By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
William Kronblatt was the lucky kid to find the afikomen. His sister Melissa also took part in the search.
During the migration of Soviet Jews to the United States in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, thousands settled throughout the Puget Sound. In the ensuing years, many raised families and have become a part of the elderly population. Because so many scholarly Jews in the Soviet Union were killed either in World War II or by the Stalin regime, most of the Russians who came to the U.S. may have been experts in their professional careers, but they knew little about religious ritual or Jewish history.
Cantor Marina Belenky leads a blessing over one of the cups of wine. Her musical group, Marianna Trio, also performed dance numbers following the seder.
Which is why Cantor Marina Belenky says that the Passover seder she led at Temple Beth Am on Sun., April 8 is “like a dream come true.”
The seder, performed entirely in Hebrew and Russian, used the Reform movement’s Russian-language Passover Haggadah. More than 200 people of Russian descent, from small children to elderly adults, were bused in from around the Puget Sound region to participate in an event they found both accessible and, at least from what appeared with the toasts and multilingual conversations, enjoyable.
Volunteer Linda Kantor serves the chicken dinner to one of the many tables of elderly Russians.
“The Russian elderly here are such a small community, and they rarely get to see each other,” said Jane Relin, Jewish Family Service’s director of aging and adult programs. “There’s no occasions for them to get together.”
This is the third such seder, a joint effort of Temples Beth Am and B’nai Torah and Jewish Family Service.
Dozens of participants sat family-style at one of the long tables set up in Temple Beth Am’s social hall.