Hadassa Podkoritov
Little by little, I started changing things in our home, even though no Jewish traditions were observed there at all. At first, I simply tried not to mix dairy and meat products. Of course, at fifteen it’s hard to influence the way a whole family lives, but I did what I could. Then I started observing the fast days.
So you began introducing Jewish traditions into your life?
Yes, to the extent that it was possible in those circumstances. And then I became interested in my family history. It became clear to me that my attraction to Judaism didn’t come out of nowhere – it had roots. By that time, my grandmother was already living in Israel, but not far from us lived the wife of her brother who had already passed away. I bought a cake and went to visit her. I said, “Tell me everything — you’re the only person who remembers the family from the very beginning, from the time when everyone still lived in Azerbaijan.”
Let’s remind our readers that your family lived back then in a beautiful region of Azerbaijan with a mild subtropical climate called Lenkoran.
Yes, everything happened there, in Lenkoran. It was an amazing corner of the world — green, full of sunlight, with orange groves and the smell of the Caspian Sea so close you could almost reach out and touch it. That southern city is where I spent my childhood, and that’s where my journey into my family’s history began. My grandmother’s brother’s wife – you could call her my great-aunt – told me many things I’d never known before. Thanks to her I learned that my grandparents came from a deeply religious family that carefully observed Jewish traditions. One of the brothers, for example, was a shochet – he slaughtered animals according to the laws of kashrut. He did this only for the family, for their large household where every mitzvah was respected. This woman herself didn’t lead a religious life, but after marrying my grandmother’s brother, she found herself in a very observant family. Their way of life made a strong impression on her, and her stories contained vivid, almost cinematic details of their daily customs. She remembered that her mother-in-law had separate dishes for meat and dairy, and that in the attic they kept special utensils that no one was allowed to touch.
Those were likely the Passover dishes?
Of course. But at the time I didn’t know that. Those dishes were brought out only for Passover. Before the holiday all the children would gather around the table to help roll out the dough for matzah. And when they got tired and started feeling hungry, they would “accidentally” drop the fragile sheets of freshly baked matzah on the floor.
So that they be able to take a break?!
Exactly. Once the matzah touched the floor it became chametz (ritually unsuitable for Passover) and then they were allowed to eat it. She also told me that on Purim they would, as tradition requires, bring friends and neighbors Mishloach Manot – tasty food gift packages. Later I read a lot about Jewish life in Lenkoran. It turned out that there had once been a large, close-knit community there – people kept Shabbat, celebrated the holidays, and helped one another. How interesting! I grew up in Azerbaijan – my father served in the Baku Air Defense District – and I heard a lot about Quba, the city with an almost entirely Jewish population. But I never heard anything about Jews in Lenkoran.
I would really love to visit. My great-grandparents are buried in the Lenkoran cemetery, as well as my grandmother’s brothers and sisters – the whole family that lived there for many years. A few years ago, some people from Chabad in Moscow went there to restore the dilapidated Jewish cemetery. In the photos they later posted on their website, I suddenly saw a headstone with the name of one of our relatives. I wanted so much to go there, but it didn’t work out…And to this day I regret that I didn’t even save that photograph. That’s how my Jewish life began. Everything felt like it was happening on its own, but quickly and with purpose. I started working at the Kishinev youth club of the Israeli Cultural Center (a Jewish Agency/Israeli government-supported cultural and educational network), and by the time I graduated university I had become the coordinator of the entire center. I truly loved that work. We ran dozens of programs – camps, clubs, trips to Israel, both tourist and educational, including programs for children with special needs. I traveled a lot with teenagers. I saw how their eyes lit up when they first stood at the Western Wall or walked the streets of Jerusalem. To say I loved my work would be an understatement. I lived it.
And what happened next?
When I was working at a camp for children with special needs, I met my future husband. In Kishinev at that time there were hardly any religious Jews – only a handful went to synagogue, and Jewish life was more cultural than spiritual. But he dreamed of a family built on tradition, where Shabbat and kashrut were not just words. He worked at the airport, and our organizations had joint charitable projects– that’s how we met. A few years later, we got married. We had our chuppah in Israel because in Kishinev at that time it wasn’t possible to have a kosher ceremony. Our wedding took place in Bnei Brak, and we celebrated afterward in Jerusalem – in the city where, it seems, the sky itself is closer to the earth.
