By Patricia Rice, Special to the Beacon   

Posted Sun., 4.17.11

ST LOUIS BEACON

At Passover Seder dinners in Jewish homes across the world, the youngest child will ask “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

Then, the story is told of that spring night when, according to the Book of Exodus, God’s angel “passed over” Jewish first-born sons as the Egyptians’ first-born males died in the 10th plague. Moses then led the enslaved Jews across the parted Red Sea to freedom.

On Passover as St. Louis Jewish grandparents and elders look with loving pride at their young questioners, many will talk about the next generation. Will young American Jews have the desire and support to celebrate their Jewish faith in St. Louis?

“Our numbers in St. Louis are diminishing,” said Barry Rosenberg (right), executive director of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis, a planning and fund-raising umbrella group. It serves all Jewish denominations, including Jews who are not synagogue members. Lower numbers hurt, he said. In January the federation announced that its annual fund-raising campaign brought in less that its $10 million goal. The total of “just under” $9.95 million was the lowest campaign results in 13 years. For each of the previous three years, the total has diminished.

In response to reduced numbers – in giving and in members – the Jewish Federation, which has a $100 million endowment, developed an energetic strategic plan to streamline its resources, cut duplication and “sunset” some programs.” For a decade it has urged synagogues with declining membership and high staff and maintenance costs to merge.

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Summary

Jewish Genetics: Abstracts and Summaries

A collection of abstracts and reviews of books, articles, and genetic studies

This site may be the most comprehensive summary of Jewish genetic data. In recent years, advances in genetic technology and the broadening in scope of genetic studies to encompass more ethnic groups have allowed scientists to come to more accurate conclusions. Nevertheless, not all questions have been answered fully, and followup studies are necessary.

At the present time, it is known that Eastern European Jews have a significant Eastern Mediterranean element which manifests itself in a close relationship with Kurdish, Armenian, Palestinian Arab, Lebanese, Syrian, and Anatolian Turkish peoples. This is why the Y-DNA haplogroups J and E, which are typical of the Middle East, are so common among them. At the same time, there are traces of European (including Western Slavic) and Khazar ancestry among European Jews. Ethiopian Jews mostly descend from Ethiopian Africans who converted to Judaism, but may also be related to a lesser extent to Yemenite Jews. Yemenite Jews descend from Arabs and Israelites. North African Jewish and Kurdish Jewish paternal lineages come from Israelites. Additional research is necessary, and it will certainly take several more years to sort it all out. What we can say for sure is that Jewish Y-DNA tends to come from the Middle East, and that studies that take into account mtDNA show that many Jewish populations are related to neighboring non-Jewish groups maternally. All existing studies fail to compare modern Jewish populations’ DNA to ancient Judean DNA and medieval Khazarian DNA, but in the absence of old DNA, comparisons with living populations appear to be adequate to trace geographic roots.

Everything Is Illuminated is the first novel by the American writer Jonathan Safran Foer, published in 2002. It was adapted into film by Liev Schrieber starring Elijah Wood in 2005. Most of the film, though made for Americans, is in Russian (with English subtitles).

Make Babushka or Deda happy…bring this home for them to see.

About the film:
A young Jewish American flies to the Ukraine in search of his grandfather’s past. He has a photograph and the name of a village. He hires the Odessa Heritage Tours, made up of a gruff old man and his English-speaking grandson. The three, plus grandfather’s deranged dog, travel in an old car from Odessa into Ukraine’s heart. Jonathan, the American, is a collector, putting things he finds into small plastic bags, so he will remember. Alex, the interpreter, is an archetypal wild and crazy guy. Alex asks the old man, “Was there anti-Semitism in the Ukraine before the war?” Will they find the village? The past illuminates everything.

Soundtrack includes: Leningrad and Gogol Bordello

It’s on DVD now, but because it’s an independent film you may want to call your local video store first.

This was one of our top essays. I loved it, but it didn’t make the top 3 spots. Nevertheless, a great piece, and a must read, for Russian Jews.

Galina Guterman

Anti-Semitism, Immigration & Reunions at Last

Three generations of our family either experienced first-hand or witnessed anti-Semitic manifestations in Russia.

Our parents remembered Pogroms, such as Stalin’s Political Process in the 1930’s.  In addition, there was the constant fear of being arrested and sent to GULAG prisons.

There was a sharp increase in anti-Semitic activity after the WW 2.  In his teenage years, my husband felt aggressive anti-Semitism being a school boy in the 6^th grade.  After class, juveniles often waited for the Jewish boys (there were 5-6 among 40 Russian boys) and often beat them while chanting “Let’s beat Zhidov.”

My husband, my children and I encountered difficult barricades when matriculating to universities  and  institutes in Moscow.  Jewish applicants were not admitted into such institutions as; MGU, Fiztech, MGIMO, etc.  It was common for Jews to be denied admission despite being privileged, having the highest honors or having served in the Soviet army.

Jewish families felt tension and an atmosphere of uncertainty in Russia especially between the years 1950 and 1953.  It seemed as though our parents were waiting for something bad to happen, but protected us by not discussing their fears with us. Unfortunately, their fears came true in the following widely remembered anti-Semitic campaigns; Stalin’s last political trial, “The Judocide that wasn’t” (F. Lyass), The Trial of Jewish Antifascist Committee and the notorious Doctors Trial (1953).

