by yelena shuster
correspondent
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Yevgeniy Labunskiy once made $2,500 in five hours playing poker, but he never bet he’d end up spending his college years at a yeshiva in Israel. “I was more of a troublemaker gambler than a quiet religious kid,” he says.
Vadim Dukhovny says, “When the New York Times refers to ultra-Orthodox, that’s me” — appearance-wise. Not that he cares. The Times, he says, is “full of shtus” (Yiddish for “foolishness”). For the record, Dukhovny wears a black suit and black hat.
“It’s a Jew thing” is the phrase Belana Mlynash uses when explaining to her non-Jewish friends why she can’t go out for Chinese food anymore. Her public-school friends were shocked.
Eve Zakharevich believes her parents’ choice to name her Yeva — “Eve” in Russian — was prophetic. “My parents did a pretty risky thing by giving me a very recognizable Jewish name … In [anti-religious] Soviet Russia, they foresaw or envisioned Judaism as a big part of my future.” She now goes by her Hebrew name, Chava.
The four Soviet-born Bay Area youths don’t hesitate to describe their newfound devotion to Judaism. At 19 or 20 years old, they have taken full control of their Jewish future and now look at their “regular” lives as a thing of the past.
They are ba’al tshuvahs — returnees to the Jewish faith, or those who have newly found it — who observe Orthodox Jewish customs despite their nonobservant backgrounds.
Many American Jews, including some in the Bay Area, have felt a renewed commitment to the Jewish faith. Yet the numbers of Russians with that experience are lower and the circumstances more difficult.
The four local youth — and a few dozen more in the Bay Area — share the familiar Soviet immigration story: arriving with their families in America in hopes of religious freedom, a comfortable life or other trappings of the seductive American dream.
All four knew they were Jewish (and helpful anti-Semites were often eager to remind them), but their knowledge of Jewish traditions and customs was frequently stifled, to say the least, by the atheistic environment of their homeland.
In the Soviet regime, atheism was taught in children’s schoolbooks, and the comrade’s faith — whether he/she liked it or not — belonged solely to the Communist Party, which easily took the place of God. For Russian émigrés bred in Soviet ideology, God was as foreign a subject as the English language.
And yet the young émigrés — products of American assimilation and remaining Russian culture — not only display their Stars of David proudly, but also observe Orthodox Jewish traditions on their own initiative, often with parents and family left to play catch-up or deal with their shock.
Transforming from indifferent Russian Jew to passionately observant yeshiva student is no easy makeover, but the way these four tell it, it was simply a natural progression from believing in God and the Torah. While others scoff at what they see as crazy extremism, the four maintain they are at peace with themselves, confident in their truth and higher purpose in life.
Yevgeniy Labunskiy’s first experience with Orthodox Judaism was what he labels as “weird.”
Growing up in Moscow, the 19-year-old always knew he was Jewish. Besides having matzah alongside bread for Passover, he remembers an Israeli flag in the living room — which his dad promptly took off the wall whenever non-Jewish Russian friends would visit.
But when he was 8, his parents sent him to a Jewish summer camp, unaware that it was Orthodox-based. Although Labunskiy enjoyed himself, he tried to avoid the actual religious acts.
“I remember being freaked out by these weird, religious-looking men shuckling back and forth during prayer,” he says. “I remember trying to do anything possible trying to get out of there, which ended up with me getting in trouble. I remember asking to go to the bathroom and never coming back [to pray].”
A decade since that camp experience, Labunskiy is an American citizen living in Santa Rosa. Inevitably, much has changed since he arrived here at the age of 10 — more than just his maturing into an American mensch.
Labunskiy has become one of the religious-looking men shuckling back and forth during prayer whom he found so strange as a child.
“Instead of just being an 8-year-old and seeing a weird guy dressed in a black suit, I actually saw the entire background behind it,” he says.
Now, a snug kippah covers his strawberry-blond hair, white tzitzit dangle from the sides of his pants, and his Russian accent flows effortlessly into Hebrew slang. What was “weird” to him then is now part of his life.
Trading his poker cards for the books of the Talmud, Labunskiy is a proud ba’al tshuvah, observing the laws of kosher, Shabbat and even shomer negiah (where one doesn’t touch the opposite sex until marriage). He is now in his second year of Aish HaTorah yeshiva in Jerusalem (instead of U.C. Davis, where he was accepted). He plans to eventually attend college in Israel and perhaps live there permanently.
