Thread by @avitalrachel

Recently another Orthodox woman in outreach was telling me about the secular Russian Jews she encounters. She started mocking someone she had met recently — his tattoos, his casual clothing, his “cute wife” who may not be Jewish.

“Oh those Russian Jews!”

I hear this often from “Kiruv professionals” working with this community. “How nebach! How distant they are from Torah!”

If you’re mocking the people you’re supposed to be servicing — rethink the life you’ve chosen.

Even if it’s just between “rebbetzins”. Respect the people we are enjoined to teach & inspire — let them be your *friends*. Don’t treat them as chesed projects, as tallies in your ‘People I Was Mekarev’ list.

Russian Jews have sadly become pawns for too many American Jews & their savior complexes. The tone is at best patronizing & often ends up being deeply isolating. (My husband wrote about this beautifully here: forward.com/opinion/318818…)

Do you know what we went through? The hell our parents escaped? And simultaneously — how terrifying it is to leave a familiar world, to leap into the unknown beyond the Iron Curtain? Do you know the way a secret piece of matzo could become the embodiment of an entire identity?

Yes, our Judaism looks a little different. It isn’t cholent and Crown Heights and Catskills summer camps.

It’s the fifth line in the passport and it’s exit visas and it’s selyodka pod shuby and it’s Sholom Aleichem as the single Jewish book in the house and it’s Brighton Beach.

It’s great-grandparents who disappeared in the middle of the night on account of their “Zionism” and thus “treason”. It’s Babi Yar. It’s “Lomir Ale Ineynem” sung cheerfully at parties but also as a sort of prayer.

Here, humility is especially important. Respect your students — if you are actually listening, they too have what to teach about what it means to be Jewish.

And that, dear friends, is my mussar schmooze for the day.