4

From Evrei to Iudei

Turning or Returning to Faith?

The previous chapter illustrates the institutional dimensions and societal importance of Odesa’s major synagogues as well as the role that visible Jewish celebrations, symbols, and rituals have come to play in the city.¹ This chapter, in turn, focuses on the personal testimonies of those whose relationship to Judaism was redefined in these new institutional and cultural contexts. The stories told here help us understand how and why some Jews responded to this emergent public Judaism and how religious ideas, institutions, and leadership influenced personal, kin, and social relations in the city. They demonstrate the sometimes-fraught relationships between newly observant Jews and their nonobservant family members and friends. And they show the general skepticism and doubt expressed within and outside some of Odesa’s religious Jewish circles about the authenticity and sincerity of the newly observant or overtly religious practices. I argue that adopting a religious identity in twenty-first-century Odesa became a way for Jews to define their Jewishness by turning to, rather than returning to, religious practice and faith.

Throughout this chapter, I highlight the notions of “tradition” and the descriptions of what is “traditional” or “traditionally done” as conveyed by my interlocutors. In its general usage, tradition refers to “elements of historical continuity or social inheritance in culture, or the social process by which such continuity is achieved.”² In some contexts, secular Jews used the term to refer to the collective social inheritance or collective identity, such as traditions that are “Odesan,” “Soviet,” or “Jewish,” as they referenced beliefs, practices, habits, routines, institutions, or texts, among other things. But in the context of Odesa’s religious Jewish population, the term traditsionnyi (traditional) demarcated a level on the hierarchy of observance. By claiming to be traditional in this way, they were demonstrating their knowledge of Jewish religious practices and partial commitment to some observances, which, they indicated, distinguished them from the secular as well as the fully observant Orthodox. In its practice-centered understanding of tradition, there is an assumed temporal continuity guided by precedent and convention, and tradition is construed as replicating what has been done before, regulated by the moral weight of public opinion, especially that of ancestors.³ But in the case of Odesa’s Jewry, traditions inherited from ancestors and learned in post-Soviet Jewish institutions sometimes showed themselves to be contradictory—the situated practice, ideology, and rhetoric about tradition may “serve as well for conflict as for the ‘binding force’ of acquiescence.”⁴ By claiming to be “traditional,” younger Jews indicated their separation from their immediate family while establishing a connection with a more distant imagined community: the Jewish people. Moreover, in most families, children taught in various Jewish centers of activity educated their parents about the “traditional” ways of the Jewish people, as such, reversing the ancestral role in the inheritance.

For many Orthodox congregants who claimed to be “following traditions” or who described themselves as “traditional,” such assertions served as claims to authenticity that rested on the historical reach of Orthodoxy (and Orthodox teachings to this day) and revealed the congregational politics between Orthodox and Reform in Odesa. Some elderly secular Jews, who had long internalized a Soviet theory of modernization, used the term traditional Jews to pejoratively refer to those who were “shtetl-like” and “backward.” In this way, they challenged the local hierarchy of knowledge linked to Jewish observance.

Anthropologists have long pointed out such dynamics in the politics of tradition—traditional tales as instruments of divisiveness rather than unity and performed in defense of competing claims to status.⁵ In Zvi Gitelman’s analysis of the evolution of Jewish identities, he asks simply, “Is ‘Jewish’ an ethnic or a religious adjective?”⁶ The Russian language supports this distinction by providing two words for “a Jew”: evrei and iudei. The word evrei is used for a member of the Jewish ethnic group (Hebrews) or the Soviet-defined nationality (evreistvo); iudei identifies a Jew as “a follower of the laws and rituals of iudeistvo [the Jewish religion], or iudaizm [Judaism].”⁷ This explains how a survey analysis of post-Soviet Jewish life conducted in the 1990s found that “Jews in the FSU do not strongly connect the Jewish religion with being Jewish.”⁸ Competing and contradictory qualities and content of being Jewish are not specific to Odesa, to Ukraine, or even to the larger territory of ex-Soviet states. Rather, individuals draw on entirely different domains to explain their sense of Jewish identification—ritual practice, ethnicity, shared history, secular culture, and common descent, for example—which reminds us of the extent to which “all expressions of social solidarity are, like the identities from which they stem, both socially produced and culturally inflected.”⁹

In the Odesa that emerged out of state socialism, Judaism as a religion was a defining feature of Jewish identity. Even among my less-observant friends in Odesa, I witnessed how life cycle rituals (births, coming-of-age birthdays, weddings, and funerals) and Jewish celebrations were increasingly infused with Judaic markers. Many of Odesa’s Jews had indeed begun to see their Jewishness through a religious lens, using vocabulary linked to Judaism, partaking in Jewish religious practices, dressing religiously, observing some religious commandments, and taking on Jewish names. Yet, it wasn’t out of the ordinary for some to adopt religious practices without adopting the label “religious.”

In light of this change of practice, this chapter questions the validity of the term revival in the context of religiosity more than two decades after state socialism. Although the number of religious communities in the city increased between the years 1991 and 2003, local sociologists saw religion and religious values as marginal to the overall public consciousness. This observation led them to conclude that while one might have spoken of a religious rise in Ukraine in the mid-1990s, by 2003 that was no longer the case.¹⁰ Some scholars have argued that although there was a “general decrease in Jewish educational activity by the Jewish population” in Russia and Ukraine after the early 1990s, those who regularly attended religious programming expressed a “deeper interest” in these subjects than before.¹¹ Other studies support the view that this is not specific to Odesa and that revival is a problematic term to describe religiosity in the FSU for several reasons. In her research on Russian Jews in Moscow, Galina Zelenina casts doubt on the term revival, noting that because most of the underground religious Jews and those involved in the national movement had left, “the Jewish revival of the 1990s was carried out by new actors and organizations, and it produced new ideas.”¹² In Kyrgyzstan, Mathijs Pelkmans finds a comparable phenomenon: although the number of mosques rose and people more readily asserted their religious affiliation, “it is questionable to what extent this meant more active participation in Islam, or Christianity for that matter.”¹³ Pelkmans reports, “I was more struck by the lack of interest most Kyrgyz displayed in religion than by a ‘religious revival.’”¹⁴ Similarly, in Odesa at that time, one’s affiliation or even observance of some traditions didn’t necessarily convey a religious belonging.

Defining the Borders of Religious “Community”

Orthodox Jews, most often, define themselves by their religious observance of Shabbat and the laws of kashrut and nidah (family purity).¹⁵ But as social anthropologist Jonathan Webber points out, Orthodoxy “may mean different things in different contexts.”¹⁶ The Orthodox Jews I met in Odesa tended to label people as religious according to the standard of a commitment to observance rather than on faith (in the sense of belief). Thus, many of Odesa’s Orthodox Jews used the words religioznyi (religious) and sobliudaiushchie (observant) or sobliudaiushchie traditsii (observant of traditions) interchangeably. Other ethnographers have described Judaism as an embodied religion that is articulated through practice and organically connected to the cultures where it is embedded.¹⁷ Pelkmans notes a similarity among the mainstream Sunni Islamic communities and Orthodox Christians who use the label “religious” to refer to that commitment to practice instead of belief. But he draws a distinction with Protestants (especially Evangelical Pentecostals) for whom religion and religious are suspect terms to be avoided compared to the true marker of faith.¹⁸

It was not uncommon for Jews in Odesa to define themselves as Orthodox simply to mark their difference from Reform Jews. To locate themselves more precisely within the local sphere of Orthodoxy, they named their orientation as either Chabadnik (follower of the Chabad Lubavitch congregation) or Litvak (follower of the Lithuanian Orthodox movement, Tikva Or Sameach). As for the far fewer congregants of Progressive Judaism (Reformisty), they placed belief above the strict adherence to rituals of observance, observing them in their own ways. It must also be noted that there were Jews in Orthodox settings who claimed to be veruiushchie (believers) but not sobliudaiushchie (observants) and others who identified as not religious but felt more connected to the Orthodox community’s approach, atmosphere, and ideology. Most Orthodox congregants were not observant but were aligned in their view that Orthodox Judaism was authentic Judaism.