“As I move through my life and religious growth, the part that is weird and strange is getting farther and farther [away]. The person in the kippah then was really strange and ridiculous, as opposed to now. When I’m in Jerusalem, I see a Chassid with a streimel with long peyot. Now, that’s pretty normal. Occasionally I go to Shabbos with people like this.”
Friends, family and teachers were shocked at Labunskiy’s transformation.
“For Soviet people, regardless of their nationality, it was instilled that religion was something obsolete, unnecessary and generally strange,” his mother, Olga, says in Russian. “I would’ve been very surprised if somebody would have told me that my son would become religious.”
Labunskiy himself never expected such a change. Even as a transfer student at San Francisco’s Lisa Kampner Hebrew Academy, he never cared for its Orthodox rules.
“I was the one spouting all these atheist lines; I had no regard for religion whatsoever. I was also the one making all the trouble in my classes, being obnoxious to my Judaic teachers. I never fit the religious type,” he says.
The path of an atheist troublemaker to Orthodox yeshiva bocher did not come via an ah-ha moment or striking spiritual revelation. Like most ba’al tshuvahs, Labunskiy adopted Orthodox customs gradually. He first found the Jewish religion attractive, thanks to its promise of social interaction and the warm environment he noticed at Sabbath meals. He continued to increase his observance after spending a summer in Israel. Along this path, though, there were moments of uncertainty.
Even after getting circumcised at age 16 (a decision, he says, that had more of an ethnic rather than religious motivation), wearing a kippah and praying regularly, he was unsure about his decisions. “It wasn’t a conviction. It was almost like, it can’t hurt to be praying in the morning, and keeping kashrut and Shabbat. If there was a God, he’d probably want me to do this. I was not even convinced that there was a God.”
Self-proclaimed “ultra-Orthodox” Vadim Dukhovny followed a similar path of gradual observance beset by moments of hesitation.
The 20-year-old is now in his second year at Kol Yaakov yeshiva in Monsey, N.Y., after dropping out of U.C. Berkeley. His vocabulary is full of Yiddishisms — “My everyday conversations are certainly not understandable to the vast majority of Americans” — though he says he can converse in English when necessary. Born in Odessa, Ukraine, he immigrated to San Francisco in 1988 at age 2.
Though his family belonged to Conservative Congregation Beth Sholom, Dukhovny never attended regularly. He played tennis on Saturdays and practiced the piano every day. He read avidly, from Tolkien to Kafka to Dostoevsky, out of school as well as in classes at Lowell High in San Francisco.
Now, his piano and tennis playing have been replaced with studying the Gemarah (part of the Talmud). Secular literature is reserved for bathroom reading, and even then, it’s limited to the subject of mathematics.
Dukhovny always imagined Orthodox people to be unhappy, with lives that were limited. He thought the women were oppressed, the men couldn’t read English, and the children had no joy in their lives. When a friend introduced him to Orthodox synagogue Adath Israel in San Francisco, however, his perception “turned out to be the complete opposite.”
At Adath Israel, he met highly observant people for the first time and was impressed by their ethical consistency. He found Judaism fascinating as a profound body of knowledge, and started reading everything he could find. After realizing that the Torah’s obligations applied to him, becoming more observant was “like a very simple leap from step to step,” he says.
“I felt I have to do this. Because I felt it was binding on all Jews. When you think that the Torah” — or “Toyrah,” as it sounds in his distinctive, Ashkenazi accent — “is an unbroken tradition, given to Jewish people on Sinai, you feel like you have certain obligations, like following it, so I did.
“Even after I realized this intellectually, I didn’t put on a black hat and start keeping kosher,” he notes. “I acted very slowly.”
Despite the initial uncertainty, Dukhovny’s convictions remain strong, even as older relatives attributed his increased observance as nothing more than a phase of adolescence.
His experience is not unusual.
Labunskiy’s grandparents believe his increased observance is one of those pesky, fleeting stages of youth. The 19-year-old disagrees. “I was kind of wondering, ‘when am I going to get tired of this and move on to the next thing?’ I’ve done a lot of that in my life. But now I’ve been there [in yeshivah] for a year, and I’m still totally passionate about it.”
