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by Jordan Hiller

L’CHAYIM, COMRADE STALIN  (to read PART 1 go here)

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Traveling to Birobidzhan today across the frozen white landscape of Russia is like moving toward a mythical city, like Atlantis or Shangri-La – perhaps either nothing or a great treasure can be the destination, and you equally expect both. Strom and his crew, including a “comically” anti-semitic interpreter, trek eastward, from Moscow to the J.A.R. and speak to local townsfolk along the way. Strom asks them about Birobidzhan. At first Birobidzhan is described as almost a fairy-tale land– a place where the Jews once were banished and there they struggled and lived and died. They say it is gone. One woman informs that the place has since been inhabited by the Chinese – there are no Jews left she says. As we grow nearer, the tale of the lost Jewish city becomes decreasingly legendary and increasingly factual. Yeah, the Jews are still there, the sneering toothless mouths say without much fondness for the people they speak of. Just like a Jew to still be there.

Sure enough, in Birobidzhan we find Jews strolling down Shalom Aleichem Street and talking with melancholy tones about the days of the Yiddish theatre and the failed Jewish homeland. The once “flourishing” Jewish city has altered dramatically.

While many Jews were saved from incineration and choking deaths by timely fleeing to the J.A.R., it turned out that starting in 1938, Russian soldiers began arriving in Birobidzhan to make arrests, take prisoners, and murder Jews without reason. The movie at one point suggests that Stalin, who was apparently well aware of Jewish religious culture, orchestrated this torment of the J.A.R. to begin on Purim, to give it an ironical bite. Stalin was out to get Jews, but specifically those who insolently expressed their Judaism. The problem for him was that these liberated Jews in the J.A.R. no longer expressed Judaism – at least not as was identifiable to our former enemies. In one noted instance a man was arrested for merely saying “L’chayim” in lieu of a more secular toast. The most popular actor from the Yiddish theatre (we actually get to watch footage from a Yiddish production of King Lear) was slain for his undesirable role in the community. Jewish martyrs, dying not for any religious act like in the time of Greek or Spanish rule, but for “Yiddish” acts. This type of persecution dealt a nearly fatal blow to a culture that was hanging on to Judaism by a meager thread altogether reliant upon a form of expression, not practical acts or laws. The language was so offensively and wholly Jewish, that it was a “crime” to speak it, even harmlessly.

Cut to sixty years later.

Miraculously, Birobidzhan has not completely lost its Yiddish flavor, but we would be deluded optimists, as Strom appears to be, not to view the fading remnant of Yiddishkeit with a sad smile and some sympathy. The newspaper, once entirely Yiddish, still publishes a few pages in the old tongue. There is a shul with a beleaguered Rabbi who still hopes that “maybe Jews will come.” A museum whose once beautiful young tour guide (as seen in pictures from the original migration), now old with glazed over eyes, has pitifully spent her life attached to Birobidzhan by chains of loyalty and stale idealism. She clings to, with Israel’s emergence as the true successor of Jewish states, an increasingly irrelevant past.

Strom wants to draw out the light at the end of this tunnel and he does so by arguing that the Yiddish language has achieved a renaissance both in America and even in the J.A.R. If there truly has been a renaissance of Yiddish in America, it has not come to my attention. As far as Birobidzhan is concerned, there is certainly a lament amongst the older generation of Jews that Yiddish culture has been diluted as their children intermarry and fail to recognize the great importance of a Yiddish song, but not much else. Interestingly, none of the mothers interviewed express regret that their children don’t light Shabbos candles, or build sukkahs, or hear megillah – they are ashamed that Yiddish is not spoken. Yiddish appears to be a religion without any G-d, yet it is solemnly worshipped.

When Mr. Strom shows a room full of Jews in their sixties and seventies slowly but merrily singing Yiddish melodies, he may believe that it is a positive image, but in reality it is heartbreaking. Someone with money to spare should fly all these lovely Jews to Israel where they can genuinely celebrate and learn about actual vibrant Judaism (and also where Yiddish is likely more commonly spoken and respected).

Strom shows classrooms in Birobidzhan where the Yiddish language is continually taught to the youth (some Jewish and some Gentiles who are interested). Is this a renaissance or a huge mistake and disservice to these children? They are being taught this floundering language to satisfy a city’s guilty conscience. If anything, they should learn Hebrew.

If there is a light to be found, and I believe light should represent something hopeful and alive and with potential for vitality, it takes the form of an interview with one middle aged man who made a remarkable observation and transformed his life. It also speaks volumes about the Yiddish/Jewish dynamic.

A twenty eight year old Jewish Yiddish teacher walks casually down Shalom Aleichem Street one cold, crisp Siberian morning in September about a decade ago. His gentile neighbor approaches and wishes him a happy holiday. The Jew is confused – Why are you wishing me this? His neighbor is surprised by the question, but goes on to enlighten the oblivious Jew that the day is Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days of the Jewish year. The Jew has an epiphany. Here I am, he says, teaching Yiddish to Jewish children in the Jewish Autonomous Region and I am utterly ignorant when it comes to actual Judaism. He has since become an observant member of the tribe. I consider this light because it exemplifies the underestimated power Yiddish possesses.

As the rebbi always taught in his mussar shmooz: The fire dying out always has one last moment of dazzling brightness just before it is extinguished. In our time we will watch the flame of Yiddish culture go out, but we will be fortunate enough to see films like L’chayim Comrade Stalin, where the last brilliant sparks shine most astonishingly.

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Send comments to Jordan about this article to jtrick1@aol.com