the 48th and 49th parallels north lati- In 1936, as the clouds of Nazism the war, might prove tude. A 1929 commission compared darkened over Europe and to be “the logical Palestine of this it, topographically, to Ontario and sought sanctuary wherever they unhappy era. In this new potential Michigan. Indeed, the commission could find it, Edward E. Grusd, the haven, the Jewish people are free was headed by Franklin S. Harris, editor of B ’nai B ’rith Magazine, to develop their inherent spiritual an agronomist who had lived in Al- remarked that those Jews “who still and intellectual gifts as well as their berta, where, he said, “the climate believe in the value of prayer should industrial and agricultural aptitudes, and conditions were similar to Bi- thank God that in today’s mad world” and enjoy freedom and abundance in robidzhan.” there is a Birobidzhan, “a great land ever increasing measure.” Unlike the parched Middle East, beckoning to them, challenging Grusd and Weber were wrong, there’s no shortage of water: The their best energies and talents.” In of course. Birobidzhan never came Amur River, separating Birobidzhan such days of distress for the Jewish even close to rivaling the Zionist from Chinese Manchuria to its south, people, he concluded, Birobidzhan yishuv in Eretz . Today the connects the region to the Pacific “may well turn out to be their one Jewish population of the JAR is Ocean. Other rivers include the Bira, sure haven.” about six thousand, according to the Bidzhan, Birakan, Urmi and Ikura. In 1943, in the middle of the Ho- Jewish community, which survives The Trans-Siberian Railway links locaust, the Polish-born American as a living footnote to history and the region with , East Asia, Jewish artist Max Weber, a protege another far-flung outpost of the Jew- and the Pacific. of Pablo Picasso, hoped that, after ish world. ®

A Romance with :

From Birobidzhan to New York N ik o l a i B o r o d u l in

“The louder the Yiddish, the farther you’ll get.” — Bernard Choseed

t I HE INCIDENT WILL b e in my memory forever, and I recollect it as if At the time, I was 28. I knew that I it happened yesterday. On a warm, sunny September day in 1989, was Jewish, yes — the stamp on my I was strolling along Sholem Aleichem Street, the major thorough- passport, “Yevrey” (Jew), didn’t grant fare of Birobidzhan, capital city of ______me the chance to forget. I was even the Jewish Autonomous Region in weirdly proud to be Jewish because Birobidzhan, I had never , Yakov Sverdlov (the first ״' the Far East of Russia, and I met Llvjn9 an acquaintance who wished me a heard the words, “ Hashone.” president of Soviet Russia) and many happy holiday. I looked at him as if ------world chess champions were Jewish. I he were daydreaming and naively another planet. “Don’t you know that was also a decently educated person: asked, “What holiday are you talk- today is a Jewish holiday?” I knew Russian, English and German, ing about? We have a long way to “What Jewish holiday?” worked as an assistant principal of a go before Day” “Don’t you know that today is high school, and had begun to study (celebrated by all on ?” and simultaneously teach Yiddish November 7th). My next question astonished him: to adults and children. Still, I didn’t He looked at me as if I were from “What’s Rosh ?” know about the simplest, most com- mon traditions of Jewish life. Living N ikolai Borodulin, a member of our Editorial Board, is Assistant Direc- in Birobidzhan — described by the 10- tor of the Center for Cultural Jewish Life at The Workmen’s Circle. He was cal writer Boris Miller as “a factory to bom and raised in Birobidzhan and came to the U.S. in 1992. He worked for assimilate Jews” — I had never heard eight years as a librarian and cataloguer at YIVO. the words, “Rosh Hashone.”

18 Jewish Currents דאם ערשטע יאר פון דער אידישער אױטאנאמער The Jewish Autonomous Territory in טעױטאױע - א רעקארד פון גרױםע דעתרײמנגעןBiro-Bidjan is Making Great Strides

פעדעץ טאײדש — טאײדש פעדעץ עם גײט, טייגא, צו דיר איצט יונג װעח א פאלק א װעח יונג איצט דיר צו טייגא, גײט, עם r #למאו#? r דוד בע-נעלטא: דוד ראובן בריינץ כדוך גלאזטאז כדוך בעד גדין י. ט. ומבטאן ט. י. ליובע װאבע־טאז ליובע ט. .c באווקין .c ט. ט״צה כ*ו ד*ז6 טאדליש ד*ז6 גיגא טעדעב .... איציל פעפע־ א. יעדעלטאו א. ד-. ל. •טאצאוו - לאדדאנטלי -