Living an Orthodox life is tough for anyone, let alone youth. For instance, dating is only for the sake of marriage, and using your cell phone or car is forbidden on Shabbat. But these four youths doubt they will change their minds.
For 19-year-old Chava “Yeva” Zakharevich, age is not an issue when describing her firm beliefs.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Zakharevich immigrated to America when she was 2, settling in the Bay Area when she was 6. She is now attending Yeshiva University in New York after spending a year in Niveh Midrasha in Israel.
After being introduced to the Orthodox way of life at Chabad Almaden Valley Torah Center when she was 7, she began the “slow and gradual process” of wearing only skirts, keeping kosher and observing Shabbat.
“Becoming more observant was a natural outgrowth of what started a little bit before as I felt less and less comfortable with my old habits. It wasn’t an all-or-nothing decision,” says the Belmont resident. She chose to attend San Francisco’s Hebrew Academy for high school, where everyone knew her by her Hebrew name, Chava.
“I think it’s a tragedy in general that people think that teens have no free will and are incapable of making any decent decisions,” she says. “That sort of attitude limits teens and creates a false expectation within themselves that they are indeed incapable of making proper decisions.
“When you know something to be true, it’s no longer a question of ‘how am I going to do this for the rest of my life?’ Once you know something to be true, the question is ‘how can I not do this?’ I think it would be insincere not to make that jump.”
Belana Mlynash made the decision to become Orthodox last year, and she has no regrets, despite the difficulty of being around friends and relatives who aren’t accustomed to her new observance.
The 19-year-old grew up in a Conservative household in Mountain View after emigrating from Tbilisi, Georgia, at the age of 5. She is now a sophomore at Yeshiva University.
Unlike the other teens, Mlynash’s family is not completely foreign to Orthodoxy. Keeping Jewish customs in Georgia was not as stifled as in the rest of the Soviet Union, Mlynash says. So when her older brother became Orthodox nine years ago, her mother did not have a hard time adjusting to the change, and herself became more observant.
Though Mlynash attended Los Altos High School, she always knew she wanted to raise her kids “being religious, keeping kosher at home, learning at a Jewish school, being in the environment where they’re surrounded by Judaism.”
Despite such far-reaching goals, she wore pants, ate non-kosher food and observed Shabbat “on and off” during her adolescence. “Shabbos would get boring, and it’d be hard to not do anything,” she admits.
At Yeshiva University, Mlynash never feels lonely because of her religious convictions. Though not fully Orthodox — she is still not shomer negiah — she hopes to increase her observance over the years. “I don’t want the religion and belief to stop with me,” she says.
Choknutiy (crazy). V dolyokeem proshlim (ancient).
Russians (and Americans, for that matter) have no lack of words to describe Orthodox Judaism as extreme or backwards. But those negative stereotypes don’t faze these Bay Area youths.
Dukhovny’s attitude toward his Orthodox way of life is unapologetic, even defensive. “The fact that the world thinks that religious people are living in the Stone Age doesn’t really bother me so much because the world’s opinion is not amazingly important to me,” he says.
“It depends how you define extreme. If anything that is based on a firm conviction that isn’t rooted in enlightenment values is considered extreme, then yes, I’m certainly extreme.”
As the more soft-spoken Zakharevich puts it, “I always try to be sensitive to other people’s feelings, but at the same time those who believe in democracy and making their own choices in life shouldn’t look down upon those with strong convictions.”
The teens maintain the same resolute attitude, even when negative aspersions come from their own friends and family.
Labunskiy’s biggest challenge since becoming more observant is relating to non-Orthodox or non-Jewish friends, and making sure they don’t view him “as some brainwashed lunatic.”
“There’s definitely some kind of barrier between me and my friends. I’m religious and they’re not,” he says, though “once in a while, I start reminiscing about how we used to go out — I get really nostalgic. [But then] I just look at myself and realize I’m really happy.”
A public-school student her whole life, Mlynash says her increased observance is “weird” for her friends because she only recently became observant. “In the beginning, they were shocked because they weren’t used to it,” she says. Hence, the catch-all explanation: “It’s a Jew thing.”
