What does it take to be your country's first Reform rabbi? Drive, intellect, diplomacy, a sense of humor, the ability to compromise when necessary and fight when called upon...and a lot of guts.
That's what Nellie Shulman, Alexander Dukhovny, and Chaim Ben-Ya'akov (soon to be ordained) all have, in spades. The first generation of native-born, Russian-speaking spiritual leaders of any denomination to serve in the post-Soviet Union, all three took up their positions last year.
Shulman, in Minsk, has the added challenge of being a woman. Dukhovny, in Kiev, faces Ukraine's deeply entrenched Orthodox heritage and a hostile Hasidic establishment. Ben-Ya'akov, in Moscow, has...Moscow, the center of the post-Soviet world, with the eyes of the international Jewish world trained upon him.
They know there's a lot riding on each of them.
Alexander Dukhovny -- Ukraine
"The Jews of Ukraine need a strong rabbi, and I am strong," asserts Dukhovny, who at 49 is the oldest of the three. "Spiritual, not physical strength," he adds quickly, although the sight of this tall, energetic man striding purposefully down Kiev's main street might suggest he has both.
Dukhovny grew up with the strongest Jewish background of the trio. In fact, when he was accepted to Reform rabbinic school, an Orthodox rabbi in Kiev told him, "You're the grandson of the Hasidic rabbi of Ruzhin, why don't you let us send you to yeshiva?" Dukhovny responded, "I respect your way. But after 70 years of authoritarian rule, I don't need that again."
Born in Kiev in 1950, just before Stalin's infamous Doctor's Plot ushered in a new era of antisemitic fervor, Dukhovny was barred from Kiev University because he was Jewish; he went to a technical university in the evenings and worked with his father at the Academy of Sciences during the day. His mother, who died in 1990 of lung cancer, attributed to fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear accident, narrowly escaped a mass killing in the ghetto where she and her family were trapped during World War II. "She never spoke to me about death, only about life," Dukhovny says. "She wrote in her diary, 'Where there is life, there is hope.' That's the motto of my congregation, 'Hatikva--hope.' We have hope that we are rebuilding Jewish life here."
In the late 1980s, Dukhovny became a tour guide in Kiev, and after the fall of communism was recruited by the Israeli Embassy, Jewish Agency, and the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to lead tours for visiting delegations. That evolved into a job with the JDC in Kiev, where he directed educational and cultural projects for the entire country. "That's where I gained my knowledge of the 'Jewish wars' here," he says ruefully, referring to the uneasy relationship between Ukraine's Orthodox and non-Orthodox groups and the ongoing jockeying for position among the Jewish organizations working in the FSU. "That's important for a rabbi. You're not just a spiritual leader; it's also politics."
Through his work with the JDC, Dukhovny began teaching Jewish history at Kiev's newly formed Reform congregation "Hatikva," and in 1994 began studying for the rabbinate at the Leo Baeck College in London.
"I didn't know any Hebrew, and very little English," he admits. "I gave up a well-paid job and a nice apartment in Kiev to live in a 'nun's cell' at the age of 44. I thought, how altruistic I am! Look what I'm doing for the Jews of Ukraine! Only in my second year there did I understand I was doing it for myself, for what I could become."
On July 11, 1999, Dukhovny married a fellow rabbinic student. The wedding took place in the morning, and both were ordained the same afternoon. Dukhovny flies to London every six weeks or so, where his wife has a congregation, and she flies to Kiev on the off months. It isn't easy, he admits. But his work lies in Ukraine, where so much needs to be done. "For me, it's a personal challenge to build the Movement here,"he says. "There's great poverty in Ukraine. It's hard to pray on an empty stomach."
Dukhovny revels in his non-Orthodoxy. He's a snappy dresser, and is clean-shaven. "I could grow a beard, but I don't, on purpose," he states. "My Hasidic grandfather shaved his beard after the war, saying it wasn't necessary to look different. I do this partly to honor him." And although he incorporates many Hasidic melodies and tales into his services, his political orientation is very Reform. As the man in charge of Ukraine's more than 30 Reform congregations, he sets the standard.
Chaim Ben-Ya'akov -- Russia
Chaim Ben-Ya'akov, 32, runs things a little more traditionally in Moscow than does his counterpart in Kiev. His physical appearance is also more conservative, with his short beard, black kipah, dark suit, and white shirt.
