Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Alex Yunerman, left, participates in a B'nai Mitzvah service with seven other young people at Saratoga's Congregation Beth David.

Russian emigres share in rite of passage

By Shari Kaplan

Along with the usual preoccupations that accompany the middle school years--making friends, doing homework and keeping up with changing fashions and changing bodies--a local group of eight young people spent the last 11/2 years preparing for a religious rite of passage in Judaism that traditionally takes place during these same years.

On May 30, four boys and four girls celebrated their B'nai Mitzvah--a plural used when Bar and Bat Mitzvahs take place together--at Congregation Beth David in Saratoga. What's special about this group, according to Beth David teacher Marilyn Popper, is that the youths immigrated to the United States from Russia with their families in the last few years with little or no formal education about Judaism or the Hebrew language.

The 18-month "crash course" they received at Beth David came though the auspices of the Los Gatos-based Jewish Family Service, the Jewish Federation of Greater San Jose and the Milton Itzkowitz Emigre Resettlement Fund of Congregation Beth David. JFS emigre resettlement coordinator Vlada Gelfond and JFS director Carol Gopin worked together in creating, organizing and funding the program.

Beth David's Rabbi Daniel Pressman taught some classes and officiated at the May 30 service; Karin Braunschweig taught Hebrew and how to read the holy book called the Torah; and Popper taught about Jewish holidays and customs, and helped students interpret the Torah and prepare their personal B'nai Mitzvah speeches.

"When they come here and they're kind of in between two lands, it's important for them to make a connection with the community. These kids are caught between the old ways of family life and the new ways of modern U.S. life," says Popper, who sometimes had the youths over to her Los Gatos home for dinner, fellowship and extra instruction.

Once B'nai Mitzvahed, youths are considered part of the adult Jewish community--they're expected to carry out the 10 Commandments and can participate fully in religious services. Popper says the May 30 service was particularly significant because the holiday of Shavuot fell on May 31, commemorating the day Moses received the Commandments on Mount Sinai.

The students themselves found the study program and its culmination ceremony to be significant as well, as they explained in their autobiographical speeches.

"Becoming a Bat Mitzvah [is] my rite of passage ceremony into Jewish adulthood. I feel that over this year I have evolved spiritually," wrote Sofya Elperin, a native of Minsk, Belarus.

"The most important thing I have learned in this brief but pleasant time is what it means to be Jewish. It is not the name or a brand; it's simply a group of people living life as they believe it should be lived, in the image of God," explains Rita Kompelmakher, also originally from Minsk.

For Philipp Perepelitsky of the Ukraine, the experience was practical as well as spiritual.

"Now I can read in Hebrew. Even though I cannot speak or understand Hebrew, reading [it] is something that many Jews and people in general can't do," he writes. "Having a Bar Mitzvah is very satisfying because it is really a milestone in every Jew's life, but not every Jew gets to achieve it."

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