According to the chief rabbi of the Progressive Jewish Congregations in Ukraine, Oleksandr Dihovnii, what defines Reform congregants as religious Jews is their “Jewish soul.” This faith in Judaism guides their moral actions in life, and the ethical commandments are emphasized as key markers of Jewish identity. But in the Progressive perspective, rituals can be transformed to meet the needs of the present. In Rabbi Dihovnii’s view, Jewish traditions are always evolving and are enriched with new meaning with every new generation. Based on this definition, members of Rabbi Yulia’s Reform congregation whom I observed during my research identified themselves as religious even though they didn’t follow strict commandments. Their practice of Judaism included participating in synagogue life and celebrating Shabbat and the Jewish holidays—events where men and women mixed, and there was singing and guitar music. They viewed these practices as symbolic activities important for their Jewish identity and regarded adherence to strict religious commandments as old ways of marking Jewishness that were no longer suitable for modern times. In this way they saw themselves as more “modern” and continuing Odesa’s long lineage of modern Jewish traditions.

Likewise, Jews affiliated with the wide array of religious institutions throughout the city did not feel that adhering to strict religious commandments was part of their Jewish identity. Many Jews used synagogues for social and educational activities. Many relied on the aid and welfare provided by the congregations; others came to see friends, meet potential partners, broker business deals, or catch up on the latest news and gossip. As mentioned earlier, many subscribed to the Jewish newspapers that are printed in Russian and distributed free of charge: the Shomrei Shabbos newspaper, for example, has six thousand subscribers. None of these facts necessarily reflect any particular pattern of observance. I met many students in Jewish schools, universities, after-school programs, and camps who followed the rules of religious conduct when they were within an institution but not when they were outside of it. The “proper” codes of behavior and dress were matters of institutional necessity, not rules for their private lives. Even the religious organizations understood that they could only teach and preach the importance of their rules and commandments, not dictate personal choice, and they therefore requested that at least in public, religious rules be observed.

Although religious leaders saw their congregants as part of their religious community—many Jews applied the term only to those who they knew lived by religious laws within and outside Jewish institutions—observance was often only partial among the majority of affiliated Jews in Odesa. Joseph Zissel, director of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Ukraine, said half-jokingly in an interview in 2019 that “the majority of Jews in Ukraine are not religious. But don’t tell that to the rabbi. They think everyone is religious.”¹⁹ He estimated there were five to six thousand religious Jews in Ukraine. As for which observances might mark one as religious in Odesa, the question invited reflection. Vera, who was born in 1976 and saw herself as religious (and even taught Judaism), put it this way:

First of all, it’s difficult to say who exactly fits into that [observant] category. Obviously, those who keep Shabbat, kosher, proper dress, mikvah, and so on. But as you know, in Odessa you meet people who observe these commandments in various combinations. Take me, for instance: kosher, Shabbat—but I wear trousers and not a skirt [as is demanded of women by the Jewish law, halakha]. I think that for many, my status is [therefore] questionable. Second, today there are a number of people who don’t necessarily demonstrate their observance of commandments publicly. They live by them, but you don’t really see them doing it.

In other words, Jews who were religious in differing ways couldn’t easily identify one another, but to most, those who observed Shabbat and laws of kashrut were generally regarded as religious.

Again, it’s important to note that the three religious congregations were independent of one another, offering few joint events. Noting the rarity of multicommunal events, one of the employees of the Chabad congregation told me that the two Orthodox congregations were last brought together for the great cycle celebration of the sun (birkat hakhama), which occurs every twenty-eight years and took place on April 8, 2009. And while Odesa has never had and still does not have a Jewish quarter, observant Jews looking to buy property made it a priority to live within walking distance of their synagogue, which resulted in more concentrated Jewish areas surrounding the two congregations in the center of the city. This division carried over into gender distinctions within the congregations because women, unlike men, were not obliged to participate in public prayer. Exempt from such specific time-bound commandments, women could find themselves praying alone at home, without meeting one another as observant Jews. Jewish men, on the other hand, were brought together by the obligation to pray three times a day, preferably in the presence of a minyan and usually in the synagogue.²⁰ For a number of elderly Jews, and in some cases their children, avoiding public displays of traditions was also a relic of Soviet upbringing, when much of the observance of commandments, if practiced, moved into the private and domestic realms.

These varied orientations toward being Jewish are partly a matter of religious flexibility and partly the result of Odesa’s changing religious environment. Many of the old ways of being identified as Jewish in Odesa, in Ukraine, and throughout the FSU are disappearing or have already faded from view. The Soviet passport designation of “Jewish” as a nationality, along with state-directed antisemitism and Jewish quotas in education facilities and workplaces, is no more. The idea that being Jewish was a secular, biologically inherited identity passed through either parent that for many meant belonging to the Russian-speaking intelligentsia has been eclipsed by rules of halakha and the practice of specifically religious Jewish rituals and traditions.²¹ Thus, even those Jews who rejected the new religiosity, or whose observance was less public or visible, were defined by an environment of controversy, negotiation, and experimentation that has surrounded Jewish traditions since the late 1980s.

For instance, when my friend’s father died in Odesa in 2006, the khevra kadisha required that his corpse be circumcised before they could give him a Jewish burial. While I was shocked to hear about this at the time, his daughter reassured me that all “halakhic Jews” had to be circumcised before they could be buried. “By tradition means by tradition” (Po traditsii znachit po traditsii), she concluded. She wasn’t at all distressed. But a Jewish friend raised in Soviet Odesa who was now living in the US was deeply upset that a man who had lived as a Jew his whole life now needed a new confirmation and affirmation of his Jewishness, as defined by the Chabad rituals, to be buried as a Jew. It is apparent that having some old traditions like circumcision reinstated after a person’s lifetime, as a correction to Soviet Jewishness, aroused ambivalent feelings among some close friends who questioned this transgression, especially without the person’s consent. But kin who were educated in the new canons of Jewish practice accepted the practice as the correct and “traditional” ritual in the burial procedure.

From Secularism to Judaism: Motivations and Paths of Return

Because most of the older generations of Soviet-raised Jews I met in the mid-2000s grew up secular, very few could teach their children about Judaism. This meant that for many families, religious upbringing in postindependence Odesa had to take place outside the home. The newly observant Jews I met learned about religious observances through interactions with religious Jewish emissaries and Jewish organizations or through personal relations with an observant Jew. They were not recovering a previously abandoned or suppressed family practice, as implied by the term ba’al teshuvah, which is often used by religious leaders who consider newly religious Jews to be those who “repent and return” to Judaism.²² Rather, most newly observant Jews described their journey as twofold: first, they rejected what they often called the “religious/spiritual emptiness” and “absence of knowledge” about Judaism and moved toward learning and eventually adopting a new value system strongly attached to faith in God and the practice of the commandments (such as keeping Shabbat and so on); and second, they gave up their non-Jewish practices.

To be clear, many Odesan Jews did not move up a “progressive scale of observance,” to quote the phrase used by Rebecca Golbert to describe young Jews in Kyiv who similarly “reject[ed] the institutional model of religious development.”²³ Instead, as the stories that follow show, Odesa’s Jews engaged in attachments to religiosity that were partial, indefinite, or interrupted or that had even been abandoned altogether. Along the way, many of them questioned their own commitment—and that of others—to religious practice and faith. I met observant Orthodox Jews who described a “process” that began with, say, no longer eating pork and moved on to accumulating religious responsibilities that led to daily observance of such rituals as prayers, dress codes, and dietary laws. But the steps were varied, and the process took longer for some than it did for others, with changes of direction and devotion. Some abandoned observance altogether.

