Travel Jitters Won't Stop These Jewish Students!

About 100 American and Canadian Jewish students will bring food, songs and traditions of Passover to Jews of Russia, Ukraine and beyond.

April 2002

For some it may be the best Passover of their lives.
For all of them, it will mean bringing food, songs and traditions of Passover to reach and touch Jews of all ages in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus.
Come Passover, despite world travel jitters, groups of students and young people from North America will travel for about two weeks from community to community, from shtetle to shtetle, from city to city in the former Soviet Union (FSU), home to about 1.5 million Jews. These Americans and Canadians join about 1,000 Russian young men and women from throughout the FSU and work with them to bring Passover into people’s homes, schools and community centers.

“The project helps develop students as Jewish leaders,” said Gary Hirschberg, who organized last year’s Washington area contingent.

A moving experience certainly will occur when the American and Russian students hold Passover programs in so-called “Warm Homes” and Hesed Welfare Centers sponsored by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Here senior citizens who do not have a family, or whose family has left the country, come together as a group at someone’s home or at the Welfare Center for their Passover experience. Here, they talk about Judaism; sing Hebrew and Yiddish songs, as well as hold the Seder.

All of them will explain and conduct Passover Seders; visit the elderly; serve up smiles and warm meals and spread the joy of Passover and tradition to Jews in a program known as the “Passover Project” for more than 350 communities in the former Soviet Union.

Now in its seventh year, the program is a partnership between the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, (JDC) and Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. The JDC and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation have supported Hillel’s vision of bringing Jewish life and culture to students in the FSU since 1994 when Hillel’s program began.

JDC offices in the FSU, in partnership with Hillel in Jerusalem, organize the Pesach Project. The American volunteers are affiliated with Jewish Federations, Hillels or other Jewish community groups in their cities.

The roster of North American young adults traveling to FSU communities include: Baltimore to Odessa; Los Angeles to Rostov-on-Don; Boston to Dnepropetrovsk; Toronto to Kishinev; Pittsburgh to Kishinev; Washington D.C. to Kharkov; New York students to Moscow; and Hebrew University students, including Americans and Canadians, to the Kiev area. Also, Cleveland and Palm Beach to St. Petersburg,; and Montreal to Kiev. The major goal of the American students will be to support the revival of Jewish life, identity and culture in the former Soviet Union through the celebration of Pesach.

Amos Levi, director of University of Maryland Baltimore County Hillel, who this year will lead Baltimore’s contingent to Odessa, said, “despite all the darkness coming into the world now, there is light in the miracle of the rebirth of the Jewish community in the former Soviet Union.”

This experience of going to Russia and the Ukraine “will give American Jewish college students an ability to appreciate how available a rich Jewish life can be for all of us,” added Levi.

Included in the material the students will be carrying will be an easy-to-use- Hillel Hagaddah and a companion guide produced through a JDC grant. Replete with graphics and photos, the Hagaddah contains both Russian and Hebrew, as well as transliterations of Seder passages. Each Hillel student will take with him or her a Passover kit which includes kiddush cups, candles and other Pesach resources.

“Those chosen have a solid Jewish background and familiarity with the Passover Seder,” explained Scott Richman, Director of JDC’s Former Soviet Union Desk. “The students have been selected because they are outgoing, energetic, creative and sensitive to cultural differences, so they can overcome difficulties,” said Richman, continuing, “all the students know that conditions in the field can include long hours, changing schedules and itineraries, as well as different types of food and inclement weather.”

Courtney Krieger, of Cleveland, a past participant in the Pesach Project, told the JDC, that many of the Jews he met had the same story. They would come up and cry, “Thank you for giving me all the memories back of when I was little and my father would lead the Seder.” In the Russia of the 21st century, a man can “finally go to a Seder and not worry about being watched or arrested,” pointed out Courtney.

“The work of these organizations is a wonderful example of these communities taking charge of their Jewish future. This North American participation in the Passover Project shows that world Jewry is taking on the responsibility to help revive Jewish life in the former Soviet Union,” concluded Richman.