconsciously thought that the entire country would be so happy to see me and that they would all apologize for the culture of anti-Semitism. Our only relatives in Kiev are my dad’s brother and his family, as well as, my mom’s cousin and his family. To this day, even after my trip, it is strange to imagine that such close relatives of mine continue to live in a country where anti-Semitism pervades.
As we prepared to walk to the Brodsky synagogue — the other operating congregation in Kiev shares my family name, the Rozenberg synagogue — for the Bar Mitzvah ceremony, I clipped my kippah onto my head just as I do when walking to synagogue in the United States. Less than a second passed before I felt hairs being pulled out of my head. I turned around to see that it was my Ukrainian aunt who had pulled the kippah from my head. “It might enrage some crazy Ukrainian nationalist and you can never know what they could do to you,” she admonished. This did not align with the vision I had of being warmly greeted by all of Ukraine. I didn’t understand why we came all this way to celebrate a Bar Mitzvah in a country that my family left over 25 years ago because of the anti-Semitism, and yet people were still afraid to be openly Jewish. If we returned, it was presumably because something had changed. Had anything changed? If not, why did we come back?
I told my aunt and my parents, who sided with her, that I didn’t want to go to this simcha, and that I would never go to synagogue again if I had to enter through the backdoor. I ended up walking on the opposite side of the street from my parents because they refused to walk with me as I wore my kippah. No Ukrainian nationalist assaulted me, and I raged at my family’s embarrassment and fear.
I had not envisioned such a poor “homecoming.” There was no apology for the anti-Semitism of previous centuries, nor did I see a thriving Jewish community in a transformed, 21st century city. I felt conflicted for being ashamed to affiliate with Jews who lived in fear, and this experience brought to mind the tendency among American Jews to be up in arms at the slightest anti-Semitic remark or symbol. In Kiev, on the other hand, Jews still fear their compatriots. In American cities, especially New York, a kippah is one of dozens of religious symbols we see in a given day. In Ukraine, it amounts to a bullseye.
I have come to think that I was wrong to assume that being afraid to openly identify as Jewish in Kiev revealed a weak Jewish identity. Elie Wiesel famously describes the plight of the vulnerable Soviet Jews in his 1965 work, “The Jews of Silence: A Personal Report on Soviet Jewry.” Shocked to see a massive celebration of Simchat Torah outside of a mostly inactive Moscow synagogue, Wiesel questioned where those Jewish Muscovites were during the remainder of the year. Wiesel asked a celebrant why he cares about his Judaism despite rarely practicing. “Apparently you live in a country where Jews can afford the luxury of asking [these] questions,” the man replied to Wiesel. “Things are different here. It’s enough for a Jew to call himself a Jew. It’s enough to fulfill one commandment or to celebrate one Jewish holiday a year. With us, being Jewish is not a matter of words, but of simple endurance, not of a definition but of existence.”
This struck me deeply. I am forever grateful to my parents and the heroes that fought for Soviet Jews to have the right to leave for a land where they can feel comfortable to be Jewish publicly. Kiev turned out not to be a promised land like I had imagined. I was naive to think that in this new century, anti-Semitism would be a mere scar in the Ukrainian national memory. Turns out, it is an open wound that still bleeds.
//FELIX ROZENBERG is a senior in Columbia College. He can be reached at [email protected].