Many of the foreign Jews working in Odesa described the new religiosity along the lines of a return and revival. They tended to see Odesa’s religious Jews as part of the ba’al teshuvah movement, which brought Jews out of the darkness of communist reforms to modern-day religious freedom. Odesan Jews rarely described their personal trajectories as returning to traditions that had previously been abandoned by their elders, nor did they refer to themselves as ba’alei teshuvah. Instead, I saw that newly observant Jews were seeing themselves as pioneers by adopting customs that weren’t familiar to or approved of by their parents or even their grandparents. Not surprisingly, in some cases, those secular family members repudiated these new religious practices as “backward,” articulating the residual force of the Soviet modernization narrative.

As this new version of Jewish life took shape in Odesa in the early 1990s, it garnered much interest. Many Odesans told me they were drawn to the topic of religion, which had previously been banned. They also wanted to feel part of a meaningful community. Speaking to newly observant families, I often got the feeling that people had found great strength, courage, and meaning in their dedication to Judaism, and most important, they had found a community linked to Odesa and beyond. Their stories were infused with a sudden sense of the power of God and with a spirit of rebellion against their previous ignorance of Jewish history, traditions, and religion, the exploration of which was now emerging as a form of new, post-Soviet freedom. Vera, for example, described her early days of observance as being a form of romantic militancy, as if she were part of an underground movement: “It was more like a period of war than a time of normal living.” Being observant “was very difficult then, but my memories of this period are very warm.”

Vera’s mother was Jewish and her father, Ukrainian. She grew up outside Kyiv, and her family had survived the Chernobyl catastrophe. She told me that in her early years, she was “very distant from Jewish life.” But in 1990, she went to Odesa, where she had family, and enrolled in the university there. That summer, before school started, she was already wanting to change her life for something more meaningful and resonant, and yet she felt that she lacked the proper foundation to do so. The first step was an education: “At the end of that summer, an ad in the local newspaper announced that all Jewish girls over the age of twelve and all Jewish boys over thirteen could have a bat or bar mitzvah.²⁴ One of my cousins decided to take part in this ceremony. Then a small group formed of people interested in studying tradition, rituals, Hebrew, and so on. My cousin took me to one of these meetings. It was all very exciting then; everything was new and we were eager to learn.” Still, Vera emphasized, “it didn’t happen overnight.”

When I was first starting to observe, everything was difficult. What to eat, how to observe Shabbat and holidays, and combining them with my studies. I always had to find a way to get around something. I remember that first, my two cousins and I decided we would keep Shabbat. And then, with time, the three of us made the decision to keep kosher. We were living at home with my aunt, who didn’t support our choices and viewed them as extremely radical. So that obviously made things more difficult. We kashered [made kosher] one burner on her stove and a few pots, and used only those to cook with.

The sense of doing something radical and demanding played into Vera’s feelings of comradery through the discipline of maintaining strict adherence.

Maya, who was born in 1973, had a similar account. Though she grew up identifying as a Jew and had always had Jewish friends, it was only at university that she started practicing Judaism. “I was studying math, and many of my friends in the department were Jewish.” She saw an ad promoting a synagogue’s Chanukah celebration, and she attended with a fellow student named Slavik, who later became her husband. “We didn’t really know what to expect,” she said, “but we decided to try it. I had grown up playing chess and traveling to tournaments, and going to KVN [Klub Veselykh i Nakhodchivykh, the Club of the Merry and Resourceful, a student comedy club], but all these things were no longer happening. So this was something new, something interesting and intellectually stimulating. At the end of the night, we were invited to come back, and as you can see, we haven’t left since.” For them, Maya said, the process began slowly: “We started giving up some things, such as eating pork and shrimp, mixing dairy and meat, going out on Fridays. . . . With time, it became more natural to us and we took on more and more. It wasn’t until we moved away from Slavik’s parents’ house that we started observing fully. Once you start doing certain observances it doesn’t feel right to turn back. . . . Now it’s just part of life.” As Maya explained it, she and her husband had made a moral commitment, and establishing the practice as natural contributed to their growing observance. Maya and Slavik were among the first couples in Odesa to have a religious Jewish wedding ceremony with a chuppah, in 1993.²⁵ She showed me pictures of the ceremony and even a newspaper clipping—because Jewish religious weddings were so rare in Odesa then, their ceremony made the local news, and their chuppah is on display at the Museum of the History of Odesa Jews.

Some individuals explored other religions before choosing to live by the canons of Judaism. Dima, a biology student born in Odesa in 1973, shared this story of becoming observant when we met in Israel:

I was always interested in religion. My mother is Jewish and my father is Russian. At one point in my life, I was intrigued by Catholicism and seriously entertained the idea of becoming a devoted religious man. . . . I first came to the old synagogue to learn Hebrew, thinking I might one day go to Israel, where some of my family had emigrated. There I met Shaya [Gisser] and we started talking. I never made it to Hebrew [class], but I decided to start studying with Shaya instead. There were probably only fifteen of us, and we met daily. This man [Shaya] was able to answer a lot of my questions about life and religion.

A number of observant Jews—and not just those associated with Shaya’s pioneering initiative—called their decision to turn to Judaism a “religious awakening,” a sudden moment of clarity that they needed to live a “morally right life.”

Katya (born in 1991), a student at the Lithuanian Orthodox Jewish school Tikva Or Sameach, told me that despite her many years of Jewish education, she had never wanted to be a practicing Jew. She was often suspended from school for misbehavior, and no one, even she herself, ever thought she would become observant. But one night she had a dream that showed her she would be going to hell for all her mischief. When she woke up, she made the decision to live her life with the Vsevyshnii (the Almighty). That very day, she broke up with her boyfriend, who was Jewish but not religious, and started anew. Fear of God’s judgment guided her religious orientation. She told me she kept trying to admonish girls who were making the same mistakes she had made. I last saw Katya in Israel in 2007, where she was studying in a religious Jewish girls’ school. Knowing that I’d be going back to Odesa, she asked me to bring her mother a parcel of the head coverings that, she said, every married Jewish woman needed.

Leib (born in 1979), a newly observant Jewish man, had a mixed background, one similar to Vera’s. He told me that after graduating from the Tikva religious boys’ school, he took two years off from being Jewish: “I was interested in other things and just busy with life.” Later, he started attending Migdal and going to weekly lectures given by a Jewish educator, Yosef. This greatly influenced his decision to become observant and follow the Chabad movement. “One day I just knew it was right for me,” he said. Shortly thereafter, he adopted the Jewish name Leib. A great number of my Odesan friends born in the late seventies and early eighties and most students enrolled in Jewish schools had adopted Jewish names or used their birth names and Jewish names interchangeably.

While some newly observant Jews were motivated by a religious awakening, others were moved by witnessing a “miraculous” event that revealed God’s power. Diana, born in 1982, whom we met in the previous chapter and who regarded herself as “traditional” but not religious, shared a story about her cousin and his gravely ill mother as an example. “They told him she only had two days to live. He spent all day in the synagogue praying for her recovery, and then he found out she was actually getting better. Once she was back on her feet, his previous interest in Judaism turned into a fanatically religious life.”

Kostya, born in 1975, had recently returned to Odesa after living for about ten years in Israel. His life in Israel had been entirely secular, but some two years after his return, he became convinced that in Odesa one could only be Jewish through the prism of religion: “Everything else speaks of assimilation.” Being drawn to Hasidism—specifically, to the Jewish mysticism he explored on one of his trips with the Chabad synagogue—Kostya found himself becoming more involved and observing many Jewish commandments. He was the only member of his family to incorporate Jewish religious practices into his daily routine.

