By Mara Koven-Gelman (Buffalo, NY)
The year was 1983.
I was a Boston University junior studying abroad at a London college. March break was approaching and I joined my friends for a one-week Russian government Intourist trip to Leningrad and Moscow for $200 (black bread and vodka included.) This was before the opening of Russia with Perestroika (restructuring) and Glasnost (transparency.) All religion was still banned in former USSR. Refuseniks (Jews and others) were not allowed to practice their religion and denied emigration.
I was always connected with the plight of my Jewish people. As a 10-year-old I wrote to U.S. President Richard Nixon and implored him to “let my people go.” He never replied.
With a pang of “maybe I should visit some refuseniks,” I used my Jewish network, and met up with Rabbi Felder, a religious Jew in North London. He had a long grey beard, black hat, and gave me banned books (by Golda Meir, Abba Eban and prayer books), Passover matzah, and Star of David necklaces. Rabbi Felder trained me on what to expect at border control.
“Once they see all the Jewish items, they will stop you instantly,” he warned. “A guard at a booth will look at a mirror positioned behind your head. It will unnerve you, but disregard it,” he counseled.
Rabbi Felder gave me refuseniks’ names and phone numbers to find and deliver the goods. “Keep the contacts hidden on your body,” he advised. I wrote them down in a thin blue vinyl address book. “Good luck, may God protect you.”
As our plane landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, I saw large Soviet cement buildings and cranes dot the grey March skyline. Several college students smoothly went through customs before me. At my turn a guard asked me truncated questions while looking at a thin horizontal mirror behind my head as expected. He was menacing, wearing a grey felt coat tightly belted at the waist and a black leather collar, similar to the Wizard of Oz’s flying monkeys.
I struggled to picked up my large blue duffel bag and put it on an x-ray machine. A man in a black suit with greasy black hair took me aside.
He picked through my belongings knowing which items to pile on a steel grey table. With a box cutter, he sliced open the sealed matzah boxes and asked why I needed it.
“Why are you carrying all these Jewish books? Why do you need so many of the same book? Who are you going to visit while you are here?”
I had been trained.
“I am Jewish and will be celebrating the Jewish holiday of Passover,” I said with confidence.
Pointing to my American co-travelers, I said, “These are my friends, and we celebrate together. We each need the Haggadah book to follow the ceremony.”
He asked me to step aside, where two women with dark grey handkerchiefs started to pat my body. It was humiliating. My confidence waned and I started to cry. They kept saying, “Nyet, Nyet,” no doubt feeling sorry me.
“Do not meet with anyone. I will allow you to gather your things and enter our country. Remember you are a guest,” said the investigator.
I nodded, feeling scared and grateful that they didn’t find the blue address book that I’d hidden in the inner pocket of my jean culotte pants.
My only friend on the trip was Julie. “Good thing you asked everyone to wear a Jewish star, Mara. I’d hate to see what that guy would have done if he found those.” I looked sheepishly at the other students.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize they would be so thorough and intimidating.” The college students didn’t seem to mind. It was part of an adventure. For me, though, it was an act of defiance.
We stayed in the centrally located Metropol Hotel. Only tourists were allowed in the hotels. Rabbi Felder had warned me that all of its rooms were bugged. Sure enough, an older woman sitting at a table greeted Julie and I as we emerged from the elevator. She gave us a brass room key on a wooden ball. Regardless of the time of day or night, someone was there to dole out the key and receive it when we left. I felt like a stranger’s hands went through my clothes when I wasn’t there.
Heeding Rabbi Felder’s warning, I called Regina, (a Jewish refusenik) from a phone booth in the street. She invited me for a Passover Seder, and gave directions via metro subway. My tourist trip had a free night, so I left with my blue duffle bag full of Jewish books and items.
The nearby Moscow Ploshchad Revolyutsii metro station was beautiful with its twinkling colorful mosaics and gilded bronze statues. I thought I was in a combination of a Turkish mosque and Versailles Palace.
Somehow I found the rundown apartment building. I climbed the dark staircase with its wooden stairs indented from decades of previous climbers.
The brisket, gefilte fish and cabbage were the smells of my grandparents’ and mom’s Passover kitchen. My family had come from this country 80 years earlier. The air was familiar and warming. It was Passover, and I was home.
I emptied the blue duffle with the forbidden items. Regina pointed to a corner table and whispered a non-exuberant “Spasiba,” Russian for “thank you.” It was time for the Seder, not for gratitude.
A 25-year-old man, Simon, who was a couple of years older than me, led the Seder with the Haggadot I had brought. We sang the Four Questions. I understood the Hebrew, not the Russian, although he translated the readings into English for me. The entire Seder was experienced in very dim light for fear of police surveillance.
Someone asked what we were served for breakfast at the hotel.
“Black bread, cheese, and herring, ” I said.
“There is no cheese in Moskva this week,” was the answer. Tourists were treated better than the citizens.
Simon walked me back to the Metro after the Seder. He openly carried the “banned books” that I had brought, with Gold Meir’s My Life on top. The books were obvious to anyone walking by. I mentioned it.
“What else can they do to me?” Simon responded.
He was an underground Hebrew teacher — teaching any refusenik Jewish customs and Hebrew — and was trained by people who visited clandestinely from the US and Israel.
It was at that moment that I decided my career and future. If it was so difficult for Jews in Russia to practice, and even more difficult for them to leave, then I would dedicate my life to building Jewish life in the U.S. and in my home country, Canada.
It was a light-switch moment. I also knew that I would become involved in the “Let My People Go” advocacy initiatives back in Boston. Not yet 21, I was full of passion and, clearly, naive.
I returned on the Metro to my hotel, attended the remaining heavily guided tours of Moscow’s Red Square, Kremlin (outside), iconic St. Basil’s Cathedral, and a performance at the Bolshoi Theatre. We took an overnight train to Leningrad (its name returned to “St. Petersburg” in 1991.) I peeked out the drafty train windows. The bright moon lit the thatched roofs and towns which looked like they were straight out of a scene in Fiddler on the Roof.
Leningrad was filled with more sites—the Hermitage Museum, Lenin’s Tomb, and naval ships. We also waited in line for an hour for ice cream. Two guards jumped the line, screaming between gritted teeth at a shop girl, who broke down in tears. This was not a friendly place.
Thankfully, the trip was over and I eagerly left with my group. Touching down at Heathrow Airport, I felt free again. Yes, I had witnessed beautiful buildings and art, but my experience visiting refuseniks overshadowed the esthetics.
Now I knew why my family had left in the late 1800’s. I also knew what I had to do in the last decades of the 1900s and into the next century.
Author’s Note: It is now 42 years later. I have had a long career in Jewish communal work in Canada and in the U.S. I have advocated to release refuseniks (emigration waves started in 1986), amplified the stories of Holocaust survivors, conducted community surveys, and built bridges with people of other faiths and cultures in the name of social justice and civil society.
Now is a complicated time to be Jewish and to be concerned about a shared society. I am looking forward to a time when all people can work collaboratively together. Until then, I’ll write my memories of a time when reading a book in the open was a crime and feel grateful that I can still read a book openly here.
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Mara is a writer, writing facilitator, and long-time Jewish communal professional who has worked in Toronto, Boston, and Buffalo. Most recently, she was a Jewish Community Relations Council Director and Holocaust Resource Center executive director putting her smack in the middle of interesting conversations and events. She has published in the Globe & Mail, Buffalo News, Baltimore Jewish Times, and The Jewish Advocate, and has edited an anthology, Mourning has Broken: A Collection of Creative Writing about Grief and Healing. She lives in Buffalo, NY with her family.
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