During the 1980’s, the anti-Semitic organization “PAMET” was particularly active.  The organization held mass demonstrations and riots in Moscow and the suburbs of Russia.  Some of these demonstrations included arson of Dachas which belonged to Jewish families.

A new life of freedom began for our family after emigrating from Russia to the U.S.  In NY, My husband wrote several medical books using his tremendous experience as a practitioner and his accumulated knowledge.

In our new country, we were joyfully surrounded by our four beautiful granddaughters, sons and friends.

An unforgettable experience was reuniting with 6 former students from my medical school (The 1^st Moscow Medical Institute) two years ago in NY.  The meeting felt magical and absolutely unexpected.  We had not seen each other for 50 years since our graduation party in 1957.   There was reminiscing and the sharing of both happy and sad memories.  Together, we remembered Stalin’s Last Political Trial and spoke of the Doctors Trial in depth.  This second event was particularly memorable to us as we were medical students at that time and knew several professors who were arrested.

After Stalin’s death the trials were immediately stopped.  Professors came back to their hospitals and clinics to continue teaching.  One of them, M.S. Vovcy went to his lecture on the same day that he received his freedom.   At our reunion we also discussed our children and grandchildren.  These conversations showed that all of our offspring were very well adjusted in America.  Regarding the older generation (those over 70 years of age), their adjustment to American life was not as successful.  Only one of our Moscow friends became an American doctor (an ophthalmologist) managing to overcome difficult years of residency training, with new rules, night calls and not having a good knowledge of the English language at that time.

Shortly after the amazing meeting in New York, our friends, living in Princeton NJ, invited us to visit the annual Princeton graduation Parade, honoring the graduated students of Princeton University.  The oldest alumni of Princeton University open this solemn ceremony.  That year, there were 2 alumni of the class of 1925.   One of them was barely able to walk; the other was unable to walk and sat in a wheelchair.  All of the participants in the parade wore something orange colored as part of their outfit because Princeton’s school color is orange (each American University has its own color and emblem – Princeton’s emblem is a tiger).  One student, a graduate of the year 1934 walked with a dog painted as a tiger. Most of the participants were male as female were not accepted into the University prior to 1958.

There were many tents on the green lawns with tables set up underneath them.  Following the parade ceremony, former students shared memories of their past and present, failures and successes.

There have been several periods of mass Russian-Jewish emigration to the United States.  Each wave of settlers came to America to avoid difficulties faced in Russia. Every parent or grandparent came with an idea of how life could be improved here in the United States.

Second Place: Masha Girshin

“David Feldman – Survivor and Witness of the Holocaust”

My family was among the stream of Jewish immigrants who left Russia in 1989 (when I was 5 years old).  Two years later, in New York, I was reunited with our American relatives, Lillian and David Feldman.  David shared with us his story of survival during the terrible times of WWII.

David Feldman was born in 1919 to a large religious Jewish family in the Polish town of Warsaw-Prague.  He was one of seven children.  However, David’s survival story begins as do many stories of European Jews; with the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1^st, 1939. In the first days of the Nazi occupation of Poland, David was sent by his father to Belostock to try to cross the Russian border to escape being captured by Nazis.  He had crossed the Russian border having no official documents or registration papers, but was captured at the border and held in captivity in a labor camp in Siberia for 3 terrible years.   The living and working conditions were atrocious.  The winters were extremely cold and the summers, too short and bringing with them only an infestation of mosquitoes.  The amount of food was extremely limited.

In 1943, after the Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin Pact, Polish prisoners in Russia were incorporated into the army.  David’s division was sent by sea voyage to Iran.  While on ship, David fell sick with Hepatitis.  He hid in a vault so as not to get thrown overboard into the sea if discovered to be sick.  However, by the time the ship arrived in Iran, he was unable to walk or even stand.  Miraculously, David was discovered by British soldiers and was sent to the military hospital.  Youth, medical care and support of the other Jewish soldiers helped David come back to life.  Soon after his recovery, David was sent with the Polish army to Iraq, where he met many young Jewish enthusiasts.  All of them then decided to leave the Polish camp and devote their energies to fighting for and building a Jewish state.  Armed with fake documents and dressed as a Palestinian, David moved to Kibbutz Romash-Ravesh.  There in 1948 he embraced the Declaration of Israeli Independence with great excitement.  In the Israeli army, he fought in the “War of Independence”.

After the War ended, in Tel Aviv, David met his future wife, Lillian Guterman, who was working for Hadassah in Israel.  David and Lillian shared a bond over both losing their family members in the Holocaust; Nazis murdered most of David’s family members in Poland. Lillian’s family (her grandparents and cousins with small children) were killed in Pinsk/Western Belarus. After their wedding, David and Lillian moved to New York, where the remaining members of Lillian’s family had immigrated in the beginning of the 20^th Century after a series of Kishinev’s Pogroms starting in 1904.

Today, David is 90 years old.  He lives in New York City and continues to amaze me with the sharpness of his memory, attention to detail and stories of his astonishing past.  Mentally, he is the same as when I first met him when I was a little girl.

David’s life during WWII and the capturing of many Jewish families just like ours is part of the suffering of the entire Jewish nation during the terrible times of WWII.  David’s journey during those terrible times is a great example of Jewish survival and the strength of the spirit.

We continue to re-tell David’s story so that future generations do not forget about one of the biggest tragedies that has ever faced the world’s nations – the Holocaust. Hopefully, remembering David’s story, our children and grandchildren will better understand the history of their roots and be proud to be Jews.