World Jewish News

Odessa's dwindling Jews rediscover their history.

Odessa - Benya Krik, the story goes, was a gangster so smooth that when a lackey of his accidentally killed an innocent man, Krik arranged a show funeral for all Odessa to pay its respects to the deceased. At the end of the funeral, Krik turned everyone's eyes to another casket - that of his lackey, killed by Krik to show the gangster meant no ill will toward non-enemies.
In turn-of-the-century Odessa, then a Russian Empire port where wrought-iron Stars of David decorated the doorways of townhouses and seven synagogues catered to the faithful, Jewish criminals like the legendary Krik were "knights and aristocrats," according to Vladimir Chaplin.
But Chaplin, a historian at the Museum of the History of Odessa's Jews, adds that Jews were more than gangsters in a city still famous throughout the former Soviet Union for its exalted criminal culture: Jews chronicled Odessa's stories, sold its wares and ran its hospitals.
At the beginning of the 20th century, this city - today in southern Ukraine but then part of Russia - had Europe's largest Jewish population, with nearly 150,000 people.
While various estimates exist, Chaplin said Warsaw counted 130,000 Jews, while 80,000 lived in Kiev and 35,000 in Moscow.
When Jews in Russia and across Europe faced pogroms, Odessa's native sons were among the creators of the Zionist movement that urged Jews to resettle Israel. They established charitable organisations and trading companies. And yes, they were the city's top gangsters.
But then the 20th century came down hard on Odessa.
After the city fell to the Bolsheviks amid brutal fighting in the Russian Civil War, the Soviet Union stamped out religious and ethnic identity with brutality in cities like Odessa. And more than 200,000 of the region's Jews were murdered during World War II.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, many fled the poverty and instability of Odessa for Israel and the United States.
Today, however, many see a rebirth of one of Eastern Europe's greatest Jewish cities.
"Things changed only for the better" with the Soviet collapse, said Alexander Rosenboim, 68, director of the Odessa Society for Jewish Culture. "There was no Jewish life in the Soviet Union."
Over a dozen Jewish organizations have sprung up in recent years. Jewish Street is again called that, having shed its communist-era name. A bagel can be had at Rosemarin for lunch, followed by dinner at the kosher restaurant Khevron. And those who want can wash it all down with a beer at Maccabee Bar.
And importantly, the religious freedom enjoyed in tsarist times has returned. The city's main synagogue, first opened in 1798 and used as a school gymnasium through most of the Soviet period, has been restored to its original purpose and is currently undergoing a major renovation.
Yet some in Odessa say that with the exodus of people who have left for Israel or the US, the city's famous Jewish edge has gone dull.
"A certain colourfulness has been lost," said Niyusya Verkhovskaya, 20, a student at Odessa's Hebrew university.
While she recognized that Judaism as a religion was "flourishing" in today's Odessa, Verkhovskaya lamented that the world of Benya Krik and other Jewish gangsters and merchants made famous by writer Isaac Babel was slipping away.
Mentioning a furniture salesman neighbour of hers, Verkhovskaya said "typical Jews like that can be counted on one hand now."
No one knows exactly how many Jews are left in Odessa, or how many fled the city. Some of those who went to Israel are thought by locals to have forged a false identity to enter the Jewish state.
Rosenboim said approximately 6,000 people were associated with the Jewish Charity Centre of Odessa, but that it was impossible to estimate how many Jews were in Odessa, adding only that they were fewer than there previously were.
Located behind Odessa's main market - half of which is now in a new, air-conditioned building and half of which remains in a crumbling tsarist-era structure - Babel's neighbourhood of Moldavanka looks much as the author described it.
Stray dogs and cats run wild amid the crowded, low-rise buildings. A sign dating back to the early Soviet years tells the citizens of the then-rapidly industrialising society that "For letters and telegrammes your address is: Odessa 5."
Vadik, who identified himself as a pensioner, greeted a passerby with a sweep of his arms: "These are all our Jews!" he said of the neighbourhood around him. When asked if he was Jewish, Vadik answered: "No, I mean yes. I mean, you could say I am or that I'm not."
But throughout parts of the previous century, any such talk about Jewish identity was met harshly in Odessa.
A poem on display at the city's Jewish museum and referring to the Star of David as a "star burning for me" was enough for its local author to be sentenced to death under Stalin.
For Jews and non-Jews alike in today's Odessa, "a cultural life has developed," Rosenboim said.
"There's a process of democratization," he added. "And everything comes from that."

Источник: earthtimes.org