Soviet Jewish Oral History Project Western Reserve Historical Society Interviewee: Misha Pisman Interviewer: Ken Bravo Date of interview: May 5, 2015 Location of interview: Park East

KEN BRAVO: My name is Ken Bravo. Today is Tuesday, May 5, 2015. I’m at Park Synagogue East interviewing Cantor Misha Pisman. First of all, Cantor Pisman, thank you very much for agreeing to be interviewed today. As I mentioned to you today before we started recording, the Jewish Archives of the Western Reserve Historical Society has a project, and we are interviewing people who came from the former and who have settled in Cleveland, Ohio. So thank you again. When and where were you born?

MISHA PISMAN: I was born on July 28, 1953, in to a family of simple people. My parents were factory workers in Moscow. I was the first born, and then nine years later my sister was born. She lives in now with her family.

KB: And tell me a little bit about life growing up in Moscow when you were there, particularly about whether it relates to your knowing that you were Jewish and whether that was a part of your life growing up.

MP: Well, I was born in July of 1953 as I said, and a few months before, in March 1953, Stalin died. And the reason I’m mentioning that is because shortly before Stalin died, he initiated that so-called case of Jewish doctors that were accused of trying to poison the top leaders of the Soviet government. So obviously, that time in was (even though I was just born, I didn’t know and didn’t experience it), the atmosphere was very anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish. But luckily Stalin died, and the new government of Nikita Khrushchev, who came into power, tried to liberalize the country a little bit. And so from what I know, the anti-Semitism subsided, and the political atmosphere became more liberal. Growing up in Moscow, because it was the capital, obviously the government tried to portray the capital as cosmopolitan, as a city where people can enjoy the modern way of life. So growing up, I didn’t experience much anti-Semitism. Of course it was present, but not on an official level, more everyday level or street level depending on where you lived, who were your neighbors, etc. etc.

KB: So when you started going to school, did you experience any anti-Semitism in the school system?

MP: No. As I said, I went to a normal public school, and growing up and being in school, I honestly can say I never experienced any anti-Semitism. Of course, kids could say something, but as I said, I don’t remember much that I was teased, that I was bullied as I Jew. I personally didn’t have that experience in my life.

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KB: Was Judaism part of your life growing up?

MP: No, Judaism wasn’t part of my life obviously because as I said, I was born in the early ‘50’s. At that time, everything Jewish practically disappeared from everyday life. There were no Jewish schools, especially in Moscow which was the capital of the country. There were no Jewish newspapers, no Jewish theater that used to be in the ‘30’s in Moscow, a very famous Jewish theater. There really wasn’t any presence of the Jewish culture.

KB: Was there any place to pray? Were there any ?

MP: There was one synagogue which was called Moscow Choral [05:00] Synagogue. But growing up, I don’t remember ever going there. I didn’t know anything about Judaism. My family was not observant. My family – both of my families: my father’s family and my mother’s family are coming from a little Jewish shtetl named Berdichev. But they escaped the famine that Stalin organized in Ukraine.

KB: How do you spell the name of that shtetl?

MP: It’s B-E-R-D-I-C-H-E-V probably. It’s actually a famous shtetl. We might think that a shtetl is kind of small and uninteresting place, but from what I read about Berdichev, it was a very famous and cultured Jewish shtetl. There were many synagogues, there were houses of worship, there were schools. But as I said, my families, both of them, my mother’s and my father’s families – they left Berdichev in late ‘20’s, early ‘30’s because Stalin organized a famine; he collected all the food and people didn’t have anything to eat. And how they managed to escape – I don’t know how they even got permission to go out of the town – but they left the town and they came to Moscow, and that’s where we settled. But as I said, growing up I knew that I was Jewish, but that was the extent of my Jewishness.

KB: I’ve heard from others that there were identity cards that identified you as Jewish. Do you recall that?

MP: That’s correct. Actually every citizen in Russia had a passport, and line 5 indicated your nationality. But if you were below eighteen years old, your school card , every official piece of paper in Russia indicated your nationality. I don’t know why they put so much emphasis on that, why it was required for people in Russia to have that kind of national identity present with you all the time, but that’s correct. I knew that I was Jewish and everybody else knew you were Jewish because it was on every piece of paper, on every official document, indicated your nationality.

KB: I’ve also heard elsewhere that for example the teachers had a list of students in their class that showed nationality.