I had never heard of “Purim,” read to myself amazing stories about occasion I can, although he is al- “Sukesfi or “bar mitsve, ” either. The young Volodya Ulyanov (Lenin’s ready twelve years oyf yener velt only Jewish holiday I was somewhat real name), how honest and brave he (in another world). The late Bernard familiar with was Peysekh, for which was. In the first grade, almost every Choseed, a professor of Russian Lan- my bobe used to bake matse. She student became an Oktyabryonok, guage and literature at Georgetown never said why and I never asked a member of an all-Soviet school University, a passionate lover of Yid- even one question, forget about fir children’s organization, and received dish language and an expert on Soviet kashes (Four Questions). a pin with the image of Lenin as a Yiddish literature, had wanted to visit Like almost every person of my child of 6 or 7. In the third and fourth Birobidzhan since Stalin’s death. He generation, I was a product of the grades, we became Young Pioneers had always been refused a visa, but national policy of the Communist and wore the red tie along with a didn’t give up. In the 1970s, he even Party, whose ultimate goal was to pin with the portrait of 10-year-old took a train from Moscow to Vladi- force all people of the Lenin. At 14, we joined the Young vostok, with a twenty-minute stop in to believe in the new and only God Communist League and proudly the city he had read so much about. — the Communist Party and its chief wore a pin with the portrait of a teen- But the real opportunity to spend deputy, Khaver (Comrade) Lenin. (In age Volodya Ulyanov. time in Birobidzhan arrived with my time, Stalin was not spoken of How many songs about Lenin we perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev’s any more). The brainwashing really sang! How many poems about Lenin policy of “restructuring,” which be- worked, and how! No matter what we recited! gan in 1985 but eventually reached time of day or night, if you woke the Soviet Zion in the late 1980s. me and asked when and where V.I. I mention Lenin 9s birthday intention- Professor Choseed was fascinated Lenin was bom, I, along with most ally, because on that date in 1989 I by what he saw in Birobidzhan. of my generation, could answer met in Birobidzhan a person who Most of the Jewish/Yiddish enthu- without thinking: April 22nd, 1870, became my mentor, taught me how siasts (including non-Jews) were in Simbirsk. Throughout my early to be a good teacher and a mentsh, just beginning the process of Jewish childhood, I would listen and then and whom I thank sincerely every revival, and he was as happy as a

July-A u gust, 2006 19 child to see this renaissance: to hear residents. Little of this interested me, Heymland (Soviet Homeland). There Yiddish songs and cultural programs however. I actually found it slightly I was privileged to study with, and on the radio; to buy gefilte fish in embarrassing to see old Jews sitting shep enormous nakhes from, Shimen delis; to see little kids studying Yid- on benches and speaking this strange- Sandler, a legendary Yiddish teacher dish in kindergartens, and students sounding Yiddish. If anybody had who taught Yiddish on the pages of at Teachers College (most of whom, suggested that not only would I some Sovetish Heymland. like the kindergarteners, were not day speak the language but actually Seminar participants soon learned Jews) studying to become Yiddish- become a professional in the field about another Yiddish seminar in language instructors. I was truly im- of Yiddish culture, I would have Moscow run by former refuseniks pressed by Choseed’s methodology laughed. What caused my transfor- and taught by Israeli Yiddish pro- of teaching language through culture. mation from an almost-perfect So- fessors. We had to tants oyf tsvey He used contemporary, innovative viet person with an appropriate set khasenes (dance at two weddings), studying officially from 9 to 1 with Sandler and Chaim Beider, and semi- By the third day of my Yiddish immersion, I felt as if all the people officially from 2 to 6 with Gershon surrounding me on the Moscow Metro were speaking Yiddish . . . Weiner, Dov Noy, and Rivka Reich. By the third day of this immersion, approaches, which he demonstrated of values into an ardent Yiddishist? I felt as if all the people surround- z a lange ing me on the Moscow Metro were־ for many language instructors and As they say in Yiddish: 57 students at the Teachers Training mayse (it’s a long story). speaking Yiddish . . . Institute and Teachers College in Birobidzhan, and also in Khabarovsk My interest in Yiddish arose when When I returned from Moscow, the Teachers College. Anatolii Surnin, a dean at the newly editor of the Birobidzhaner Shtern Professor Choseed became a major established Teachers College in gave Anatolii Surnin a letter from promoter of Birobidzhan abroad. In Birobidzhan, asked me at the start Miriam Dorn, chairperson of the Japan, where he taught English, he of 1988 to become their Yiddish early childhood education depart- would also teach about Birobidzhan instructor. “You’re Jewish, and you ment at the City College of New and Yiddish. It was he who invented know English and German,” he said. York, expressing her desire to visit a new Russian proverb, “Gromche “Why don’t you take a textbook and Birobidzhan. Her father had been Idish, dal she budesh” — “The louder teach yourself Yiddish?” the editor of a Yiddish newspaper the Yiddish, the farther you’ll get” So I did — in part because I had in Canada and she wanted to see — which is an adaptation of a famous very little else to do in the nearby Birobidzhan with her own eyes. I without considering ־— Russian proverb, “Tishe yedesh’ village of Lazarevo, where I taught called her -The quieter you English and was the only Jew among the fifteen-hour time difference be“ — ’״ dal she budesh go the farther you’ll get.” (There is a several thousand inhabitants. Becom- tween New York and Birobidzhan play of sounds here: yedesh, go, and ing a language instructor at Teachers — to suggest an exchange of visits idish, Yiddish.) College meant a true advancement of between our Teachers College and my professional career, and I took it City College. It was 3:00 a.m. in Even before perestroika, Yiddish quite seriously. On a deeper level, New York when her husband Herold had been present in remnants in Biro- my Rosh Hashone episode had been picked up the receiver, passed it to bidzhan. The local newspaper, Biro- more painful for me than a physical Miriam, and I explained the matter in bidzhaner Shtern (Star), founded in blow — and had really awakened my tsebrokhenem (broken) Yiddish. 1930, was the only Yiddish daily left my desire to understand Jewish She told me to call again in a couple in the Soviet Union; there were daily identity. of weeks. radio news and cultural broadcasts In late June, 1989,1 went to Mos- When I did, the exchange had been inYiddish; the signs on most official cow for my first serious encounter arranged: I and my colleague, Larissa buildings were in Yiddish and Rus- with the Yiddish language, at a Tsilman, an English teacher to whom sian; the inhabitants of Birobidzhan seminar of Yiddish teachers orga- I had tried to teach Yiddish, would go even spoke with a certain Jewish nized by the Ministry of Education to New York to study Yiddish, and intonation, similar to that of Odessa and the Yiddish magazine, Sovetish then professors from City College