For a number of my friends in Odesa, their religiosity was shaped by a romantic relationship with someone observant. A discrepancy in levels of observance could become an issue when dating or even after a couple was engaged to be married. David (born in 1981), who was introduced in the previous chapter, told me about dating Nastya (born in 1980), a young woman he met at Beitar camp, who started to become more and more religious, causing him to follow suit. But even after the relationship ended, David continued to lead a religious life, moving to Israel for a time. In 2008, he returned to live in Odesa and was still observant when we last met in 2019. Likewise, when Hannah was in her mid-twenties, she decided to become more religious after becoming engaged to Artur, a young yeshiva student from the neighboring city of Dnipro. Her religious “elevation,” as she called it, was driven by her desire to be with Artur and to build a life with him.

For others, it was an interest in the Hebrew language and the discovery of their culture and history that initially attracted them to attend religious classes, lectures, or rituals. This evolved into adopting religious practices in everyday life. “Academic endeavor, with no interest in a religious life, originally brought me to study on my own,” one young Jewish man explained, “and over time I started to put it into practice.”

Most of the observant Jews I interviewed emphasized how secure they felt in their relationship with God, the almighty “protector” and “judge” of life. At the same time, they also valued the more practical comfort of belonging to an obshchina (communal group or community) and the support of other observant Jews. “Stability,” “order,” “assurance,” “understanding life’s path,” and a sense of “belonging” were among the perceived benefits of living as observant Jews. When I asked Diana (mentioned above) what had persuaded friends in her circle to become “fully” observant Jews, she answered:

Religious people have a lot of things in common. You get married right away, you have a wedding, holidays . . . lots of things to discuss and people to discuss them with. . . . Within the obshchina, people organize their own business . . . friends . . . holidays together . . . working together. . . . But if you’re traditional, as most of us are, you start to feel pressure. It starts to feel uncomfortable to not put up a mezuzah if the rabbi offers . . . to not come to the synagogue for holidays . . . to not observe the holidays . . . for some, it’s actually scary. Religion brings you comfort and the security that you’re living the right life. . . . Others will praise you, understand you, and approve of your life choices . . . plus, there’s a place for you after death. It’s pretty. Also, it’s nice to come to the synagogue and feel yourself svoim among svoikh [yourself among your own people].

Anthropologist Alexei Yurchak has written extensively about the term svoi, noting that this Russian word has no exact equivalent in English. Its closest translation may be “us,” “ours,” or “those who belong to our circle” and “share a particular ethic of responsibility to others.”²⁶ I saw this sense of responsibility performed over and over during my time in Odesa, as families helped those newly observant Jews feel part of their “circle” by inviting them over for Shabbat meals and Jewish holidays. Similarly, when a congregant experienced hardship, other members would offer monetary, emotional, and practical support. Thus, beyond the trust and belonging embedded in a circle of svoikh, there was a shared responsibility to care for one another like kin. In Solovyovo: The Story of Memory in a Russian Village, anthropologist Margaret Paxson translates the term svoi (f. svoia, n.svoe) as “one’s own” and notes that svoi is a marker for belonging of a wider range of types that “can mean being a member of an extended family, a covillager, a dear friend, a compatriot.”²⁷

Senya, a middle-aged physics professor who had no affiliation to the city’s Jewish organizations and identified himself as a secular Jew, offered an interesting perspective on the “pull factor” toward religious life: “First, it’s curiosity. Second, today we don’t have the same system of organizations to entertain and improve our youth: pionerskii lager’ [Communist youth camp], Komsomol [Communist Youth League], and others—none of those exist anymore, and nothing was introduced to replace them. Meanwhile, various new groupings have formed among new ethnic and national organizations. . . . Some people are attracted by the material benefits, then others get sucked into it. . . . I think these are the main factors, and not a call of blood.” Though it might not be clear from these brief sketches, religious observance wasn’t something that newly observant Jews simply folded into their lives. Most who spoke of their developing religious awareness mentioned a period of uncertainty as well as puzzlement and deflation. There was no inexorable progression from partial acceptance of and adherence to religious commandments leading to a complete dedication to a religious life. Indeed, from what I saw during my initial stay in Odesa, most Jews affiliated with synagogue life didn’t go on to become observant—though more and more did after I completed my first extended fieldwork there.

For example, Vera told me that her attitude toward Judaism evolved as she traveled, matured, and grew older. She was maintaining a strict, observant life in Odesa when her status as a Chernobyl survivor made her eligible for a two-year program in Israel. While there, she chose to study at a religious women’s seminary and discovered that the meaning of being religious depended more on context than she had anticipated. “For me, the period of fighting to express yourself as a Jew died when I left Odesa. There it had truly been a struggle, but in Israel, where it wasn’t a problem to be a Jew, you suddenly realize that eating kosher and keeping Shabbat aren’t acts of heroism, but just a way of life. I lost the sense of why I was doing what I was doing. It was more than that, though,” she continued: “When you first learn about Jewish ideas as expressed in books, you expect religious people to always live according to those laws. But there are laws and there are people. And people are people. I was disappointed by some of the things I saw among religious people in Israel, and it [religious life] started to seem fake to me.” That’s when she rebelled at the religious training. “It was a serious crisis for me,” she said. With an embarrassed laugh, she recalled blasting her stereo on Shabbat, even though using electricity was prohibited, and inviting female classmates to her room to take part in the Kiddush, the prayer traditionally conducted by men. She was quick to add that she’d never act like that today.

After returning from Israel, Vera eventually found her way back to her old routine of observance, largely because she wished to share her knowledge with other Jews in Odesa. Today, leading a life as a religious woman and Jewish educator, Vera described her early observance as “maximalist.” Back in Odesa, she found the right balance between personal convictions and religious obligations: “It takes years for observance to become a natural part of you.”

A number of those I met never gained that natural sense of conviction and obligation. Elena, a television producer who was then in her late twenties, told me she’d tried wearing a long skirt, keeping Shabbat, and keeping kosher, but she quickly realized it was not for her. After a short time, she said, “I was just fed up.” But she didn’t feel that she’d failed at being a “good Jew”; it was just that these religious observances infringed on her way of being and her freedom of choice. So it was with Miriam, a city guide in her thirties, who told me that she used to light candles on Shabbat but resented not being able to work on Saturdays, her busiest day for leading tours. Some Jews who’d previously experimented with religious observance said they still fulfilled some religious obligations, but others felt no duty to do so. I saw many of the younger Jews experiment with observance as they connected more deeply to Judaism, but it didn’t feel natural for everyone to follow a formula of rituals they ultimately felt to be constraining. Several of the youth I met later made different choices regarding Jewish observance depending on their spouse and their mutual decision on how to raise their children. Miriam, for instance, became more observant when she married her partner, who observed Shabbat and kashrut, and when I saw her after her marriage her hair was covered with a discreet headscarf.

Negotiating Tradition: Challenging Orthodox Models of Judaism

During my initial stay in Odesa, I saw many friends selectively taking part in religious rituals. Because of their lack of “full” observance, these Jews didn’t claim to be religious; rather, they saw themselves as traditional. After learning the proper conduct for Jewish holidays and rituals, many had adapted their own ways of acknowledging traditions, feeling comfortable enough to choose what suited them. Often, young parents passed on to their children Jewish traditions that they themselves hadn’t experienced when growing up, giving their children what they called the “basics,” such as circumcising a baby boy and giving him his first haircut at age three, an old Hasidic tradition called upsherin (“shear off” in Yiddish).²⁸ There were different reasons for not aspiring to be wholly religious—though some didn’t rule it out as an eventual outcome.

