One college student cried for an hour at the Western Wall. Another wanted to touch every stone in Jerusalem. Many felt proud to be Jewish for the first time in their lives.
Denied their religion and culture in the former Soviet Union, 21 Bay Area college students from the former Soviet Union spent an intense two weeks in Israel this summer learning what it means to be a Jew.
For all but one of the students, ages 18 to 28, the trip was their first visit to the Holy Land.
“In the two weeks, we received more information about Israel, Judaism and Jewish history than we did in our whole lives,” said Misha Gutkin, a College of San Mateo student.
University of San Francisco student Elina Borokovich felt similarly.
“Everything that you’ve ever lived for is from that country,” she said.
Gutkin and Borokovich are among the approximately 100 members of the San Francisco Hillel Russian Club. Earlier this year, the S.F.-based Israel Project interviewed club members and then selected participants for the free trip financed by a special grant from the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation.
In return, all of the students must lead or participate in an Israel-related event during the coming year.
The excursion cost about $1,800 per student. While in Israel, the students worked at a kibbutz, joined in an archeological dig and visited Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Safed and the Golan Heights. They hung out on the beach and in night clubs. They went four-wheelin’ on the northern border.
“For the first time in their lives, they were really proud to be Jewish,” said Tessie Topol, one of two group guides who accompanied the students. “Their experience with Judaism in the [former Soviet Union] was either negative, a void or neutral.”
During the stay in northern Israel, Topol recalled, many of the students stayed up late one night to discuss the implications of returning the Golan Heights to Syria.
Israel “had gotten under their skin and was becoming part of them,” Topol said. “They started calling it `our land,’ which was, for many, new phraseology.”
Borokovich, for one, loved camping in northern Israel. “We were walking around the border and saw tanks of soldiers. It was this very beautiful place — very African.”
The interactions with those living in northern Israeli also affected the group. The locals impressed upon the students that they were willing to live in an area so vulnerable to attack because of their commitment to the land, Topol recalled.
In Safed, a center of kabbalistic study, many of the students for the first time felt a spiritual pull. But it was in Jerusalem where their feelings for Judaism awoke.
“All my life, all 22 years of it, I waited for that moment,” Gutkin recalled. “I wanted to touch every stone, to feel every molecule of it. When I touched the Western Wall, I finally realized that `I’m here. I’m here in Israel.'”
Borokovich said another woman in the group cried at the Wall for an entire hour — “Everyone was touched.”
Gutkin and Borokovich say they feel changed by the trip.
Gutkin has spiritual feelings now that he wasn’t aware of before. And Borokovich, who left then-Belorussia as a child and lived a short time in Israel, wants to start a Hillel-run Israel club in San Francisco.
The club could host speakers as well as educational and social events.
“It’s also a good way for Russians to feel comfortable meeting Americans,” she said.