20 Jewish C urrents would come to Birobidzhan to see mameloshn club, bringing students editorials, poems, short stories and how they could help us. Larissa and I to Moscow in 1991 and 1992 to polemical articles, including sharp at- were the first official mini-delegation study Yiddish at International Judaic tacks against Birobidzhan’s enemies from Birobidzhan, which was honor- conferences, studying Yiddish at Bar and skeptics — especially against the able and thrilling — but not easy. In Ilan University’s summer program in Forverts for its lampoons of Jewish order to get two airline tickets to New Israel (which is a mayse farzikh — a life in Birobidzhan. York, Surnin and I had to fly some story in itself), and more. However, I Not an ambivalent thought ap- 7,000 miles to Moscow and climb hadn’t had much time to study seri- peared in Nailebn, not even when the bureaucratic ladder all the way ous Yiddish literature. the first governor of the Jewish Au- up to the deputy minister of aviation My immersion in Yiddish at Co- tonomous Region, the well-known of the USSR! lumbia, and later at YIVO, where I and much-loved Yiddish scholar We arrived in New York on Feb- had the privilege to work from 1994 Iosif Liberberg, was arrested as a ruary 12th, 1990. Thanks to Miriam to 2001, not only tremendously en- Trotskyite and a Japanese spy and Dorn’s wise and enormously helpful riched my Yiddish but also allowed executed in 1936. Nailebn simply arrangements, we spent a month and me to discover my own family roots congratulated the newly elected a half studying Yiddish with Mord- and fascinating, often disturbing, governor without a word about poor khe Shaechter and Hershl Glasser, facts and amazing artifacts about the Liberberg. and met the legends of Yiddish place I had lived for thirty years. In In a similar instance, Nailebn pedagogy, Yosl Mlotek and Itche America, I learned so much about reported on ICOR’s enthusiastic or- Goldberg, Workmen’s Circle educa- Birobidzhan that it became the major ganizing of the “Exhibition of Ameri- tors Khava Lapin, Mikhl Baran and theme of my research. can Artists for Birobidzhan,” involv- Pesakh Fiszman, and National Yid- ing 119 artists, Jews and non-Jews. dish Book Center president Aaron It is still hard for me to comprehend Their works were exhibited in 1935 Lansky. why this enclave in the Far East of in New York and Boston, in 1936 in At the end of our visit there was Soviet Russia attracted the attention Moscow — and then disappeared at a reception in honor of two humble of Jews all over the world. Why did approximately the same time that “professors” from Birobidzhan. Only so many support this project, collect- Liberberg was killed. Nailebn didn’t there did we have the chance to meet ing money, establishing friendship mention the exhibition again. our sponsor, the late Joseph Murphy, societies, publishing books, peri- American Jews nevertheless sup- chancellor of the City University, who odicals and posters, creating operas ported Birobidzhan financially and greeted us in Yiddish and shared with and ballets, organizing fairs, bazaars, went there to build the Jewish home- the audience his boyhood memory conferences, and concerts in order land with their own hands. The ma- of being sent by his yidishe mame to to help Jews to build their Soviet jority came back in short order. The collect money for Birobidzhan with homeland? colonization of Birobidzhan, accord- a pushke on the streets. Had she not The major publication about Biro- ing to Victor Fink, an American who enlisted him in this enterprise, my bidzhan, outside the Soviet Union, traveled there in 1929, “was stated colleague and I might never have was Nailebn, the organ of the pro- and implemented without prepara- come to New York! Soviet ICOR (acronym of idishe tion, study and planning.” Many who kolonizatsye organizatsye). When stayed met a sad or miserable end. In 1992,1 returned to New York to the Soviet government initiated the earn my master’s degree in Columbia Birobidzhan project, ICOR, which Last May, in Vilna, Lithuania, I met University’s Yiddish program. I was already had a hundred branches with Judita Rozina, whose father, Chaim still a greenhorn in my knowledge over 10,000 dues-paying members Rozin, had gone to Birobidzhan in of Yiddish language and culture. in the United States and Canada, 1932. In ICOR Magazine (the pre- True, I had been extremely busy in turned its efforts towards promoting decessor to Nailebn) of July, 1932, Birobidzhan developing a Yiddish the settlement of Jews in the Soviet he is shown in a group picture of language curriculum for the students Far East. Americans (there were twenty-seven at Teachers College, writing for Biro- The magazine portrayed a Jewish in all) sailing for Birobidzhan on The bidzhaner Shtern, teaching Yiddish ganeydn (paradise) in Birobidzhan, Majestic on July 20th. to adults and children, organizing a with joyful images enhanced by Bom in Poland, Chaim had lived