Andrey and Lika, a young couple both born in the early 1980s, were each raised in a secular Jewish environment. They met at a Jewish camp run by Beitar and started dating.²⁹ “Beitar isn’t a religious organization,” said Lika, “but it is a Jewish organization, and it taught us a lot about Judaism.” Neither remained active members of Beitar, but many of their close friends are linked to that period of their lives, as are their favorite stories. When they decided to marry, their parents didn’t object to their desire to have a chuppah for the central ritual of their wedding vows, but the parents also wanted all the elements of a “traditional Russian wedding” to follow.³⁰ Lika and Andrey proudly told me they were the first in both their families to have a religious wedding. But while their parents didn’t object, Lika said, they also didn’t know what the ceremony would entail.

Figure 4.1. A Jewish bride awaits her groom before the chuppah ceremony. Photo by author.

During the holiday of Pesach, I watched as Lika rid her home of all khametz, taking the traditional Passover observance seriously.³¹ However, other Jewish holidays went almost unnoticed in their household. Of course, there’s nothing particularly Odesan—or Jewish, for that matter—in the phenomenon of partial observance, of only recognizing a major holiday, be it Yom Kippur or Christmas. But the contemporary context gives new significance to partial observance: in Odesa, the meaning and content of High Holidays and other religious rituals were being shaped and reshaped as families and individuals explored different places on a “Jewish continuum.”³²

Choices about which Jewish religious holidays or rituals to observe paralleled choices about which customs not to observe when considering Soviet and Slavic holidays or old family traditions. Late one night, sitting with Lika and Andrey in their kitchen, I heard them debate whether to put up a New Year’s tree—a tradition they’d both followed as children. Andrey thought it was wrong, citing the Israeli teachers who were advising him on proper Jewish domestic conduct in weekly classes at the synagogue: this tradition was pagan, Christian, and Soviet; it definitely wasn’t Jewish. For her part, Lika thought it merely strange not to follow a family tradition. By the time I left, they’d settled on celebrating the New Year without a tree and decorating their house for Chanukah with garlands that they kept hanging throughout December.

For newly observant Jews, the New Year was most often reconsidered as a holiday celebration, but minor holidays also came under fire. Valentine’s Day, for example, usually celebrated on February 14 after the American tradition, had gained great popularity in Ukraine, but it was seen as a Christian, and therefore not Jewish, tradition. Likewise, the old burial practices followed in Soviet times, now regarded as Christian in origin, were contested, compromised, or altogether abandoned and replaced by Jewish rituals.³³

Negotiating traditions was a recurring topic of conversation among students at Jewish institutions; indeed, depending on the social setting, students faced different expectations and criteria for Jewish “membership.” Vika and Masha, students at the Chabad school, explained that unlike the classmates they called “observant,” they themselves only behaved “religiously” while at school. Neither of their fathers was Jewish, and at home, there were no dictates of a proper Jewish life. In fact, while all the students in religious Jewish schools had to stick to the rules ordained by teachers and sponsors, most students, Vika and Masha told me, abandoned those rules outside school: only two of the twelve girls in their class always observed religious laws. “The rest of us wear trousers, we eat nonkosher food, we don’t observe Shabbat, or really anything.” I asked if the nonobservant students were candid about this behavior—with each other and with the faculty. Both girls conceded that most students spoke to one another about it and that the teachers knew they were observant only within the institution.³⁴

But religious education did have an influence on Vika and Masha. When I asked Vika how she’d feel about entering a Christian church, she replied: “Listen, when year after year you’re drawn more into Jewish education, you get used to this type of Jewishness. We’re not religious, we don’t observe anything, we are as we are. But to be honest with you, somewhere deep inside me things have changed. . . . Before [studying at the Jewish school] I could easily have walked into a church; now it’s not the same. It wouldn’t feel right, for some reason.”³⁵ Masha’s response was different. Whereas Vika clearly defined herself as Jewish and therefore not Christian, Masha rejected the demand for such an exclusionary definition. “I belong to two religions,” she told me. “I am baptized, I have a godfather and godmother, and I consider myself both Jewish and Christian.”³⁶

Proper behavior for observant Jews affiliated with the Orthodox community also involved reconciling the demands and discipline of religion and personal loyalties with local cultural norms, family, and upbringing. These negotiations could be seen in the forms of dress adopted by some observant women. The halakha requires married religious women to cover their hair, and most of the Israeli women emissaries appear publicly in Odesa wearing stylish wigs that are often hard to distinguish from natural hair. Such head coverings, often imported from Israel, were expensive at the time, so many women intent on following the dictate had to find cheaper options, such as scarf head coverings. For others, a hat or scarf simply felt more natural than a wig. Some women may have been willing to make concessions in response to the demands of observance but weren’t willing to change their look. “Really, can you imagine me in a wig?” asked Maya. To her, one of the most difficult things as a Jewish religious woman was the obligation to cover her hair and wear modest clothing, such as knee-length or longer skirts. “I just feel more comfortable in trousers. I can’t think straight in a skirt, it’s not me.” Growing up in Odesa, she was used to wearing casual summer clothes and going to public beaches. “I still have a hard time dressing religiously, and giving up public beaches and swimming in the sea. I’m from Odesa, after all, and the sea is part of who I am.”³⁷

Maya abandoned her casual style and covered her hair with a wig only for official gatherings or formal pictures with her congregation. She wasn’t alone: other young and middle-aged women in Odesa identified themselves as religious without necessarily looking the part. But on my later visits to the city in 2014 and 2019, I saw that a number of Jewish women whom I knew to be “observant without looking the part” (Maya included) now appeared more religious, and most of the young observant women wore stylish wigs that they received as wedding gifts, hair wraps they purchased in Israel, or simple hats. Maya felt that because men had to be present at the synagogue daily, there was a firmer requirement for them to wear ritual dress, such as the tzitzit and kippah. But observant men had their own ways of sidestepping observant rules. The Israeli rabbis would avoid social settings such as theaters and concerts, where a woman’s voice might be heard, and refrained from shaking hands or otherwise touching any women not in their immediate family. But many Orthodox men born and raised in Odesa held to their secular upbringing—they shook hands with women; they attended the theater, opera, and concerts without hesitation.

There were Jews in Odesa who had experimented with greater levels of observance for several years and then followed lesser or minimal observant practice, or none at all. In some instances, as with Vera, exposure to a different religious context—foreign in values and mentality—drove newly observant Jews away from the religious life they had previously romanticized. Others found that daily observance of rituals lost its meaning, becoming “burdensome,” “unnecessary,” and “tiresome.”

Recall Dima, an Odesan native introduced earlier in this chapter who moved to Israel. When I met him, his head was shaven and uncovered, and he was dressed in gray cotton shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt. It was hard to believe that he’d once been a yeshiva student at an Orthodox Jewish institution in a city near Jerusalem. When he originally moved to Israel, he had been a devoted and observant Orthodox Jew affiliated with the Chabad movement. Dima described his drift away from religion this way:

When I came here [to Israel], I was beaming with light from all directions. Here I was told that I could only glow in one direction, and a very narrow direction. In my yeshiva I met students who were not good people, and at first this shocked me. But, most important, the rabbis told me what I could and couldn’t do, what I could and couldn’t have, what I could and couldn’t listen to or read. . . . To me this was awkward and constraining. I am the son of a hunter, and I am an artist. I grew up in Odessa, an open city. Before, I was used to a completely different balance in life. As you can understand, it wasn’t a quick hop out for me. But over time, I started to see observance differently.

Among Dima’s circle of friends were some whose departure from Jewish Orthodoxy was less dramatic, but they had similar stories about their choice to leave full observance behind.

Negotiating Values: The Dynamics of Family Relations

For Odesa’s newly observant Jews, particularly the youth, observance was often adopted on an individual basis, with the rest of the family keeping a religious home only partially or not at all. Given the high rate of assimilation and intermarriage, religious observance by one family member often did not—or could not, in cases of intermarriage—bring the rest of the family closer to Judaism. I spoke to only a few families whose observance spanned as many as three generations.