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MP: Yes, as I said, every official piece of paper indicated your nationality.

KB: Now how about holidays growing up. Did your family celebrate any Jewish holidays or do anything at that time of year?

MP: As I said, my family was not observant. But the only holiday that we always observed, that was Passover. Pascha, as we say in Russia. And growing up, we always lived with my father’s mother, my grandmother. And she would go to the synagogue, buy matzah, and she would cook for days to prepare the meal. And what that meal was – it wasn’t a seder in the religious sense because we didn’t have a haggadah, we didn’t know Hebrew; we didn’t even know the story of the Passover. For us, Passover was a time for family to come together and share a meal and talk about life and sing Yiddish songs. And I remember vividly of those times when the whole family – all of the cousins – we all would come together. And we would rotate the houses obviously. My grandmother – she would cook and she would make gefilte fish from scratch, and buy carp alive. And she would boil it and cook it. And she would make matzah, kugel, and other wonderful foods – chicken and white beans. It was really a wonderful feast and wonderful time for family to come together and experience it. But that was the only holiday that I remember that we were kind of celebrating and observing.

KB: Now, as you were growing up in Moscow, did you start singing there?

MP: Yeah, [10:00] what happened – I discovered that I have a voice from early on. And growing up, I was singing at every family gathering. My parents would kind of proudly display me in front of the entire family, and I would sing Russian folksongs and Russian popular songs. When I went to Russian summer camps, I would sing there. Really, I always, always sang for as far back as I remember myself. But as I said, my parents, they were simple people. They didn’t even think about giving me a musical education until it was very late. I was fourteen years old when one morning we were sitting in the kitchen having breakfast, and on the radio we heard an advertisement about Moscow Choral School for Boys. They were advertising the school with boys with voices to come sing in a choir and study music. So, as I said, I was fourteen years old when my dad said, “Let’s try.” So we went to that school for the audition, and they accepted me. So I started to study music professionally when I was fourteen years old. And from that time, it kind of became my vocation.

KB: This was actually formal voice training at that time?

MP: Yes. It was a music school where boys would get not only music education at that time but a general education as well. So I was accepted to that school; I entered the seventh grade (and in Russia high school goes through the tenth grade). So I studied for four years in that school. I graduated from that school. And I sang in the choir, and at that time my voice started changing. We had a teenager addition to the choir, so it was

3 a mixed choir of boys and young men. And then what happened, because I started my musical training kind of late, I wasn’t sure if four years of studying music was long enough for me to continue my musical education. And I loved math all the time, and I did well in it in school all the time. So I was trying to figure it out what I loved more: singing or math. And it took me some time and I tried different things. First, I decided that maybe math should be my profession. And after I graduated high school, I went to the, well, in Russia there are universities, but only a few universities. The rest of the higher education system they called institutes. And I wanted to study information technology because they just started entering. Russian computers, they were a new and exciting field. But at that time, that particular field was highly restricted for Jews to enter because it was connected to the military complex in Russia. And they were kind of guarding that, let’s say, from Jews for different reasons because I graduated high school in 1970, and that was the time when the Refusenik movement started going on strong, and Jews wanted to leave the country. So obviously they didn’t want to educate Jews and share the secrets and then they would leave, and so on and so on. So I failed in my attempt to enter one of those military-connected institutes. In hindsight, that was a wake-up call for me that maybe I should continue my musical education. The following year, I entered a music college and started my musical education.

KB: This was in Moscow?

MP: It was in Moscow in 1971 that I was accepted into music college. But at that time, I was already eighteen years old, and in Russia, there is a law that every male reaching eighteen years old should be drafted into the army. Unless you’re in a very small, selective [15:00] group of those military-connected institutes, then they will allow you to continue because they know that you will serve the military complex. So I had just started my musical school, and I was drafted into the army. And I was sent to Siberia, and I served two years in a tank battalion. Actually, I didn’t serve two years because I got into a [inaudible] battalion and I was the driver of a tank. It was very challenging, I would say, for a guy from the capitol who loved music. So I quickly, it took me three years to learn how to play one of the wind instruments, and the second year of my army experience, I played in the military band.

KB: What did you play?

MP: I played a little, well, in Russia there is a big instrument called tuba and then baritone-tenor alt, so I played tenor. My voice is tenor, and my instrument was tenor instrument in the military band. Interesting, you know, the similarity.

