Moscow Spring

Today.

Come visit!!!!!

This post originally appeared on JDC Next Generation’s blog: In Service. There, in addition to my post, you can find stories collected from dozens (hundreds?) of young(ish) volunteers serving in JDC long term and short term service projects around the globe.

It’s hard to believe, but I’ve been living in Moscow – initially as a JDC Jewish Service Corps Fellow, now as a full-time JDC employee – for about 18 months now.

18 months ago, I didn’t know what a hesed is. What a “patronage” worker is. Who is Gretta.

18 months ago, I was a newcomer, a visitor, a stranger, a first-timer.

Today, Moscow is my home, my community, my family.

Today, I visit heseds several times a month. I’ve met more patronage workers than I can name, and Gretta never fails to greet me with a hug and a kiss.

“Liza – are you OK? You look a little tired,” she says. At 70-something, the director of Chesed Chamah has more energy than I had at 18. My Jewish Russian babushka.

Unfortunately, sometimes we take our families for granted. We forget just how special they are.

Sometimes, it takes a group of outsiders to remind us of the miracle that we have in front of us.

Sometimes, it takes a group of visitors to make you stop and think about how our extraordinary our work is.

* * * * *

JDC returned to the Former Soviet Union just over 20 years ago.

The Soviet Union began to fall, and JDC saw a window to re-enter the region. We didn’t know when it would close, so we were going to go in and do what we could for as long as we could. We would reconnect Jews to their Jewish souls.

One thing we thought we knew – we weren’t going to do welfare. We didn’t think there would be a need. It was a socialist country, we knew everyone was “equally poor,” but we thought basic needs were being met.

And then we got here, and we saw.

The queues. The hunger. The loneliness. And we knew we had to do something about it. So, in partnership with the Jewish Federations of North America and other partners around the world, we looked for a way to help.

We imported food from Europe, on trucks, on trains, however we could get it in. We tried to distribute it to Jews.

How do you find Jews after 70 years of communism?

Last names, referrals, however we could.

And one day in St. Petersburg we got a call. There was a woman, with a little local Jewish welfare organization. She had a list.

Our hesed system was born.

For more than 20 years, we have worked with local partners to make sure that no elderly Jew is hungry. And that no elderly Jew is alone. We feed stomachs. We feed souls.

Today through our network of 165 local welfare centers in the Former Soviet Union (hesedim), JDC serves more than 160,000 elderly clients in more than 2,500 locations.

In Moscow, in my community, we serve almost 29,000 elderly Jews a year in five hesedim.

But when you visit Moscow, when you visit Chamah or Yad Ezra or Ethel or Nadezdah or Shaare Tzedek, you don’t see numbers.

You see smiles.

You sing Jewish songs.

You dance.

You smell the borscht.

You taste Dima’s markofka (carrot) salad and his gefilite fish

And if you give him a kiss on the cheek, he just might share the secret recipe. (Hint – there’s a brick and a lot of garlic involved.)

You connect.

Because, you see, the clients at Chamah and Ethel and Yad Ezra aren’t that different from our grandparents. So you forget the legacy of 70 years of commumism.

Whereas we can take care of our grandparents, the clients of institutions Chamah and Ethel and Yad Ezra need our help.

You see, the pension provided by the Russian government just isn’t enough. And our clients don’t have savings. So, $300/month in a city that’s more expensive than New York doesn’t go very far. And there may not be children or grandchildren to take care of them.

So they need to make choices.

Does the babushka who painstakingly cuts the leather pendant to give to our American visitors stop and buy diabetes test strips at the pharmacy on the way home? She had a hot meal at Chamah this afternoon, so maybe she can skip dinner?

That’s not acceptable in our community.

Kol Yisrael Averim Ze Le Zeh.

All Israel is responsible for one another.

So, we provide food cards and emergency medications so that she doesn’t have to make that choice.

And if she gets a little bit older, a little bit more frail, we provide her with a patronage, a home care worker. Someone to help her cook, and clean, and shop. She needs a wheelchair, we loan the equipment. Surgery? A grant from our SOS fund.

For years, I read about the work that we do in Moscow, in Ukraine, in Belarus, in Siberia.

But until you meet Ira and Sveta and Anya and Bella and Boris, you cannot feel the depth of the impact.

And then sometimes, when you’ve been here a while, you forget just what our clients face every day.

So each time a new group comes to visit, I look forward to seeing Bella and Chamah and Gretta for the first time through your eyes. Because through your eyes, I’m reminded just how special our work is.

See you soon.

Applications for Inside Jewish Moscow are open through March 18.

Email globalservice@jdcny.org for more information.

Progress?

Once you conquer the Moscow metro, it’s by far the best way to get around the city. Even on the off chance you manage to get a taxi that’s not a 30 year-old Soviet Lada with a flat tire, traffic is at a stand still more often or not. I’ve never even contemplated driving myself in these parts.

But . . . there are a few issues that make conquering the metro challenging.

First, everything’s in Cyrillic.

Occasionally, you’ll find a map with Latin letters or a station name written in Latin letters, but for the most part, you cannot rely on being able to read anything.

When I first moved to town and before I was used to the Cyrillic alphabet, I used to study the metro map very carefully and then count stops while I was on the metro (on my fingers because the chances of distraction were quite high).

One, two, three, four . . . OK, time to stop staring at he couple making out in the middle of the day and get off.

I would also print out the letters of the stop I needed to get to so that I could compare with the signs and make sure I was in the right place. Learning the Cyrillic alphabet makes life much, much easier in Russia.

Second, many metro stops have a zillion different exits. Even if you can read the Cyrillic and manage to get off at the right stop, and even if you know what direction you want to go, you can be paralyzed by the myriad of choices. I can understand the signs, but I still don’t know what side of the street a particular exit will dump me on. And even if I’ve been somewhere 20 times, there’s a good chance that I will pick the wrong exit every time.

Though I’m very comfortable with directions within the metro system, once out on the streets of Moscow, all bets are off.

Third, buying tickets can be difficult. For the first 16 months that I lived here, the only way to purchase tickets was to go to the КАССА (kassa or ticket booth) and buy tickets directly from the women working the booth. But of course, these women do not speak English. And the signs listing the ticket prices aren’t in English, making it very hard to communicate exactly what you want or figure out the price of your tickets.

A few weeks ago, small blue kiosks started appearing in the metro, and I was hopeful to think that it might be a way to buy tickets electronically — without talking to a woman at the kassa. When the machines went live, I went over to take a look. Sure enough, there was an English option. Beyond excited, I touched the little British flag to see how the machines work.

I very much appreciate the effort by the Moscow government to make things accessible in English. This is a huge step forward for a city trying to increase tourism. But do you think they could have asked a native speaker (or at least a decent speaker) to review the instructions before publishing on them hundreds of machines across the city?

I’m not even sure what half the directions mean.

Also, why the limit on 1 or 2 trips? Why can’t you buy a 10-ticket pass? Or a 60 ticket pass? All of which are available from the kassa itself.

But once again, I’m reminded that sometimes it’s better not to ask questions and to appreciate the little things.