Back in the USSR...

As promised, a description of my trip follows. It was such an amazing and busy week that it's hard to condense it into a post. Want more details? Just ask. Pictures coming soon.

A quick intro to the important people on my trip:

Josh and Hayley: my HUC travel partners, and awesome trip buddies. We left Israel in the middle of the night, so none of us started on much sleep. All week we put up with each other, calmed each other down, and cheered each other up. Hayley and I roomed together, and she was amazing at putting up with my passionate hatred of the snooze button.

Ilona: our absolutely amazing translator. Ilona is 19, involved in the Progressive Jewish community in Minsk, and studying to be an English teacher. She has an awesome Russian-British accent. She took care of us all week, not laughing too hard as we tried to learn the Russian alphabet and being more patient than I thought possible when reading an entire menu aloud, only to have all but three dishes eliminated because of presence of bread products, pork products, and other offensive foods. She made this trip what it was. We all made a new friend.

For Dad, Belarus by the numbers: (Mom, see below.)

3: Cities visited. I went to Polotsk, a small city of about 80,00 people, then Vitebsk, a good-sized city and apparently the cultural capital of Belarus, and Minsk, the actual capital.

6: Seders I attended during Passover this year. Josh, Hayley, and I led five of them, with Ilona translating.

3: Seders I attended for Netzer kids, ages 14-20. We went to one in each city. We led the first and third, and the middle one was the dinner-theater-seder.

0: Items on the seder plate at the first (Polotsk) Netzer seder. We got creative. What represents karpas? A potato chip, of course. What represents a bone? A pirouette cookie, Passover acceptableness notwithstanding. This seder turned out to be amazing.

4: Haggadot present at two of our seders. They were mine, Josh’s, Hayley’s, and Ilona’s. Not surprisingly, one of these seders also was the one with the empty seder plate.

17: Adorable children encountered. Most were when visiting a kindergarten in Vitebsk, one was a great grandchild at our first seder in Polotsk, and one was a daughter at our second Polotsk seder.

3: Languages spoken at our lunch table in Vitebsk. Ilona’s friend Stas was guiding us around the city. His English was rusty, but his Hebrew was very good. Stas and Ilona spoke in Russian, Stas and me/Josh/Hayley spoke in Hebrew, Ilona and me/Josh/Hayley spoke in English. There was much confusion, but a lot of fun.

25ish: Choruses of Dayenu sung. We sang at five of the six seders, plus in the kindergarten, approximately 4 times in each singing of the song. We didn’t sing during the dinner-theater-seder, although one 16-year-old with an amazing voice did perform several songs, one of them even Passover related.

4: Museums visited. Two were on the history of Polotsk. I didn’t think a big town/small city could have that much history, but apparently, it does. One was the history of Vitebsk. Much bigger city, much less interesting history, but that could be because it was a tiny museum, all in Russian, and after a long morning of playing with kindergartners and visiting a cemetery. The fourth was the Marc Chagall house museum. I think the most exciting part here was that Josh’s grandma grew up on the same street. The museum was interesting and I liked looking at the old photos and drawings, but Josh was disappointed that the rest of the houses on the street no longer existed.

60: Drops of wine spilled out representing the ten plagues. At the dinner-theater-seder, they were followed by the youth group performing an interpretive dance of the plagues to the tune of “Echad Mi Yodea.” Creative? Yes. Impressive? Definitely. Expected? Nope.

1: Differences between American Jewish teenagers and Belarusian Jewish teenagers. That would be the language. In all other ways, we discovered that they’re pretty much the same. That’s always nice to see!

About 30: Sips or cups of wine (actually, usually grape juice). Four per seder, plus the last night in Minsk, when there were lots of toasts to various parts of the trip by the different community leaders.

10.5: Russian words I now know. Yes, no, please, floor (as in, which floor is my room on?), blanket (as in, my room is freezing, can I have an extra blanket?), potato (as in, I think I might turn into a potato after eating so many of them this week), egg (see description of potato), ice cream (actually, I forgot this word. But it seems important, so I’ll get Ilona to reteach me. It has a spider-letter in it.), goodbye, byebye, restaurant (hint: it looks like PECTOPAH), and that’s all I can remember right now.

3-4: Times we were asked how women can be rabbis. The old people were especially pushy on this issue. We were also asked all kinds of questions about the situation in Israel, Reform Judaism, our family histories, and more.

700: Pictures currently on my computer from this trip. Josh and Hayley are both camera-happy, so I generally kept my camera in my bag while they snapped away. Over 300 are Hayley’s, over 300 are Josh’s, and 60 are mine. I’m working on cutting that down to a more reasonable number to post.

For my mom, a super-concise description of the trip, with as few numbers as possible.

Sunday

Ridiculously early morning flight, requiring leaving home in the middle of the night, without sleeping. Sleep on flight. Long layover in Vienna. Arrive in Minsk, have dinner, go to sleep. Scary, militaristic airport.