KB: So how long were you in the military?

MP: Three years.

KB: After that, what did you do?

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MP: After that, I came back to Moscow, and I continued my musical education. So I graduated from the music college, and I went to the Pedagogical Musical Institute. I studied for five years.

KB: So when did you graduate college?

MP: Well, I got out of the military in 1973; then I studied for four years and graduated from the music college in 1977. In 1978, I entered the musical institute, and in 1983, I graduated. And after I graduated, I got my job at that same choral school for boys that I graduated from. So I became an alumni teacher, and I worked there as a music teacher teaching all of the musical disciplines, piano, voice, solfege, harmony.

KB: How long did you do that?

MP: Well I did that for almost sixteen years until my family emigrated to the States.

KB: So, what year did your family come to the United States?

MP: We came to the United States at the very end of 1990, literally right before the end of the year, Dec. 30, 1990.

KB: Who came?

MP: It was my entire family: me, my wife, my two children, my son Eugene who was fourteen years old at the time, and my daughter Kadya. She was nine.

KB: How about your parents? Did they come with you?

MP: No, my parents didn’t come with me. My mom died when I was nineteen years old. I was serving in the military when she died after battling breast cancer. And my father stayed in Russia. He remarried twice and started a new family, and he never expressed any interest in leaving Russia. So he’s still living in Moscow. He’s 86 years old.

KB: And what was it that caused you and your family to want to come to the United States?

MP: Well, actually the late ‘80’s, it was the second time already that we decided to leave the Soviet Union. The first time we started thinking about emigrating to the United States was in the late ‘70’s. I think it was like ’77 or ’78 when I just started my musical training in that pedagogical institute. But what happened at that time, my father-in-law – he got a heart attack. So he was sick, he was in bad shape, and obviously we could not leave the family behind. It would be very detrimental to his health. So we stayed in Russia; we kind of shelved that plan. And then life took over and we kind of

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[20:00] forgot about that plan. You know, life just goes on, and you adopt, you adjust. And, as I said, the second time we kind of decided that it was time for us to leave the country because we were not satisfied with our life, we were concerned about our children’s future. And in the late ‘80’s we decided to do something about it. And at that time, it was easier already. We went to the American embassy, we got application, we returned the application, and a year later we were called for the interview.

KB: And where did you come in the United States when you came?

MP: As you might know, it was kind of like theater of the absurd. The Jews were leaving to go to Israel. In order to leave the Soviet Union, you had to obtain an Israeli invitation from the family. So everybody was getting that invitation to Israel. And then people would go into Italy or Vienna and talk to the American embassy there and kind of live in a temporary camp obtaining the refugee status and come into the States. But what happened in 1990, just a couple months before we were to leave Moscow, the Soviet government changed the rules. They allowed Soviet Jews to go directly to America if you would have a refugee status. So what happened to us: we went to the American embassy in Moscow, we got our refugee status, and we flew directly from Moscow to New York where my wife had a cousin and they officially sponsored us. So we came to New York, and we settled in Brooklyn.

KB: And at the time that you got here, did either you or your wife have any arrangement for employment or what you were going to do here?

MP: No, we didn’t have any arrangements for employment. So, as I said, my wife’s cousin’s family, they sponsored us. We came to New York, we lived with them maybe for four months until we found our own apartment. And at that time, every Russian Jewish immigrant was sponsored by the NYANA which is the abbreviation for New York Association for New Americans. So they sponsored us for six months. They gave us money to pay rent and food stamps. And that’s how we started our life in New York.

KB: Now, at some point, you wound up at the Jewish Theological Seminary, correct? How did that come about?

MP: Well, that was a little miracle that happened in my life that I’m very grateful for, actually. But I have to go back to what happened to me a year before we left Russia. In 1989, when Gorbachev decided to liberalize the political system, to make some changes to present the Soviet Union in some more liberal ways before the West, he actually allowed some American Jewish organizations to do projects in Moscow. And one of those projects was the Joint Distribution Committee project to try to liberalize religious life in Moscow. And what the Joint Distribution Committee did, they gave money to the Moscow Choral Synagogue to start a choir because it was called Moscow Choral Synagogue, but the choir stopped singing shortly after the Revolution. For 70 years, there was no choir at the Choral Synagogue. So the Joint Distribution Committee gave

