After a 24-hour plane ride and a quick nap, five weary teens got their first taste of Jewish life in Kiev.
A chauffeur took them straight to Babi Yar, a ravine where thousands of Jews were massacred in a hail of bullets from Nazi storm troopers during the Holocaust.
Now it’s a park. It was covered with green grass and sunbathers when the teens arrived in August.
The scene “bothered us a lot,” said Julia Szejnwald, 17, a Los Altos resident. “Most people think the monument downtown is the place where it happened, but that’s not true. People come to the park and don’t know where they are.”
Kiev residents might be taken aback by the young woman’s criticism. It’s a harsh judgment for a foreigner who had just arrived for her first visit to the country.
But Szejnwald’s trip last month was all about exploring the differences and similarities between American Jewish teens and Kiev’s inhabitants, both Jewish and non-Jewish.
After writing an essay and undergoing an interview, the five students were selected to go on the trip, which was organized by San Francisco’s Bay Area Council for Jewish Rescue and Renewal. The Koret Foundation funded the bulk of the cost.
In addition to Szejnwald, participants included Jackie Wayntraub of Los Altos Hills, Sophie Roberts of Palo Alto, and Ukrainian-born teens Anna Tepermeyster of San Francisco and Anna Nepomnyaschy of Palo Alto.
The two-week itinerary took the kids around the city, planted them in a Jewish summer camp, and also introduced them to the Jewish sites and people in the area. The group returned home Aug. 16.
“It’s not every day you get offered a trip to Kiev,” said Roberts, 16. “I’ve always been interested in different cultures. You can’t learn [enough] from just being taught it, you have to be immersed in it.”
Pnina Levermore, BACJRR’s executive director, said the program came about after Kiev’s Jewish leaders asked her how they could form a bond with the Bay Area Jewish community.
“We said it would be nice to expose our kids to Jewish kids in Kiev. We chose these kids to be representatives of our diaspora-to-diaspora relations,” Levermore said.
For most of the trip, the Americans bunked down with about 100 kids their age at a Jewish summer camp outside Kiev.
Szejnwald said she saw eye to eye with the Ukrainian kids in some areas, such as hanging out and enjoying nightly disco parties. But when it came to Judaism, she felt much more knowledgeable.
“Most didn’t know their prayers or much about religion,” said Szejnwald, who attended three summer sessions at Camp Tawonga, a Jewish camp just outside of Yosemite, and is active in B’nai B’rith.
“But at the end, they knew a lot more about Judaism and could sing the prayers.”
Roberts caught her Ukrainian peers off guard when she told them she wants to be a rabbi, a path she decided on after her bat mitzvah.
“Some people were kind of shocked. They were not used to a girl wanting to be a rabbi,” she said. “They were unsure but were definitely approving of it.”
The camp held prayer sessions every day. Roberts found that time to be her favorite.
“I felt kind of like an outsider because I didn’t speak the Russian language. But I came alive during services because we were all connected by Hebrew,” she said. “No matter how different you are, religion makes us the same.”
On three occasions, the Americans led the Birkat Hamazon after meals. The first time occurred on the second day of camp. Almost no one joined in. The second time, midway through the session, a few more voices chimed in. But by the last time, the campers were applauding and filling the room with voices, Szejnwald said.
Roberts, too, applauded their Jewish passion. Her experience “reinforced the fact that there is no set form of Judaism. It’s what you make of it. The people I met didn’t have a huge Jewish education, but their Jewish souls and identity are huge,” she said.
Ukrainian kids were impressed by the American teens’ knowledge of Judaism, Szejnwald said, and peppered them with questions such as “Do Americans keep kosher?”
But they also identified with each other on a more universal level as teens, asking one another “Would you like to dance?” or “Do you have a boyfriend,” Szejnwald said, smiling.
After the camp session ended, the Americans had a few more days to explore the Kiev metropolis.
They capped off their trip with a visit to a Chabad synagogue. After services, the rabbi invited the teens to his home for dinner.
“It felt amazing to be invited to a rabbi’s home in Kiev,” Szejnwald said. “The food was so good. We had potato salad, corn salad, fish, rice, tomatoes and ice cream. That was my favorite part.”
Now that Roberts is home and has had a chance to let the culture shock wear off, she thinks a return trip is a good possibility.
“Since I want to be a rabbi when I grow up, I think a good experience for me would be to help to improve Jewish education in Russia. I found there isn’t really much there.”