I often heard parents express concern about sending their children to Jewish schools, as they believed it would increase the likelihood that the child would become more religious. Some parents voiced admiration for sons and daughters who taught them how to “do things right” by observing Jewish celebrations and rituals. Still others admitted they had little choice when it came to “getting used to” their children’s new lifestyle; their common refrain was, “What am I to do? [A chto mne delat’?]”

I met Malka (born in 1978) during her visit home to Odesa from Israel. She was the only observant member of her family and described her parents as atheists who accepted her ways but were far from understanding them. When I asked Malka if her turn to Judaism had affected her parents’ Jewish orientation, she responded, “I gave my father a small Torah book two years ago. When I was home recently, I saw it displayed on his bookshelf. Knowing him, that was a big deal.” Malka’s mother, Anna, told me her daughter had made the decision to start living a religious life entirely on her own. “My husband and I aren’t religious people, and religion was never part of Malka’s upbringing. She grew up with Jewish intelligentsia values, nothing more. I didn’t even know that my daughter had taken a Jewish name for herself until I went to visit her in Israel.”

In Hebrew, the name “Malka” means queen. I asked Anna whether she calls her daughter by her new name, and she told me she doesn’t. “The name we gave her, Inna, starts with the same letter as my mother’s name; it was given to her in memory of her grandmother. ‘Malka’ means nothing to me.” It had at that time become fashionable among young Jewish families to give children traditional Jewish names rather than Russian or Ukrainian ones. This caused some consternation in several families I knew, with grandparents insisting that Hebrew names were unsuitable or too awkward to pronounce or lacked a connection to family history.

In a later conversation, Anna told me she saw her daughter as part of a larger shift in Jewish society. The new values prized and practiced by today’s Jewish youth didn’t stem from a knowledge of local Jewish history, art, literature, or music, she said, or from the works of Odesan Jewish writers, who wrote in Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew. The notions of belonging to the Russian-speaking intelligentsia, of having an open orientation to the world and seeking to attain the highest levels of education and recognition, were no longer distinct markers of Jewish identity. This wasn’t to say that the Jewish youth in Odesa no longer espoused such values and aspirations, she said, but these values and aspirations were no longer seen as markers of being a Jew. The historically cosmopolitan and secular way of “being a Jew” in Odesa was being displaced by a new, more potent association between being Jewish and identifying with Judaism as a religion in the Orthodox sense, emphasizing practice. At the same time, Anna acknowledged that the cosmopolitan basis of Jewish identity had already been radically undermined during Soviet rule, when most Jewish institutions—religious, cultural, educational, and Zionist—had been either closed, destroyed, or banned. Anna and other Jews of her generation had had no access to such institutions.

It was apparent that Anna herself was working to distinguish the different layers and modes of cosmopolitanism that existed in Odesa throughout its history and in relationship to the Jews. In contrast to the Orthodox model of Jewish identity, Anna differentiated between those Jews who relied on religious guidance and authority and those who espoused an older, more “open” identity—embodied, most likely, in a figure like Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940), the journalist, writer, and Zionist leader who was born and raised in a secular Jewish family and possessed what she described as the “cosmopolitan outlook.”

More than a half century after his death, Jabotinsky was still a presence in Odesa. His novel Piatero (The Five)—written in Russian in 1935 and published in 1936 in Paris—was widely read by many of the Odesans I knew who had either passed through Beitar, the Jewish self-defense league started by Jabotinsky, or through literary circles in Jewish Odesa. An English translation appeared in 2005, the year I first arrived in Odesa. Narrated by a person much like Jabotinsky, The Five recounts the story of a Russified, assimilated bourgeois Jewish family, the Milgroms, in fin de siècle Odesa. The title, as literary scholar Brian Horowitz notes, is a “double entendre” as it refers both to the five protagonists (the Milgrom children) and also to the revolution of 1905.³⁸ Through the story of the family’s children, all of whom actually or symbolically die, Jabotinsky demonstrates how the dream of assimilation, or indifference to Zionism, had reached its limits. The Milgroms appear to be Russian in most senses of the term, except for their ability to negotiate a path through a society increasingly divided along national lines.³⁹ The narrator encourages readers to interpret the five main characters not as individuals but as typified characters who were part of the history of Russian Jewry, insinuating that the text is modeled on real life.⁴⁰ Literary critics have mostly interpreted The Five as a crypto-autobiography and “an epitaph mourning the decay of Odesa’s Jewish life.” But as literary scholar Mirja Lecke points out, the novel is a complex and ambiguous piece of literature that also depicts and praises the religious, ethical, and ethnic plurality (which can be identified as cosmopolitanism) of the city and thereby contradicts the nationalism visible in Jabotinsky’s other writings.⁴¹ There are many interpretations of the novel, and some suggest that the fates of the Milgroms imply Jabotinsky’s condemnation of universalism, but as Brian Horowitz argues, by offering others a chance to contradict Zionism, Jabotinsky presented an intellectual portrait that is fuller and closer to the tenor of the age.⁴²

On this note, Anna also acknowledged that despite the Soviet claim to a brotherhood of nations and Odesa’s traits of cosmopolitanism and tolerance, Jewish organizations in Soviet times were eventually forced to end their operations. One might then say that the opening of Jewish organizations and the presence of religious Jews from Israel, and elsewhere, as well as the presence of Judaism supported by the Ukrainian state, spoke to yet another chapter of Odesa’s cosmopolitan life, even as it lacked recognition by the secular Jewish population. Anna may well have been reacting to the limitations that came with strengthening Jewish identity through an association with Orthodox Judaism—thereby threatening the interaction of Jews with others and limiting the references and symbols that would define one as a Jew in that new Odesan context. That many young Jews recognized the halakha as the authority on Jewishness as presented by religious leadership was indeed far from the outlook of Jewish intelligentsia.

I asked Anna how she reacted to her daughter’s observance of Shabbat and kashrut, two commandments that separate observant Jews from others. Anna told me that Malka often spent Shabbat with her friends. “There, they cook, sleep, and go to the synagogue together, as the synagogue is within walking distance. It’s a life she mostly leads outside of our home.” This was quite common among observant Jews; many adapted to their new lifestyle by finding a place to live that was close to a kosher grocery store, a Jewish school, a synagogue, and other observant Jews, even if it meant separating from their families.

Two of my other interlocutors, Maya and Vera, also had to work to balance family and religious obligations. Maya told me how their families had reacted to her and her husband’s decision to become religious: “At first, they were against it—completely against it! Especially Slavik’s family, and for some reason they were angry at me. They thought I was responsible for his religiosity. Then, after years passed, they calmed down. Time and our serious conviction did the job. They used to get very upset because we wouldn’t eat at their houses. I had an easier time convincing my parents . . . but I think that’s only because they were used to me making decisions from an early age.” In Maya’s view, “It was important for us to act in such a way that they knew it’s not a joke but a serious life decision for us. And none of their fits and fusses would be able to turn everything back. It was difficult, but at the end of the day, they loved us.”

As for Vera’s process of integrating her faith and family, she said, “They were in shock. You must understand, back then the idea that ‘religion is the opiate of the people’ was embedded in everyone’s heads. I think my family was trying to understand what had happened to their daughter . . . [and] the hardest thing for them was the fact that I had become chuzhoi [‘other people’s’ or foreign] and they couldn’t understand me. They couldn’t even articulate what scared them so much. But time passed, and thank God I have a good family and we lived through this and more.” By the time I met Vera, her religion had become a source of gentle teasing. Her dad would say, “I just don’t understand how I, a Ukrainian man, could have fathered a Jewish daughter.”