6 money to the synagogue to form the choir. And because I was a professional musician, and my friend who worked with me at the choral school, he was a conductor, [25:00] we got to know about this project. And we were given the chance to build this choir. And subsequently, we formed the choir, and I became the soloist of the choir and I sang Jewish liturgical music without even understanding what I was singing about. But the music itself was so powerful, and the music resonated with my soul so much, that it literally changed me. When I came to New York, I didn’t know what was going to happen to me, but as I said, somehow miraculously I met American Jews from New York in Brooklyn. And even without being able to speak, somehow we communicated, and they found out that I was singing Jewish music. And they made all the connections on my behalf to the different cantorial schools in New York. And luckily, the Jewish Theological Seminary, precisely at the time that I came to New York, got an anonymous grant to attract Russian Jewish immigrants to the school to become rabbis or cantors, and I got to know about this. So I went for the audition and interview, and they accepted me. And I got a full scholarship for five years to study at the Seminary and become a cantor.

KB: Just so that we can understand now, at the time that you got here, I assume you spoke no English.

MP: No. Just two words.

KB: So you had to learn English. You didn’t know Hebrew.

MP: No.

KB: And you really didn’t know anything about Jewish customs or religion?

MP: Absolutely nothing. As I said, I was totally, Jewishly illiterate. Because I didn’t grow up going to the synagogue; I didn’t grow up knowing about Jewish customs, holidays, Jewish way of life. So when they accepted me into the Seminary, they knew that they would have to start from the very, very beginning. Plus, another challenge was – not only was I Jewishly illiterate, I didn’t have a language to communicate in. It was an enormous challenge, but I simply had no choice. I wanted to succeed; I had to succeed to be able to help my family. So I started simultaneously learning two new languages, English and Hebrew. And, I have to say, that the Seminary did everything they could to help me.

KB: Now were there other Russians in your class?

MP: So as I said, the Seminary initiated a program for Russian Jewish immigrants and when I came to the Seminary, there were three other Russian Jews that came for that interview and audition. And three of us got accepted, me and two other men. One of them had already lived in the United States for quite some time. And he had some kind of laundromat business in Brooklyn, he studied privately with some cantors. The other

7 fellow was actually a famous Yiddish actor from Moscow by the name of Yascha Yavneh [spelling? transliteration of name is likely incorrect]. And he came to the States, I think on tour. And he decided to stay. I don’t remember all the details of his story. But he was trying to figure it out what he can do in the States, just like all of us. So he thought that maybe retraining from being a Yiddish actor to being a cantor may be his way of life. So the three of us started the program. But after the first year, the two other fellows they dropped out because, as I said, it was quite challenging to study at the Seminary. It was a very vigorous program, especially for us who didn’t grow up in Jewish tradition to learn everything from scratch. Not only to learn everything, but to change our way of life because we know that Jewish life is different.

KB: What year did you start at the Seminary?

MP: I started at the Seminary in May 1991, just six months after I arrived.

KB: And it was a five-year program?

MP: It was a five-year program. And [30:00] what happened, usually first-year students, rabbinical and cantorial students, they would go to Israel and study at the Seminary branch in Jerusalem. But at that time, the Seminary had some financial difficulties, so they cancelled that year in Israel for cantorial students, but they kept it for rabbinical students. So I didn’t get the chance to go to Jerusalem and study in Israel my first year, like cantorial students do now. What I did was study for five years in New York.

KB: Were you getting any instruction in English outside of the Seminary, or was that all at the Seminary also?

MP: So here’s what happened. I got accepted into the Seminary in May. But in New York, there were several organizations helping, Jewish organizations and not necessarily Jewish organizations, because New York is a city of immigrants. So there were many different venues for getting help in English. And as I said, that organization NYANA – New York Association for New Americans – supported us financially, and they had English classes. But there were so many people, that they could not provide English classes for everybody. So they had a lottery. We had to take a lottery ticket, and if you get lucky, you get accepted into classes. I didn’t get lucky the first time. But the second time, I got lucky and I got accepted into English classes. It was like a three or four month class that I took at NYANA. And in May, when I got accepted to the Seminary and started studying, they realized that my English wasn’t good enough to succeed in the program. So what the Seminary did, and for what I’m really, really grateful, they paid for my English classes at Columbia University. So in the morning, I was going to the Seminary. And three times a week after my classes, I was going to Columbia University to study at the English Language Center to improve my English so that I would be able to take classes at the Seminary. So I studied the full semester at Columbia University.

