For the bride and groom, everything felt foreign. Never before had they heard the English and Hebrew words the rabbi spoke. Never before had they seen a couple marry beneath a chuppah. Never before had they watched a groom break a glass.
The only thing familiar to Sofia and Lev Obolsky at their recent Petaluma wedding was being married. This they have been doing — happily — for 25 years.
They first exchanged vows in a Russian government office. Although both are Jewish, the Obolskys never considered marrying in a synagogue. In 1976, there were no synagogues in their town of Homel in Belarus, near the western border of the former Soviet Union.
“In our country, we knew nothing about Jewish life,” says Sofia during an interview in their East Petaluma apartment, where she displays a mezuzah on her front door and her framed marriage ketubah on her living room wall. “We had no synagogues in those years.”
The Obolskys first set foot in a synagogue last year, when they joined the nearby Congregation B’nai Israel shortly after immigrating to the United States and settling in Petaluma. Last spring, they began contemplating ways to mark their silver wedding anniversary and decided to celebrate their newfound religious freedom with a traditional Jewish wedding.
The 56-year-old bride says she told her 68-year-old husband: “When we become older, we so want to feel ourselves Jewish people. Let’s have a Jewish wedding.”
Lev, who says he loves his wife more every day, immediately agreed. Until moving here, he knew nothing about being a Jew, except that it meant hardship. The Nazis killed his father and grandmother, sending Lev and his mother to live in a ghetto in the forest.
“I know no Yiddish language. No ritual, no Torah. I’m a Jewish man,” he says. “But I’m Russian.”
His blue eyes affectionately engage his wife’s blue eyes. “We have a second wedding,” he says, “but first chuppah.”
The Obolskys envisioned a Jewish wedding about the same size as their Russian civil wedding — with about 20 friends and family members. But B’nai Israel congregants seized the opportunity to welcome the newcomers.
Some 75 people, many of them synagogue members who had never met the Obolskys, attended the wedding and potluck reception. That strangers showed up bearing food and gifts astounds the Obolskys. When they talk about the wedding, they shake their heads in amazement.
“People so friendly to us,” Sofia says. “I don’t want to speak about us. I want to speak about this community, that they done all this for us.”
She shows off gold candlestick holders and a silver Kiddush cup that congregants bought for her and Lev.
“Our wedding is 75 people, all friendly. This is foremost,” says Lev, who formerly worked as a geologist for an oil company and spent last summer studying English and delivering Domino’s pizza.
Sofia adds: “Our life is former Soviet people. Not interesting.”
Many things that Americans find routine intrigue Sofia. The very existence of a religious school at B’nai Israel surprised and fascinated her. When she was a child, Sofia’s father began to teach her Hebrew. Terrified that Sofia would go to school and share her new language, Sofia’s mother disallowed the lessons.
Sofia’s father died in 1982. It was for him that Sofia most wanted to marry under a chuppah. “If he knew it,” she says, “for him it will be a great happiness.”
The Obolskys immigrated to the United States in Januray 2000 to be near their only child, 24-year-old Luba. Anxious to get away from possible contamination from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant before she had children, in 1998 their daughter moved to San Francisco, where her husband has relatives.
While they all still lived in the former Soviet Union, Sofia dreamed about a rabbi officiating at her daughter’s wedding. The Obolskys went to Israel with the young bride- and groom-to-be, intending to have a Jewish wedding there. But no rabbi would marry the couple without proof that they were Jewish.
“They said we have to show papers that we are Jewish,” Sofia says. “I say if we are not Jewish, why would I want this?”
Sofia says she wanted to leave Russia her whole life. “I always want to leave because I didn’t like socialism. Maybe my father’s influence.”
But Lev had a good job. They had a nice apartment, a car, friends. In the mid-1990s, Lev and Sofia visited relatives in Israel. Having tasted life in a democracy, Lev began to think about leaving his homeland.
“Before,” he says, “I don’t know another life.”
As far as moving to America, Sofia was determined. “I said, ‘Stay. I’ll go alone,'” she says. “I can’t live without my daughter.’ Now when I ask him, ‘You want to go home?’ He say, ‘No.’
“Our language and our traditions and all our friends, is in Russia,” she adds. But when getting ready to leave, it was important “not to see back but to see forward and only think about the best life, for the future of our daughter.”
The turnout at their wedding reinforced their decision to emigrate. “We felt surrounded by friends and well-wishers and a spirit of love that prevailed,” reads their thank-you note to the congregation. “We are still amazed at the generosity extended to newcomers.”