Marriage was another potential point of disagreement between younger generations and their families. On one occasion, my friend David took me along when he met his grandmother for their regular tea. A newly observant Jew, David did his best to evade her persistent questioning about when he was getting married. Eventually, he told her he was waiting to meet a nice Jewish girl. His grandmother replied: “You should want to marry someone because they’re a good person, an intelligent person, a kind person. Marrying someone just because they’re Jewish is nonsense. Our family has so many nationalities in it, so many wonderful people who have helped me throughout my days in Odessa. . . . Must you upset me with this kind of talk?” Referring to David’s kippah, she demanded: “Why do you walk around in that funny hat? Must you tell everyone you’re Jewish?” To this, David replied, “That is exactly the point.”

Of course, not all families discouraged their newly observant young people. I encountered those who not only accommodated their children’s choices but also embraced their developing an observant identity. For instance, Lera and Vadik’s daughter and her family taught the sixty-year-old couple, who were raised in the Soviet Union, about observant Jewish life. Instead of resisting, the parents made sure they always had plastic dishes on hand to make their house kosher for family visits. I also talked to a man who wasn’t Jewish himself but had a Jewish daughter through her maternal line. His daughter was observant, and out of respect for her choice, he had agreed to kasher his kitchen and to eat only kosher products and cuisine at home. I often saw nonobservant family members taking part in religious holidays and celebrations, even though they related to them only marginally. “I went to my grandson’s bris,” Emma, a sociologist in her early seventies, told me. “It was a nice celebration, but all these religious things . . . oh, not for me. I am a Soviet person.”

There was a difference between the observant Jews who tried to smooth their own transition into a religious life for the sake of their nonpracticing or non-Jewish family members and those who dealt with the situation in a radical manner. Vera tried to gain her parents’ approval by altering her life so rapidly they wouldn’t have time to process the change she was going through—an approach she called “shock therapy.” Others spoke of trying to talk their way through their new disposition. Mendy, a twenty-five-year-old city guide of Jewish Odesa who divided his time between Tel Aviv and Odesa, told me he explained everything to his mother and answered all her questions. “They’re just not used to it,” he said, meaning not only his parents but also their entire generation. “They grew up in a different time. We also have to understand that.”

If becoming religious and observant sometimes exacerbated generational divides, the turn to religious practice fostered close bonds among those undergoing similar experiences—bonds that emulated those of family or close kin. In some cases, as with Malka, spending Shabbat away from home didn’t just mean being able to walk to the synagogue; it also felt like “being in the right atmosphere.” As one young Jewish woman explained, “When everyone’s doing the same thing, it’s nice and you feel good about it. If you’re the only one, it’s lonely.” Indeed, it was common for both Israeli emissaries and local observant Jews to invite religious newcomers to their homes for a Shabbat meal after the synagogue service, to make them feel part of the “family.”

Figure 4.2. Children at Migdal, the Jewish community center, get ready for the kapparah ceremony customarily done by Orthodox Jews on the eve of Yom Kippur. Photo by author.

Both Orthodox synagogues held a Shabbat meal on the premises, free of charge to anyone wishing to partake. Attending Shabbat meals, whether in a private home or at the synagogue, was one of the first ways I was able to interact with the city’s religious minority. The religious circles entered by newly observant Jews functioned as kin networks in many ways, offering care, attention, and love to new members of the community as if for their own children. Vera said, “Those with whom you share this experience often become like family.”

Challenging Jewish Practice: The Politics of Jewish Observance

Religious practice allowed some of Odesa’s observant Jewry to recognize one another as “kin.” Pasha, an observant man working at the Chabad congregation, told me, “Only one or two percent of our greater community is religious.” He seemed to understand that the revival of observance would take time: “We’re doing our job. We wish those numbers were higher, but for now that’s where we stand.” He explained the distinction between his sense of the truly religious and the rest this way: “Many people follow the customs that don’t require repetition—Brit Milah, chuppah, Jewish burial. Far fewer observe the daily mitzvoth that require a greater level of dedication. For many, it takes time to become observant, and that’s normal. I would be skeptical of anyone who turned religious overnight. They usually abandon this path as quickly as they come to it.” To my question about his own commitment to Judaism, Pasha contrasted himself with those newly observant Jews who might prove to lack the necessary discipline, speaking succinctly and with another temporal definition: “I have been in Judaism for twenty-five years.”

Such distinctions, however, generated a larger, ongoing debate—among those within and outside the religious minority—about what would constitute a “proper” Jew. At times, Odesa’s Jews even questioned the authority of foreign religious leaders who differed in principles of observance. Members of one family told me that the Israeli families working in a congregation had refused to eat at the homes of some congregants, not trusting their kosher status. The family considered it blatant disrespect. The fact that Odesa’s Jews had to rely on foreign rabbis was regarded by some religious families as a sad aftermath of Soviet rule. Other local Jews were heard to complain that some Israeli religious practices were more lenient than their own; on more than one occasion, they mocked the “guidance” from Israeli emissaries—such as “this is only expected of men”—and challenged it with a stricter observance of the commandment.

For others, the system of observance they’d internalized through Jewish education, provided mostly by the emissaries, served as their main frame of reference for judging whether they themselves or others were “good Jews.” For example, ten-year-old Zhenya, a student in the Chabad Jewish school, stated, “I am Jewish and Ukrainian. My [Ukrainian] grandfather and my [Jewish] grandmother believe in Jesus.” “And you?” I asked. “No, I do not,” he replied. “But I’m not as good a Jew as [my friend] Haim. I don’t keep my Saturday [Shabbat]; I watch TV. But at least I don’t believe in Jesus.” Because Haim followed one of the main obligations of Orthodox Jews, Zhenya judged him to be a “good” Jew, but he hesitated to grant himself this status. However, he considered himself a better Jew than his grandmother because she believed in Jesus. Like most students in Orthodox schools, Zhenya was immersed in different religious and cultural orientations at home and at school, but it was the official education that shaped his judgment on the contradictions he saw in his life.

While those who were religious practiced varying degrees of observance, many secular Jews rejected the belief that Jewish identity is defined by religious practice at all. Their own Soviet- and Odesa-formed notions of being Jewish were secular and linked to family history, education, knowledge, culture, a sense of growing up in that city’s Jewish environment, a worldly outlook on life, and so on. Some were skeptical about religious Jews’ practices, sincerity of belief, or level of morality. At times, secular Jews focused on religious Jews as individuals, but at other times, they saw them as representatives of imported efforts to “revive” Judaism as a way of life. The physics professor Senya expressed incredulity that a newly observant man he’d known as a prorab (simple laborer) but who was now employed by the synagogue could ever believe in anything more elevated than his wages. To Senya, the man’s lack of education made him incapable of having a relationship with God; he questioned how a man who didn’t live by the highest morals could claim to be religious. “I think that ninety percent of people who consider themselves religious have never even read the Bible,” said Senya.

Evgeniy, the journalist mentioned in the previous chapter, believed that the Jewish life of the city wasn’t what happened in the synagogues but rather what was seen in the Jewish newspapers and publications, the Jewish theater Migdal Or, the Odesa Literature Museum, and the work of Jewish artists and ordinary Odesan Jews. Such views were more often expressed by those closer to middle age and by members of the secular Jewish intelligentsia. Especially in the case of the elderly, being affiliated with a Jewish organization didn’t necessarily imply religious commitment; as we’ve seen, many of them depended on the practical aid these organizations provided.