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KB: And where were you learning Hebrew – at the Seminary?

MP: Hebrew I was learning at the Seminary. I started Hebrew in May, even before the regular school year started. Then I continued to study Hebrew for two years at the Seminary.

KB: And while you were at the Seminary for five years, what was your wife doing?

MP: My wife is a pianist. She worked as a professional pianist in Moscow. So when we came to New York, she started looking for a job as an accompanist. And she retrained herself in New York. She became a ballet classist pianist. She was playing for the ballet classes. And she became very successful. She played ballet classes at the Julliard Music School, with the City Ballet and with the Joffrey Ballet company.

KB: Very impressive.

MP: Yes, very impressive.

KB: How did your children do in New York?

MP: My children? Well, I have to say, honestly, I was very busy studying myself. All of us were very busy. My wife was busy working and trying to make money for the family. Our children went to public school. We settled in Borough Park, and I have to say it was a cultural shock for us because Borough Park is the center of Orthodox Judaism. And for us, never having seen these people and really observing what the traditional way of Jewish living can be, it was quite an experience. So they went to public school in Brooklyn. And then when I became a student at the Seminary, it was a little bit too far away for me. It was taking an hour and fifteen minutes to get from Brooklyn [35:00] to 125th and Broadway. So we decided to move a little bit further north, and we rented an apartment in Washington Heights which was much closer to the Seminary and to Columbia University. And then the second year at the Seminary, I got a family apartment in a dormitory. And so our son was going to high school. And our daughter, two years after we came to the United States, was accepted into a Jewish day school. There is a very well established modern Orthodox school actually, surprisingly, it’s called Park East Synagogue which is near Hunter College (68th and 3rd). And the reason being because Park East Synagogue and Moscow Synagogue were sister synagogues. I knew Rabbi Schneier even before I came to the States because he was visiting Moscow Synagogue. And when I told him that I might be coming to New York, he said: When you come to New York, if you need a good Jewish education for your children, call me. So I made the connection, and they accepted my daughter at Park East Day School.

KB: Who’s older: your daughter or your son?

MP: My son is older. My daughter is five years younger. So she graduated from Park

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East Day School.

KB: And your son went to public school?

MP: Well, he went to high school but he didn’t finish high school because he’s very smart but he’s not for the kind of structured education.

KB: You graduated in what year?

MP: I studied at the Seminary for five years from 1991-1996. In 1996, I graduated from the Seminary as a cantor.

KB: What did you do after that?

MP: Well, I was looking for a job as every graduate in America does. So I applied to different positions. Honestly, my wife, as I said, became a very accomplished ballet pianist in New York, and she wanted to stay in New York. Our daughter got accepted into Calhoun School, which is a private high school. But I was not able to find a job in New York, and you all understand why. So it was a little dramatic because my daughter was very disappointed. She was looking forward to being educated at one of the best private high schools in New York. And my wife was very disappointed to leave all of those wonderful positions. But my first pulpit that I was able to find was a synagogue in Indianapolis, Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis. It’s very interesting how I got that job. Their cantor, Ray Edgar, was retiring. That was 1996, the year we celebrated 3000 years of Jerusalem. And I was singing in a male chorus. One of my teachers at the Seminary, Neil Levine, he was conducting the Jewish male chorus. He invited me to sing in a few concerts: in Montreal, Chicago, and Indianapolis. So when we went to Indianapolis and I sang at the concert, the other cantor was Cantor Alberto Mizrahi, who was a cantor at Park Synagogue. It’s very interesting how life sometimes works in mysterious ways. So anyway when we did the concert in Indianapolis, and I sang a few Russian solos, during the intermission the rabbi and the president of the congregation came and asked me if I would consider coming to Indianapolis to become a cantor because they were replacing their cantor. [40:00] And I said you don’t have a position because your cantor is still there for another year. And actually, Abe Mizrachi made the shidduch because he said, “Well you could hire him as an assistant cantor, and he would learn the job and would gradually move in while your senior cantor will be retiring.” And that’s exactly what happened. I wasn’t able to find any other position, so I came to Indianapolis and became an assistant cantor for one year while the cantor was retiring. He helped me to get into the job. Then I became the senior cantor, and I stayed in Indianapolis for three years. Then Park Synagogue started looking for a cantor. And I was looking for a better position for myself, and I went to Park for the interview, and I got the job.