Monday

Met our translator Ilona. Realized about 5 minutes later that she is awesome. Really early morning bus ride to Polotsk. Bus is 10-passenger van. Bathroom stop: holes in the ground with walls, but modern plumbing the rest of the trip. Arrived in Polotsk, had lunch, led seder for seniors plus one adorable 5-year-old, Diana. We had her “help” with the seder, holding up items as we talked about them, acting out plagues, and generally being adorable. After seder, we went out for dinner, met a few of the Netzer kids who would be at one of tomorrow’s seders, and crashed.

Tuesday

Tour around Polotsk. We saw a couple of small museums, some big churches, and generally a beautiful small city. The river through the city used to be bigger, and this city is where Josh’s relatives got on a boat to head to America many years ago. Another senior seder, but this time with the more secular community. There was another cute kid, but she was 12 and therefore slightly less cute. It was hard to get this group involved. Short matzah-and-chocolate-spread break after seder, then to another one, with the Netzer kids. I was the oldest person in the room. The room wasn’t quite ready for seder; there was a box of matzah, candy, cookies, and soda, an empty seder plate, and no haggadot. We decided this one ended up as possibly our best seder, and definitely the best for thinking on our feet.

Wednesday

Early morning bus to Vitebsk, where Hayley and Josh both have family from. We led another seder for seniors, which also had no haggadot for the 40 or so people there, although everything else was set up beautifully. During the meal several Orthodox students around our age came in, and apparently had been watching our seder. They were on a similar program, and wanted to talk to us and say hello. It was an interesting moment where we couldn’t decide whether to feel the sharing of community or very checked up on. We also visited the Chagall House museum, on the street where Josh’s grandma used to live, although only that one house has been preserved; the rest of the ghetto was destroyed.

Thursday

We visited the kindergarten of the Progressive Jewish community, about 15 adorable kids from ages 3-7. We sang songs, danced, and made paper towel tye-dye afikomen covers with crayons and food coloring. From one extreme to the other: after kindergarten, we visited the Jewish cemetery. There was no record of anyone from Josh’s or Hayley’s families, probably because the cemetery was in awful condition. Many of the older gravestones couldn’t be read, and those that could were in Yiddish. The newer ones were in Russian. Hayley found one headstone/monument that turns out to probably be a family member. We said kaddish together. That night was the dinner-theater-seder. The Netzer kids put on a dramatic seder where we were mostly spectators, with a couple of parts that they had given us to explain things. There were about 75 people there. The kids did an interpretive dance of the ten plagues. There was a teenage singer who was fantastic. There was a dance party afterwards. The idea was to get the parents involved as well as the kids, but its unclear how well that worked. It was definitely entertaining though!

Friday

Pre-dawn train to Minsk, in a sleeper cabin, where we slept the whole way. Snow in Vitebsk before we left, sunny in Minsk. We met up with the other Belarus groups, and we were all on such emotional highs from the week. In the afternoon, we toured around Minsk with Ilona and saw lots of gorgeous buildings and an amazing park. In the evening, instead of Shabbat services we had yet another seder, with the Minsk Netzer group which is also Ilona’s community. They were incredibly well-prepared for us, and I thought it was the best seder meal of the trip. We played seder-bingo and had an afikomen hunt reminiscent of those at Herb’s house. There were at least three of them by the end, and I think more that were never found. Later that night we went on a night tour to the monument for all the fallen soldiers of WWII.

Saturday

We started at the holocaust memorial, a small area of a mass grave which now also has a small memorial. We were there with the rabbi and some members of the community. Then we went to services, which were familiar at times, and different at times. The afternoon was free, and we did lots of just walking around and seeing the sites. In the evening we had a cantorial concert with area cantors and HUC student Melanie performing beautifully! We then had a closing dinner, in a religious school classroom, where different community members thanked us for everything we had done, and we all went around and told assorted stories and meaningful experiences. Later that night me, Josh, Hayley, Ilona, and a friend of Ilona’s had an ice cream party in one of our hotel rooms.

Sunday

We relaxed all morning, and then ten minutes before heading to the airport, Ilona surprised us by showing up to say goodbye! It was so nice that she made the effort to come back for one more hug, because we really had such a great time with her, and it would not have been the same trip without her. Then we spent way too long at the Minsk airport, flew to Vienna and met back up with groups from Ukraine and St. Petersburg, and flew back to Tel Aviv, arriving in the middle of the night. We were all somewhat relieved to be back in Israel, and shocked to realize how little time we have left here.

Throughout the trip, there were zillions of conversations with Ilona and some of her friends about differences between life in Belarus and in America (and Israel). We talked about schooling, relationships, communism, government, television, and so much more. Between these conversations and all the questions from the community members, we covered a lot of pretty deep ground!

Whew! That’s as short a summary as I can do. I’m working on narrowing down the pictures too, and hopefully tonight they’ll be up as well!

Grandma: safe travels and I’ll see you in a few days!! Everyone else...I'll be home in less than 5 weeks! Wow.