July-August, 2006 21 .Iosif Chernyak as references וייער בירא-בידדשאנער יאב ,in Brazil and New York knew eleven languages and In fact, I have crossed paths became, in Birobidzhan, a with these relatives on more teacher of English, French than one occasion, and they and German at Teachers Col- always helped me without lege. His earnings were mea- knowing it. In 1997, for ex- ger so he worked additionally ample, Dina Abramowitz, as an accountant at the Jew- the late YIVO librarian who ish Autonomous Region’s helped nearly every living Department of Education. being interested in Yiddish Judita, bom in 1937, lost her culture, asked me what the father in July, 1938, when expression, “dos tsente vort” NKVD people arrested and (the tenth word), could mean. accused him of being a spy I had no idea. She asked all .a - אז ען. א :יו י#י־פעי איז אין ניר א־יבידזזז אן ar? ’י&ווו ז*י* ’י&ווו ar? ניר א־יבידזזז אן אין איז י#י־פעי :יו א - אז ען. .a (the Yiddish mumkhes (experts £ ײי איז ;עק-כ־עז פון ע3לי 2דא קי :- א ז : ע בייין אין ביי א־ בי דזיל או. for Polish intelligence. She and her mother didn’t find without getting a satisfying answer. But she stubbornly ניילעכי)ד, out what had happened to Chaim until 1958, when they continued her research until received a certificate of his From N a ileb n , July, 1938, a photo of Chaim Rozin and his she found her answer and posthumous rehabilitation family, captioned, “Happy parents and their little boy [sic].” showed me her source: an The photo appeared in the very month of Rozin’s arrest by the giving a date for his death NKVD. article from Yidishe Shprakh — November 20th, 1942. with almost 600 Yiddish say- They didn’t believe the document, build the blossoming Jewish Autono- ings — collected by Iosif Chernyak! however, and continued to press for mous Republic. It so happened that Among the people who had provided information. In 1989, Judita received the letter and the Rozin photograph him with proverbs were my great- an unusually polite letter from the were published in the same issue. grandmother, my grandmother, her KGB informing her that her father Moreover, in Nailebn's April, 1939 husband and two of her sisters! (By had been shot in Khabarovsk, a issue, I came across an article written the way, “dos tsente vort” means to nearby industrial city, on September by my great-uncle, Iosif Chernyak, speak indistinctly, so that only one 20th, 1938. about his sister, my grandmother, word out of ten can be understood.) Judita showed me some family and the Yiddish folksongs she used Again, in the year 2000,1 was pre- pictures from those terrible times and to sing. I learned a lot about my bobe, paring a course on women in Yiddish I immediately recognized one from about her hard, unhappy childhood, poetry. My major source was Ezra my issues of Nailebn — a photo of a her struggle against injustice, her Korman’s Yidishe Dikhterins (Yid- happy family with the caption: “M. activities in Crimea, and the songs dish Poetesses), published in Chicago [sic] Rosen, a New Yorker, came to she used to sing. in 1928. Represented in this ency- Birobidzhan in 1932, his wife came I had known very little about clopedic volume was my great-aunt from Lithuania. The child was bom my father’s family. I knew that my Lyuba Chernyak, who was a frequent in Birobidzhan.” Above the photo, father’s aunt, Lyuba Chernyak, was contributor to Sovetish heymland. another caption reads: “Happy par- a literary figure, and that Iosif was a Nu, I discovered my yikhes (an- ents and their little boy [sic].” The Yiddish linguist who was persecuted cestry), which makes my work more date of the magazine, July, 1938, during Stalin’s repressions in the late meaningful, exciting, and full of was the month and year of Chaim 1940s. In New York I got to know surprises, especially regarding the Rozin’s arrest! them more intimately, thanks to the place I was bom. Biographical Dictionary of Modern I rediscovered this photo in Nailebn Yiddish Literature, where there are Birobidzhan has become an impor- by coincidence, as I was looking entries on them both. When I wrote tant Jewish cultural center in the Far for a letter written by my cousin’s my master’s thesis, Ideology and East of Russia, although only a few husband’s grandfather, Hershl Ko- Language o f Soviet Yiddish Dailies, thousand Jews remain there. A really renfeld, inviting Jews to come and 1920s-1940s, I often used articles by nice synagogue opened in 2004, and