He was a completely secular Jew when he left Moscow for Israel in 1988. Intrigued by the "strange people I saw walking around Jerusalem," he began to search for his Jewish roots. He spent several years studying in Orthodox yeshivas before wandering one day into the World Union for Progressive Judaism's Beit Shmuel. "I asked the guard if I could speak to a rabbi, and he said, 'She just walked past.' That was my first meeting with a Reform Jew -- a woman rabbi."
Ben-Ya'akov embraced the welcoming, intellectually challenging atmosphere he found at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem. "People had open minds," he says. "I didn't agree with everything they taught me, but I had the freedom to disagree. At the yeshivas, they just told me I was wrong."
In 1999, during the final stages of his rabbinic studies, the World Union asked Ben-Ya'akov whether he'd return to Moscow to serve as the spiritual leader for the Reform Movement in Russia. It was his first trip back since he'd left a decade earlier. "My first day, I went to a Netzer Olami camp and saw 80 young people from all over Russia who knew the prayers, songs, all about Israel and Jewish life," he recalls. "I almost burst into tears. These young people have such desire to be part of the Jewish community. The path is long and hard, and only the liberal movement -- Progressive Judaism -- can take them along it."
As the only Reform student rabbi in all of Russia, Ben-Ya'akov is in endless demand. He leaves home at eight every morning and doesn't return until late at night. Long lines of visitors form at his office door, people with religious questions, problems with aliyah, conversion difficulties, or sometimes just the desire to talk to "the rabbi." He runs the Machon program, teaches adult classes, represents the Reform Movement at official functions, and leads popular Shabbat and holiday services at Moscow's brand new Progressive Jewish Community Center.
"Of all my work, I love teaching the best," he says. "When I see the Machon students, who begin with no Jewish knowledge and are already teaching others from traditional Jewish texts, it gives me a feeling I can't explain. It's such a wonderful thing to be able to prepare Jewish teachers for Russia. Good teachers are essential for Reform Judaism, because our strength is in questioning."
Nellie Shulman--Belarus
Nellie Shulman had plenty of questions in 1990, when the Iron Curtain fell and the 17-year-old St. Petersburg native decided to explore a Judaism she only vaguely knew from summer visits to her Yiddish-speaking grandmother. She joined up with Chabad, but after a year she decided "it wasn't for me," and was about to leave Judaism entirely when a friend brought her to a "different" Kabbalat Shabbat gathering.
"It was a group of people in a room, very interesting people," she says. "We didn't know what we were doing, but we stayed together and met for Shabbat." In '92, the group contacted the World Union, Shulman was invited to a regional seminar, and she realized that what she and her friends were practicing was Reform Judaism.
After receiving her BA in Russian Jewish history, Shulman was accepted to the Leo Baeck College in '93. Five years later, a year before her ordination, the 26-year-old became the Reform rabbi of Minsk. Today, she is in charge of the 18 Reform congregations of Belarus, including a congregation for the deaf in Minsk, where services are conducted in sign language.
Although she's the first native-born woman rabbi in the former Soviet Union, Shulman insists she's encountered no negative reactions. That's partly because many of the people she meets in Belarus "have no experience with rabbis or Jewish life at all, and therefore have no preconceived notions about what's normal." And partly it's due to the fact that the most active members of her congregation are women.
At 27, the just-married Shulman is a firebrand. She talks a mile a minute, in fluent, British-accented English; in dress she favors black, which sets off her short, spiky red hair; and when the singing starts, she's always the first to jump up and join in.
Like Dukhovny and Ben-Ya'akov, Shulman believes that Reform Judaism is not simply the best option for post-Soviet Jews, but their only option. "The Orthodox will only take in halachic Jews, people like me," she points out. "By not taking in the rest, who are the majority, the Orthodox deprive the Jewish world of a huge number of people. Remember, most of the Jews of Belarus left. The intermarried ones, in particular, stayed behind. Now that we welcome them in, they go to our Sunday schools, camps, and seminars."
Shulman has no intention of leaving the former Soviet Union. "I see how the young people here stand with their mouths open," she says. "It's all so new for them, so exciting. I see how the people have changed in the two years I've worked with them, and I know it's partly because of me. That's so wonderful."
Sue Fishkoff, a former staff writer for the Jerusalem Post, contributes regularly to national and international Jewish periodicals from her home in Washington, DC.
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