KB: Let’s go back to Indianapolis for minute. You came from Moscow which is a very big city. You came to New York which is a very big city. Then you moved to Indianapolis. So

10 that must have been another cultural shock for you to move to Indianapolis.

MP: Yes, actually it was because as you said all the big cities are kind of similar. Public transportation, streets, and so on and so on. And even though it was a big change, the move from Moscow to New York, at that time in 1990, there was a big difference between Moscow and New York. But at that time, the move from New York to suburban life, which I knew nothing about, that was another transition. I wouldn’t say it was a difficult transition, but it was a transition. For example, I never drove a car before, and in Indianapolis I had to learn how to drive a car. It took some time, and there’s not much public transportation. And we had to get a house in Indianapolis. We had never owned a house. So even though the first year we lived in a townhouse, it was sort of like an apartment, to adjust, because it was a little transition. I was an assistant cantor. I wasn’t making enough money to buy a house. But the second year, we bought a house and gradually life became normal. We learned the suburban life of America and we enjoyed it.

KB: How did your family like it?

MP: Well, I have to say it wasn’t easy for my daughter and my wife. They were very disappointed to move out of New York. My wife struggled to look for a job because obviously Indianapolis is not a cultural center like New York is. It took her some time, but she found a job at Butler University in Indianapolis. She became an accompanist. She played in the vocal department and played with the ballet classes in their dance classes as well. For my daughter it was actually a more difficult period of transition. She was very, very disappointed, and she had some problems adjusting to life in Indianapolis. But eventually, she overcame the challenges.

KB: She was going to high school?

MP: Yes. That was her first year of high school.

KB: Did your son move to Indianapolis?

MP: No. He never moved to Indianapolis. He was 19 years old, and he decided to stay in New York. He became a computer geek. The Internet was just booming, and he subscribed to the Internet from different companies. Because he’s so gifted with computers, he started telling them how to improve their business, and they invited him to work for them. So he got a job in New York and he stayed there.

KB: This is what you originally wanted to do way back in Moscow?

MP: Yes, I guess he followed my dreams.

KB: What year did you come to Cleveland?

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MP: I came to Cleveland in August of 1999. [45:00] It was my daughter’s last year of high school. So she and my wife decided it would be too difficult and too traumatic again to change schools and go into your senior year in a new high school. So they stayed in Indianapolis, both of them. My daughter wanted to finish high school in Indianapolis. So my first year in Cleveland, I lived in that apartment on the Park Synagogue grounds. I was commuting back and forth to spend time with my family. It was not ideal. It was a little challenging, being alone, but we survived. My daughter graduated high school in Indianapolis, and then she went to Indiana University. After that year, we sold the house in Indianapolis and my wife moved to Cleveland. We bought a house in Cleveland, and I’ve been the Cantor of Park Synagogue since 1999.

KB: You keep referring to your wife, and I know you and your first wife are divorced. You’ve remarried.

MP: That is correct.

KB: At this point in the interview, I usually ask people how they’ve adapted to life in the Jewish community. I’m not sure how you ask a cantor how they’ve adapted to life in the Jewish community. And what do you do outside of Park Synagogue in the Jewish community?

MP: Well even though that I became a cantor, it was a process. It wasn’t like overnight I became an observant Jew. I was 36 years old when I moved to the States. I never lived Jewish life. I never knew what Jewish life is. So when I became a student at the Seminary—I can even share some private details of my process of becoming Jewish. I never was circumcised because it wasn’t available for Jews in Russia. So when I became a student, I had a conversation with the dean of the school Rabbi Morton Leitman. He asked me that question directly. He said, “Misha, are you circumcised?” I said, “Rabbi, no, because it wasn’t available.” So he said, “I’m not telling you to go immediately and do it. You have to consider that because if you want to become a cantor you have to understand that that’s a responsibility.” He explained to me what circumcision means. It’s a covenant between God and a Jewish man. And the covenant is sacred, and that’s an indication that you are, let’s say, 100% kosher Jew. It took me some time to process that. And luckily in New York there were many organizations helping Russian Jews to become real Jews. So there is an organization in Brooklyn which is called Shoreshim, which in Hebrew means “roots.” They were helping Russian Jews go back to their roots and become real Jews. They had that service available, and I was circumcised in Brooklyn close to the end of my first year in New York. And my son, after me, we arrange the same brit milah for him and he was circumcised as well. And that’s just one of the examples of my personal journey to become a Jew, Kashrut for example. I never knew what kashrut is or was because nobody could tell me that. Even if I knew what it was, it was practically impossible to keep Kashrut in Moscow. There were no kosher butchers. Where would I buy kosher meat? How would I know which product is kosher

