c. 2000 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Like their counterparts around the world, Jews living in the former Soviet Union will celebrate Passover on April 19, singing Psalms and eating a Seder meal of bitter herbs and unleavened bread to commemorate the Israelites’ freedom from slavery in Egypt nearly 3,500 years ago.

But for the estimated 25,000 Russian Jews, many of them non-Hebrew speakers or readers, who participate in Passover Seders run annually throughout the former Soviet Union by Hillel, the international organization promoting Jewish culture on college campuses, Seder will be different this year.

For the first time, they can hear the Haggadah, the traditional Passover liturgy that recounts the biblical exodus story, read in the Russian language instead of the traditional Hebrew.

“The Seder is about freedom, breaking away from oppression,” said Rabbi Yossi Goldman, who founded the Moscow office of Hillel, which helped distribute the Russian Haggadahs. “For 75 years, Jews in the former Soviet Union were in slavery _ not so much physical slavery but spiritual slavery. It’s important that they read the story in their own language because the story of Passover relates to their own experiences in Russia.”

For the past six years, Hillel has trained hundreds of Jewish college students from North America and the former Soviet Union to lead Seders throughout Russia.

While in the past students read the Haggadah in Hebrew, this year the 800 students recruited from the United States and Canada will read the story in Russian to better suit Russian Jews who have little or no knowledge of Hebrew, said Jeff Rubin, director of communications for Hillel.

“This Haggadah really opens up the opportunity for everyone to hear the exodus story,” said Rubin. “That’s the beauty of it.”

Hillel’s Russian Haggadahs are an important part of reviving Jewish heritage among Jews living in the former Soviet Union, where religion was suppressed for decades by the Communist government, said Rubin.

“We have a young Jewish population brought up without any Jewish education,” he said. “The Soviet system precluded them from getting a Jewish education, so now we have a new generation who are curious about their religious identity. This is one way we can help them.”

Hillel’s Russian Haggadahs also highlight parallels between the lives of the enslaved Israelites celebrated in the Passover story to the plight of Jews living in the former Soviet Union, Goldman said.

“In the Russian Haggadah we relate the Soviet experience when Russian Jews were enslaved spiritually to 3,000 years ago when our people were enslaved in Egypt,” he said. “The Hillel Haggadah talks about things like what does freedom mean, and how do you use your freedom and grow into your own identity. We try to help Jews in Russia develop a sense of pride and connect them to their past. We also wanted people to fully understand what was going on, so we translated the Hebrew characters into Russian letters.”

Rubin said Hillel’s Russian translation of the Haggadah has even proven popular among Jewish students in the United States, who have begun to request copies of the Haggadah for use in the United States.

He said Hillel plans to distribute more Russian Haggadahs next year to accommodate all the requests, which number around 300.

“We have had requests from around the country,” Rubin said, “from Long Beach, Calif., to Brooklyn, N.Y., to Illinois to Boston _ everywhere.”

Cori SaNogueira, 22, who spent a week in Ukraine in 1998 leading Hillel’s Seders, said she thought translating the Haggadah into Russian helped Russian Jews better connect with their faith.

“There’s just such a lack of resources for Russian Jews to express their faith in their own country,’ said SaNogueira. “Actually being able to look at the materials in their own language will help them understand what’s going on, and they’ll learn the story themselves.”

Ilene Skolnich, 22, who also lead Hillel’s Passover Seders in the Ukraine in 1998, agreed.

“For me, Seders are something I do naturally every year, but for many Ukrainians it’s the first time they have ever been to a Seder, let alone heard one in Russian,” she said. “I think it’s important to help them create their own Judaism, letting them take Judaism home to themselves and let it resonate in their own lives. That’s why it’s important they hear Seders in their own language.”

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