Dukhovny faced the hardest challenges socially during his year at U.C. Berkeley. Admitting that he had no friends on campus, he recalls, “I think at least a few times it happened that throughout the course of a day I didn’t speak to anyone.”
Though growing apart from friends is a painful and awkward experience, it is relatively common — unlike alienation from your family.
Labunskiy’s mother sighs before explaining how she feels about her son’s transformation. “It’s probably good,” she says in Russian. Though having some personal difficulty with his decision to live in Israel, she says she noticed a positive change in his attitude towards life, and an inner warmth and calmness.
“At first she got scared that her little boy got brainwashed by the scary Orthodox people and that I’m never coming home,” Labunskiy says. “In essence I’m still me. The changes that I did experience were positive ones. Her current attitude is very supportive; she’s very proud. I guess I’m really lucky.”
In fact, Labunskiy’s increased observance has influenced his mother to become more observant. She now tries to keep a kosher house and reads the weekly Torah portion every Shabbat.
Other family members are not so supportive. “My dad is a lot more skeptical about what I’m doing. The whole Soviet atheist anti-religiousness is much more strongly cemented in him than my mom,” Labunskiy says.
Dukhovny’s parents were unhappy at first, opposing his decision to quit college and enroll at Kol Yaakov yeshiva. “My father hoped my future would be in neurobiology, but he just realized that I was not choosing that for myself.”
Though he doesn’t plan to go back to college, Dukhovny hopes to work in the Jewish world. He thinks his parents are OK with his decision, “especially now that they’ve realized that yeshiva’s not a place where people just bum around. ”
His father, Alexander, describes the Soviet mentality. “Though not all will admit this fully, in our inner soul, we have a mistrust to formalized religion,“ he says in Russian.
Despite this inherent opposition, Dukhovny speaks to his family every night and “in the long run” doesn’t feel his increased observance will negatively affect his relationship with them.
Alexander switches to English, with only a slight hint of an Odessan accent, before admitting he’s still adjusting to the changes. “This is a way of life I don’t quite comprehend. I’m not sure what this will lead to.”
But “no ties are severed. He’s still very much our beloved son.”
And his son’s religiousness is rubbing off in a small way: Alexander has “finally” started to learn Hebrew.
Zakharevich’s parents, unlike the others, have been “very supportive” of her increased observance, she says. “I think they have a profound appreciation for Judaism and are definitely growing in their own observance each year. Some may call it luck, others may call it a blessing.”
Her older sister is supportive “in her own way.”
“Siblings tend to challenge each other, and she won’t let me get away with anything without discussing it with me first,” Zakharevich says. “That way she asserts my integrity.”
Labunskiy believes that his increased observance has led to a closer relationship with his family, especially — ironically enough — after spending the past year in Israel.
“I found over the last year that not only have I not grown any farther away, but I definitely have grown closer. We talk on the phone all the time.” When he was in the United States, he says, “I was a typical teenager: I didn’t come home much, said ‘hi-bye.’ But since I’ve left, we’ve had plenty of opportunities to discuss very important things, which inadvertently strengthened our relationship.” He hopes that dynamic will stay the same when he makes aliyah.
Life is difficult for Labunskiy, but every morning he wakes up feeling that he has a purpose, excited about what he has to do that day.
“There’s definitely a big challenge in this new outlook of life. I don’t get to do whatever I want to anymore. There’s a book of laws that I have to abide by. There’s a higher purpose that I have to be aware of and live life accordingly. It’s a big responsibility,” he says.
Mlynash can’t always explain why she’s become a ba’al tshuvah, but she’s firm in her decision to keep the Orthodox traditions. “I don’t know. I just have a connection. Judaism is really important to me. A lot of Jews lose who they are and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to lose my religion and beliefs — it’s who I am.”
For Zakharevich, the benefits are clear: “You feel at peace with yourself because you’re confident that you have guidance on every situation. That if I delve enough, I can find the truth.”
Dukhovny says simply, “Learning the Torah is an amazing thing. It changes your life. Completely.”
But it’s not easy, adds Labunskiy. “Sometimes I don’t want to get up at 6 in the morning and go daven. But I can’t just take a little detail, which I happen not to like, and discredit the whole idea. Even though some little things are hard for me, since I believe in the structure that holds it, I struggle though.” n
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California