12 and which is not? There was no labeling on products. I didn’t grow up in a kosher family. It took me some time to learn the laws of kashrut. It took me some time [50:00] to reprocess my brain and my palate, to learn how to cook, to learn what I can eat and what I cannot eat. I had to change myself. I used to like certain things and now I can’t eat it. So it took me several years to change my eating habits and to become kosher observant. Holidays: I never observed other holidays besides Pesach as a family holiday. And now the most basic holiday of Shabbat has certain rituals and certain obligations. You light the candles, you gather the family together, you share the meal, you say the blessings after the meal. All of this was completely new to me, and it took me some time to learn and fall in love with all those rituals. And they would become a part of my life now. Outside of the synagogue, what is my involvement with the Jewish community? Well, my three years in Indianapolis were really too short to get involved. And I have to say the Jewish community in Indianapolis is much, much smaller than here in Cleveland and it’s not as active as the Cleveland Jewish community. When I came to Cleveland, it took me a little time. Obviously, I had to learn the new job. I had to establish connections and build relationships with people in the congregation. But then again, kind of jokingly and almost anecdotally, I was doing Jewish funerals, co-officiating with Rabbi Skoff, as the cantor. But nobody, none of the Jewish funeral directors ever suspected that I could speak Russian. The Russian Jewish community here – it’s quite sizable. We have close to 30,000 Jews, and a lot of them are older Jews who moved late in their lives. We know that they’re dying out, and they don’t speak English. Berkowitz, Kumin Funeral Home needed somebody who could conduct funeral services in Russian. Just accidentally, Stuart Berkowitz asked me if I spoke Russian. I said, “Yes.” And he said, “Oh my God! What luck! We need somebody to do Russian funerals,” because they want clergy who can relate to them and understand their problems and provide that service for them. So I became sort of the official Russian funeral clergy. There are now quite a few Russian families who need help coping with the loss of their dear ones, because the only other person who was available to them was very old. Rabbi Kazin, who died already, was the only Russian-speaking clergy. But they told me he was very strict; he was Orthodox. Families were not quite comfortable with him because Russian families know very little about Judaism. Rabbi Kazin was placing all those restrictions on them. They were a little bit uncomfortable with this. So that’s one of my outside involvements. Then I became involved with the Jewish Federation of Cleveland because Cleveland and St. Petersburg are sister cities so they invited me to serve on the Cleveland/St. Petersburg Committee to help with all those Jewish projects that we do in St. Petersburg to help the Jewish community there to revive Jewish life. I organized a volunteer choir. Now every year we go to nursing facilities, and we [55:00] bring the joy of music to people that sometimes feel lonely. They want entertainment. It’s a very rewarding experience for us to come to these nursing facilities and sing popular Broadway and Jewish music.

KB: I’m not sure that I have any more questions. If you have anything to add to anything you’ve already said, please take this opportunity to do so.

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MP: Well, I think, what I would like to say, since it’s a collection of interviews of the people from the former Soviet Union, what upsets me a little bit—I understand that it just happened in my life that I found a way to learn my Jewish roots and to learn a lot about Judaism and now Judaism is an integral part of my life. But what upsets me is that many of the Jews from the former Soviet Union, they come to the States and, for whatever reason—I understand everybody has his or her own reasons—they don’t really explore their Jewishness. They know they’re Jewish, but maybe because of the years of the propaganda and the way they grew up, they—I wish they would be more involved. That’s what I’m trying to say. I wish more people would join the synagogues and join other Jewish organizations and help to build the community. I think they would find that rewarding. And I have to say that I feel really blessed that after leaving the Soviet Union I was able to realize my gift, with the help of so many people and with the help of American Jewish organizations, I was able to become a cantor and contribute in a way I can to Jewish life. I feel I’m really blessed that I can sing to God and that I can pray on behalf of so many people and be able to express how I feel about Judaism and about Jewish music. I’m really grateful, and I will continue to do that.

KB: Thank you very much. This has been a most interesting interview, and I want to thank you for your time and effort.

MP: Thank you.

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