Many of the middle-aged Jewish Odesans I encountered were aware of Jewish activity in the city, often through their children. Most of them were neither involved in Jewish organizations nor observant of Judaism. The reasons they gave were multiple: time constraints, lack of interest, antireligious ideals. In many cases their orientation was similar to that of their parents and had been determined by their Soviet upbringing, though there might be different paths within one family. In the eyes of Jewish activists, middle-aged Jewish Odesans had an important responsibility: nurturing the Jewish knowledge their children received at school and in other centers of Jewish activity. As one middle-aged man described, “Jews are not those whose parents are Jewish but those whose children are Jewish.” Many years later, I heard this line used to describe Ukrainian identity and to draw a parallel between Jews and Ukrainians. Despite these high expectations, I met few parents who’d made significant efforts to provide a religious context for their children, even if—as with the families of Vera, Hannah, and Maya—they occasionally showed support in such ways as accommodating kosher needs. Thus, it could not be said that these parents accepted any sense of an obligation to live their lives in accordance with religious laws. In many cases, the children explained that their parents’ lack of enthusiasm was due to a mixed family background, where a non-Jewish parent would balk at accepting strict Jewish practices at home. In fully Jewish families, secular orientation or Soviet upbringing were among the major reasons that Jewish parents refrained from, or even objected to, religious practice at home.

I also came across young Jewish people who didn’t associate Jewish identity with Judaism at all. Misha and Gosha, students in their twenties in the English class I taught at Migdal, both identified themselves as Jews “by nationality” (po natsional’nosti). Being Jewish was something they were born into, and like the generation who came of age in the Soviet era, they understood it as meaning a dedication to education, family history in Odesa, and secular Jewish culture as found in the works of Jewish writers and composers, plus a taste for Jewish cuisine. Both Misha and Gosha repeatedly insisted that being atheist didn’t make them any less Jewish than the newly observant Jews, and both said they lacked the time and the interest to participate in Jewish organizations. In their teens, they’d been active in Migdal’s programs, but they no longer took part. Like Misha and Gosha, most of Odesa’s Jewish young people were not practicing (although some partially observed religious rituals in circles of Jewish organizations or at home). But to some degree or another, they were involved in some branch of organized Jewish life.⁴³

The End of a Religious Revival?

In the immediate wake of the Soviet Union and its policy of secularization in the early phases of post-Soviet reforms, there was a sudden and widespread rise in “the number and variety of religious organizations.”⁴⁴ By 1995, that rise had crested.⁴⁵ Generally, this pattern played out in Odesa. I was told that in the first decade after Ukraine’s independence, many of the Jewish religious institutions and practices in Odesa appeared as new and inspiring. As I commenced my fieldwork in 2005, however, the novelty had worn off. For some, active involvement was a youthful phase they’d outgrown. Others changed focus under the pressure of providing for their families and building careers. A number of Odesan Jews I met suggested that because the once-new institutions and practices were now permanently established, their own desire for active participation had subsided. Moreover, some had participated in Jewish religious organizations mainly for the material support they offered, and as economic and social conditions improved, fewer of those in this category found it necessary to rely on that aid.

Leaders of the Jewish programs in Odesa acknowledge that emigration has meant fewer Jews recognized by the halakha and the Law of Return. Therefore, even as many secular and religious institutions have worked to regenerate Jewish awareness, there are demographic limits. As Misha, a young Jewish man in his twenties, told me: “There are more Jewish organizations [in Odessa] than there are Jews.” Yulia, the Reform rabbi, expanded on this point when she explained that her congregation was so much smaller than those of the Orthodox communities because it had arrived “too late.” By this, she meant that either a large number of Jews had already become affiliated with Chabad or the Litvak movement; or that they’d already tested the waters and, for one reason or another, had opted for partial or no religious affiliation; or that they were never interested in Jewish associations and had simply ignored the call of Jewish outreach. It is possible that, despite the active, highly visible outreach programs, some Jews were just unaware of the developments, perhaps because they lived far from any organized Jewish life.

Many social scientists have pointed out that Jews in the FSU who had definite plans for emigration often displayed heightened Jewish activism before they left.⁴⁶ This was true in Odesa. Many of the activists who took part in the early phases of the Jewish revival subsequently made their way abroad, to the United States, Israel, Germany, or elsewhere. Those who were left to run Jewish organizations couldn’t compete with the economic means and opportunities offered by international actors. As Josef Zissels notes, the influx of foreign personnel with well-defined agendas represented a new stage of the “professionalization of Jewish life” that hadn’t previously been seen in Ukraine.⁴⁷

Observant Jews who remembered or knew of the local initiatives associated with Shaya Gisser in the early 1990s were well aware of what those initiatives had accomplished for the religious communities: a growth in infrastructure, an overall expansion, and a general strengthening, at least in numbers of congregants and the material sense. They accepted and even welcomed the new amenities brought by foreign funding, such as kosher grocery stores, Jewish programs supporting a religious way of life, and links to a wider network of observant Jewry. But some lamented the loss of a time when change was driven from “within”; now it was driven from “the top.” As one middle-aged Jewish woman put it, “the [religious] obshchina [community] was nothing then. . . . We met in a small room and studied. . . . The classes didn’t pay a stipend, and the rabbi didn’t support us financially. . . . It wasn’t easy, but it was real.” Marking a comparison to other structures of organized Jewish life around the world, she noted that unlike many other places, in Odesa, the congregation doesn’t pay the rabbi; the rabbi pays the congregation.

Comparing religious development to the process of building a house, Vera described those earlier moments of Jewish life as being like “living in a tent.” “When you’re camping out, it’s very romantic, but for some reason we always build ourselves houses with strong foundations and thick walls. At first it was groundbreaking to build anything, [and] we made big steps. . . . Today we see a different phase of construction. It reminds me of living with my neighbors, with all the pluses and minuses. . . . Whether we like it or not, such is the process.” For all these reasons, many of Odesa’s observant Jews and Jewish activists perceive the present-day religious Jewish life as the tail end of what some have described as Jewish rebirth (evreiskoe vozrozhdenie). But officially, the city’s Jewish institutions all claim higher numbers of congregants on their respective websites and in personal communication, and the message of Jewish revival is still cited to describe their work.

Conclusion

This chapter has illustrated how religious adherence for Odesan Jews meant adopting a new way of life rather than a return to a code of social norms that previous generations had observed. As Jewish studies scholar Norman Solomon writes, “Europeans, east and west, who are ‘returning to their roots’ are not, and could not be, simply recreating the lifestyle of one or more Jewish communities of earlier times. . . . They are actually inventing new lifestyles, by selecting one or more past expressions of Judaism, and mixing these with other elements of Soviet, Russian, European and world culture.”⁴⁸ Given what my interlocutors have shown, perhaps it’s more appropriate to speak of “religious adherence” than a religious revival. This idea of adherence refers to a state of mind and a space for the formation of a spiritual life that leads some to a new or altered direction of Jewish belonging—without necessarily involving strict observance of religious laws. Religious adherence can apply to full, partial, short-term, or long-term dedication to Judaism, whether people seek it out as a complement to their previous convictions or as a replacement for them. It’s also less laden with the implication of “newness” or “rebirth” and thus offers a better way to understand and discuss the attitudes and patterns of religious practice today. Religious adherence is a useful and appropriate term to describe and understand those religiously oriented Jews who test the parameters of Judaism and its institutions in a variety of ways—and who have brought about a permanent, if turbulent, change to the previous modes of Jewish practice in Odesa.

This chapter has also shown that binary definitions of Jewish belonging as either an ethnicity or a religion—evrei or iudei—are too simplistic to capture contemporary religious life anywhere, but particularly in Odesa. Separated by their diverse experiences and histories, Odesa’s observant Jews are wildly differentiated by congregations, degrees of observance, paths into and out of religiosity, associations with different institutions, traditions, and the religious attitudes of their families. Moreover, while Judaism as a religion is undoubtedly one way for the people of Odesa to identify as Jewish, the concept has not gone unchallenged, from either within or outside, precisely because authenticity and authority are constantly questioned.