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From MANNA 83: My flock totals 15,000

Written by Rabbi Alex Dhukhovny Tuesday, 01 June 2004

Rabbi Alex Dhukhovny describes the challenge of being a Reform Rabbi in the Ukraine.

When I was a child in the Ukraine, my mother told me that I should not eat borsch, red beetroot soup, with sour cream or work on the Sabbath. When I asked, “Why?” my mother replied only, “Tradition.” It was my Jewish education. It was a challenge.

Though her father was a Chassidic rabbi she did not have an explanation as to why Jews rest on Saturday or keep kosher, as her father had been killed, along with most of her family, in the Holocaust. She grew up under communist rule, when it was forbidden to practice Judaism or any religion. Together with my mother our family practised Judaism secretly. Again – a challenge!

So, after working as a scientist for more than twenty years, I set out to answer my own questions about Judaism. Following the fall of Communism, I went to Leo Baeck College in London to begin my rabbinical studies. During the first year of my studies in London I thought I was being very altruistic. I gave up a job and a car and a nice apartment to live in a nun’s cell. I came to “suffer” at the age of forty-four. Only during my second year at LBC did I understand that I came not only for the sake of the Jews in the Ukraine – I came to discover myself. Again, it was a challenge.

Now, after five years in the Rabbinate, I am determined to establish a strong and irreversible Reform movement in the Ukraine. Challenge and challenge again. Today I serve as the only Reform/Progressive rabbi in the Ukraine – a country bigger than France, with forty-seven Reform congregations and 15,000 Reform Jews.

The Reform/Progressive Movement in the Ukraine started with twenty young congregants of a community “Ha-Tikvah” in Kiev. During the last four years, the numbers of Reform congregations in the Ukraine has trebled. I learned a good lesson in the UK: Judaism is about me, it is Living Judaism. My teacher, Rabbi Colin Eimer, once said: “You need to guide your congregation as gently as you fry a fish”. But what about forty-seven congregations? You may ask me: “How do I manage these congregations?” My answer is contained in the old story of the rabbi who was looking for a new job. When he applied for a position in one congregation, members of the admission board said: “We are looking for a rabbi who is responsible”. Our applicant said: “I am the person you are looking for. Wherever I worked before, when something went wrong, the congregation said that I was responsible”.

Being a rabbi for forty-plus congregations is a huge responsibility and a challenging task. Another lesson I learned in London was to delegate. I am clearly unable to do the work in the Ukraine on my own. I have a team of devoted lay-leaders and para-rabbinic congregational workers. I also have support from the World Union for Progressive Judaism, and support from Exodus 2000, which helps in establishing twinning relations with congregations in the UK.

The congregations I serve are different. One town, a former shtetl, has 80–90 Jews and all of them belong to the Progressive/Reform congregation. What a catch. Other congregations have over 1000 members. Some congregations own synagogue buildings, other are like a wandering tribe – congregants meet in different places every Shabbat. In the absence of funding for professionals, lay-leaders have filled the breach, a remarkable development in a country with no tradition of voluntarism and where people have to struggle for basic sustenance. The average Ukrainian pensioner, including many in my congregations, gets £20 a month, while the average salary is about £60-70 a month. The money doesn’t go far, given that a pair of shoes costs £50-80.

Another challenge: although state-sanctioned anti-Semitism no longer exists in my homeland, Reform Jews feel hostility from the Ukraine’s ultra-orthodox Jewish establishment. The Ukraine’s fifty other rabbis, ministering to more than 100 ultra-orthodox congregations, are all born in Israel or the United States and do not view the Ukraine’s Reform congregations as legitimate. Possibly my ultra-orthodox colleagues simply do not know that together with other Enlightment ideas Reform Judaism entered the Ukraine in the third decade of the 19th century. Among the first changes in Jewish education was the introduction of secular subjects into the Jewish curriculum in such places as Lvov, Uman, Kharkov, Zhitomir, and Odessa. With these changes, the first Reform congregations appeared in Lvov and Odessa together with the construction of synagogue buildings. Nearly two centuries later – we are again on the map in the Ukraine.

I work in the Ukraine to educate Jews, so they and their children will understand who they are – in a different way from the way I did as a child. When I was three years old my teachers bathed me and the other children in my kindergarten class in the middle of the classroom. The teachers laughed at me because I was circumcised. I went home and cried. Though my mother reassured me, I felt a lingering discomfort. “Why am I Jewish?” I asked my mum, when I was seventeen and my documents were rejected by the university, simply because in my passport it was written that I was Jewish. “Why am I born in the Soviet Union?” My mother replied: “Your history is in this country. Your roots are here. There will be a time when you will rejoice in being a Jew.” Twenty years later, when I was travelling in Holland, I met a rabbi whose appearance surprised me. “He couldn’t be a rabbi,” I thought. “How can a rabbi be such a human-looking person?” Until then I could only imagine a Chassidic rabbi. I did not want to go back to the 18th century to wear sidelocks and black coats. I am a smart guy – once in the United States, I overheard two congregants describing me: “Rabbi Dukhovny is wearing a stylish suit with a snazzy tie and a silk handkerchief peeking out of his breast pocket. Clean-shaven Dukhovny looks more like a businessman from London than a rabbi from the Ukraine. He speaks English tinged with both Russian and British inflections”.

I remain in the Ukraine to help Jews there maintain their Jewish identities and to understand as I did that Judaism is multicoloured and multifaceted. Judaism is about each of us.

My decision to stay in my homeland represents a special choice and another challenge: I was married to a fellow rabbi on the day of our 1999 ordination, and my wife Rabbi Erlene Wahlhaus works in London. The word “challenge” became a key word in our family.

There are many Jews in the Ukraine who still think that Judaism is about the past. It is not. It is about the present and the future. This is my joyful challenge.