By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
As twilight descended on the social hall at Temple Beth Am on April 1, 160 Russian immigrants from the former Soviet Union, with a modern Exodus story of their own, examined the Russian-Hebrew haggadah created just for them, and awaited Jewish Family Service’s Passover seder that was about to begin in their honor.
Preparing to lead the ancient ritual meal was Seattleite and Russian émigré Cantor Marina Belenky, along with her musical trio, Marianna, who were warming up for the post-seder Jewish-Russian world music and dancing.
Children helped their “bubbies” and parents preview the text, while others just kept them company as the crowd gathered and latecomers took their seats.
Anticipation gave way to a warm welcome from Beth Am’s senior rabbi, Jonathan Singer, with a translator behind him to deliver his speech in the participants’ mother tongue.
“We invite you…to come and decorate our houses of Torah,” he said, reflecting on his grandmother’s journey here from the Ukraine. “Had it not been for her willingness to join the Jewish community, I would not be a rabbi. You will be a blessing and we will bless you.”
Although Chabad-Lubavitch of the Pacific Northwest has been hosting an Orthodox Jewish seder for the Russian immigrant community for several years, this was the first Reform Russian seder in Seattle.
“We’ve been wanting to do a Russian seder for years,” said Wendy Marcus, music director for Beth Am. “But we didn’t have that connection to the older Russian community that JFS has. In reality, this whole thing is about getting people connected, not only to the community, but also to their tradition.”
Ken Weinberg, CEO of JFS, also gave translated remarks just before the seder got underway.
“I am very grateful to my grandparents that they left Russia when they did,” Weinberg said as he greeted the group. “That gave me the kind of life that I’ve been able to live. This is a first for us at Jewish Family Service…but not the last.”
According to Jane Relin, the clinical director at JFS, these Russian immigrants are, for the most part, a surviving remnant from the Holocaust, who were left in the Soviet Union without any family records or religious infrastructure. They were also denied their religious freedom to practice Judaism.
“For the most part, these are secular Jews who have not had the ability to learn about the religion because of the language barrier,” Relin, who has been working with the more than 200 Russian elderly in JFS’s Russian program for the last five years, told JTNews.
Most live in public housing in Bellevue’s Crossroads area, she said, while other large communities live in Kirkland and Mercer Island. A few also live in Redmond.
“The people who are good at speaking English are the younger people,” Relin said. “They were able to integrate into the community and get pretty good jobs. But a lot of the elderly people have remained pretty isolated in their own community and stuck without much support.”
The catered kosher dinner was provided at a reduced rate by Nosh Away in Seattle and made possible with the help of Dean and Gwenn Polik and The Kenneth and Marleen Alhadeff Charitable Foundation.
Volunteers from JFS copied and assembled each 32-page haggadah by hand. It included Hebrew and Russian prayer texts on each page, along with all of the traditional Passover songs in Russian, with the music included.
Belenky, who often performs lifecycle rituals for the Russian community, said she is more involved with them now that she has been collaborating on this project with JFS.
As the only Russian-speaking member of the clergy who could lead the seder for the group, Belenky chanted each prayer in Hebrew, translated it into Russian, and then explained the meaning of each ritual for the crowd.
“I am putting my heart and soul into it,” Belenky said. “I see the analogy of my Exodus, when I left Russia. When I was growing up, I didn’t see any of that and I was jealous of the kids that lived here in America, that they had seder every year. I had my first seder when I was 29.”
Belenky graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in St. Petersburg, Russia and came to the United States in 1982, where she was ordained as a cantor at the School of Sacred Music at the Hebrew Union College — Jewish Institute of Religion.
After serving for 11 years as a cantor and musical director for a temple in Connecticut, Belenky moved to the Pacific Northwest and was the cantor and musical director at Temple De Hirsch Sinai in Seattle from 1999 to 2005. She selected the contents of the haggadah for the seder, which was originally translated into Russian and prepared by the Reform movement’s Central Conference of American Rabbis.
Her performing trio, Marianna, plays a diverse repertoire of world music, liturgical music, contemporary Hebrew Israeli songs, and Russian gypsy music.
“We are very excited,” Belenky said prior to the event. “I am just going to explain as much as I can. This is such a great beginning for the Russian-speaking community. I would love to do it annually.”