Elena Gordon
Software Engineer
Please tell us a little about your family.
My husband and I are raising two wonderful sons, age twenty and sixteen. Our eldest is a student at university and is actively involved in student Jewish life, and is a member campus Jewish organizations, which makes me very happy. The youngest is in grade 11. My husband works as an engineer at a leading Canadian aerospace company.
Tell us about your profession.
I am a software engineer, and I also have a bachelor's degree in economics. But it so happened that by profession I did not work a day in that field. After completing my studies in Israel, I served in the IDF while studying at the Open University. After the army, I got married, and my husband and I got a job at the Israel Aerospace Company (IAI) where we worked for twelve years until we left for Canada.
In Canada, I worked for various Jewish organizations. For the last two years I have been the Program Manager at the Canadian Forum of Russian-Speaking Jewry, a charitable organization founded by philanthropist and businessman Marat Ressin. The Forum is funded by private donations that are distributed to various Jewish cultural projects. We carry out some events ourselves. I really enjoy my job because I feel that it is important to our community.
Where does your family come from?
I was born in the city of Dnepropetrovsk (now Dnepr), where I lived for sixteen years. My great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side, Ilya Pinsky, lived in Yekaterinoslav (Dnipro), a famous Chassid in the synagogue of the father of the Rebbe, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson. We are trying to determine what his exact role was there – my cousin is checking information in the Ukrainian archives.
My grandparents spoke Yiddish when they didn't want us to understand them. I remember my great-grandmother, Tsipa, was very religious – she ate only kosher food, which she had difficulty getting in the synagogue. Before Passover, my parents helped her bake matzah. My mother told me that they baked it at night, and in the morning my great-grandmother would smuggle it in a suitcase and deliver matzah to Jewish families. We celebrated Jewish holidays as best we could, although it was not easy.
My grandfather on my father's side came from Kamenets-Podolsk. He was a violinist, served in the war as a radio operator and survived by some miracle. Two of his brothers were killed in the first week of the war, and the whole huge family was murdered in the camps.
At the time when we lived in Ukraine, anti-Semitism was rampant, and I experienced it myself in full. In 1991, a Sunday Jewish school for teenagers opened in our synagogue, and my sister and I began regular Jewish classes. There we studied Hebrew, celebrated my Bat Mitzvah, and attended various Jewish events held in our city. In 1992 we attended to the Jewish camp that had opened.
After studying for a year at the Polytechnic College, I passed the exams for the Na-Ale program and left for Israel on my own. Only a year later the whole family joined me.
The last years of our stay in Israel were very difficult for us psychologically: the city of Ashdod, where we lived, was constantly being bombarded by mass shelling from Gaza. The children were small and we were very worried about them. This was the main reason why we had to leave our beloved Israel. The fact that my sister had moved to Canada in 2009 for the same reason also influenced my decision, since we always lived side by side and saw each other every day. She had two small children at that time, and I really missed my nephews and my sister. We arrived in Canada in 2011 and settled next to my sister. Our mother also lives next door to us. Despite the fact that part of the family gathered in Canada, we all love Israel very much and I consider Eretz Israel my homeland.
What do you do in your free time from work? Do you have any hobbies?
I really like to travel. I am a little fond of esotericism and Kabbalah. And I also like to do everything that can be done with your hands. My latest hobby is modeling flowers from polymer clay.
If you had the opportunity to meet with any person in history, who would it be, and why?
I would like to meet with Faina Ranevskaya, the great actress who was also known for her wise aphorisms. I read a lot about this unique woman, about how difficult her life was and how she had to achieve everything herself, taking into account the opinion prevailing in artistic circles that she did not have what it takes to be an actor.
At a young age, she was left alone - her whole family emigrated. But until the end of her days she remained a very cheerful, albeit lonely person. She was incredibly talented and had an unsurpassed sense of humor. Her biting expressions, well known among the people, will be remembered for a long time.
What are your plans for the future?
I plan to continue to develop the Forum in order to create a cultural and educational center for Russian-speaking Jews in Canada closely connected with Israel, which has its representatives in all provinces and cities where Russian-speaking Jews live.
