Hadassa Podkoritov
Was Hadassa the name given to you at birth?
No. This is my Jewish name, which I took when I decided to start observing traditions. Before that, I lived a completely ordinary secular life.
Like many Soviet Jews…
Exactly.
And why Hadassa specifically?
I was born on Purim, and, as is known, the queen Esther’s second name was Hadassa.
A very beautiful story. And your last name? Where is your family from?
I was born in Grozny, Chechnya. But our family roots are in Azerbaijan. All the men in our family served on the border between Iran and the Soviet Union, in an area of Azerbaijan called Lankaran, where there were many Jews. It was there that our men found their wives. My grandmother recalled that, although Jews lived separately, relations with Azerbaijanis were warm and friendly.
I also have personal memories of Azerbaijan—my father served there in the Baku District Air Defense. I can confirm: there really was no antisemitism in Azerbaijan.
Yes, in those times, my family never faced antisemitism. Moreover, my grandmother told an incredible story. When the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh escalated, Armenians began to be persecuted. My grandmother was dark-skinned, and the attackers thought she was Armenian and grabbed her… Then Azerbaijani neighbors shouted, “She’s not Armenian, she’s Jewish!” and literally pulled her out of the attackers’ hands. That’s how they saved her.
After these dramatic events, the family decided to leave the dangerous region and moved to Moldova. My mother was only nine years old then. She grew up in Moldova, but when she was about twenty, she went to Grozny for a friend’s wedding and met her future husband there. He fell in love at first sight, soon came to Moldova to ask for her hand, and then took her to Grozny. That’s how our family ended up in Chechnya.
We lived there until 1994, when war struck again – the First Chechen War. At that time, Russian federal troops conducted fierce battles against the armed formations of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, seeking to regain control over the region.
We fled Grozny for Moldova, to my grandmother. We were lucky: in the first days of the war, the border was still open, and we were able to leave. My uncle came and said there was room in the car only for women and children. So he took me, my older sister, and my mother, and then brought us to Russia. From there, we took a train to Moldova, where my grandmother had an apartment.
But my grandmother herself was in Grozny at that moment; shortly before the war, she had come to visit us. When the shelling began, there was no room for her in the car. She insisted on staying, saying the main thing was to save the young people and children. For almost the entire war, she hid in the basement. Only later did she manage to escape the city engulfed in flames. As soon as she left, a bomb hit our house. Nothing was left – not even ruins; where the house had been, there was an empty space…
So, in the end, we all ended up in Moldova, where I spent many years, having arrived there as an eight-year-old.
Gradually, family members began repatriating to Israel: first my grandmother’s younger sister, then the elder, and later my grandmother herself. One day I started to wonder: why are all my relatives moving to Israel? Of course, I knew about our Jewish roots, but I had no idea what it meant for me personally. Then I decided to start learning Hebrew. At that time, I was in ninth grade at a regular school, and my mother said that for a good education, I should continue studying at a lyceum [advanced secondary school].
On the very first day of the Hebrew courses, I saw a newspaper from the Israeli Cultural Center, with an announcement about enrollment in the Jewish lyceum “Ort.” I told my mother: “If you want me to study at a lyceum, I will go only there, nowhere else!” The lyceum had a focus on mathematics, and I was naturally a humanities student. But I wanted so much to study at this Jewish lyceum that I worked hard to prepare for the math entrance exam. In the end, I passed successfully and began studying.
At the lyceum, in addition to regular subjects, we studied Jewish history and traditions. Our teachers were a married couple from Israel. I admired their family life, their respectful relationship, and their children (they had a large family). They became a model for me. I dreamed that my future family would be like theirs. Under their influence, I borrowed every book about Jewish traditions from the lyceum library and eagerly devoured them at home.