22 J ewish C urrents Democracy’s Ghosts neighborhoods become barred from the political process, (Continued from page 6) political candidates will often stop campaigning there or Elections has hosted a training session for hundreds of responding to community concerns, setting in motion a county officials to clarify that New Yorkers with felony classic political Catch-22. convictions are eligible to vote unless they are presently The fact that American Jews vote in disproportion- in prison or on parole — with no special documentation ate numbers, and are concentrated in certain states, has needed to register. helped strengthen the political influence of the Jewish In Florida, between 500,000 and a million citizens community and given it a large, constructive voice in are currently disfranchised because of past felony con- national affairs. It is time that we exercised that voice to victions. In Conned, Abramsky notes that if just one challenge these draconian policies, which have left mil- percent of these had voted in 2000, splitting sixty-forty lions of Americans, and entire communities, subjected to for Gore, the Democrats would have won the White “taxation without representation.” We must ask ourselves: House. Still, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans Where is the justice when “time served” becomes an end- are playing the political savior on this issue. As entire less sentence? ■

Birobidzhan... A Poem About Nothing D a v id A . V ic t o r there is a sizable Jewish community center as well as diverse Jewish soci- Alone at the kitchen table, Meggy waits, draws eties. At the state-supported Jewish Jewish stars on flags and tiny Torah scrolls day school, over a thousand students to send to Grandma for the holidays. from the first to eleventh grades study She hears us, hushed, Yiddish and Hebrew, Jewish history bickering at the answering machine. She knows and literature, Jewish dance and Jew- not to ask: the blood on the door, the swastika ish cuisine — yet more than 80 per- in the street, an accented voice among the messages. cent are non-Jews. If you ask why, the answer is: Why not? Many non-Jew- Her mother tells her there is nothing to worry about, ish parents say that since they live in that Daddy gets worried about nothing, that nothing the Jewish Autonomous Region, they worries him now. want their children to know about Meggy continues to color Jewish history, language and culture. until the police ring the bell. She dashes to the door, Halevay, that such schools would be but Daddy opens it, sends her back. all over the globe! Recently, old Jewish religious When the report is filed, the policewoman turns to leave. artifacts have been discovered in “It’s probably nothing,” she says. “And for right now, Birobidzhan, including a prayerbook there’s nothing we can do.” Before she closes lectern bearing the name of Boruch the door, Meggy races to her, opens her mouth but says Maizler, a community member in the nothing. 1950s, and prayerbooks containing a “What is it, honey?” rare prayer for the Russian tsar. These “Nothing,” she says, objects vividly show that the Birobid- and waves good-bye. zhan experiment, undertaken to create a specifically Soviet Jewish culture that would exclude the religious tradi- tion, failed to do so. It’s truly remark- D avid A. V ictor is a professor at Eastern Michigan University whose able how muchyidishkayt — in all of poetry has appeared in Confrontation, The Michigan Quarterly Review, its variety — can endure. ■ The Wascana Review and other publications.

July-A ugust, 2006 23