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All Our
Friends and their
Families
Our Wish
For

Immigrants' Pesach
In The Homeland

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SIMON GRIVER

Special to The Jewish News

F

L

or many Soviet new
immigrants, their first
Pesach in Israel has
served as an introduction to a
heritage previously unknown
to them. For others, like
Zohar Litmanowich, the
deputy managing director of
a large state-owned furniture
factory in Moldavia, Pesach
had been a covert rite but is
now an open celebration.
"We held a seder each
Pesach," 44-year-old Mr. Lit-
manowich recalls. "But it was
always very subdued and kept
secret from the neighbors. I
was afraid I would lose my job
if I was discovered observing
Jewish traditions. But I never
ate bread during the eight
days of Pesach. I went to work
on Yom Kippur, but did not
eat or drink."
In Israel since October
1990, Mr. Litmanowich now
works for the Afforestation
Research Department of the
Jewish National Fund. In his
Haifa home he recalls last
year's seder when for the first
time he and his wife Raisa
and daughter Dina sang the
traditional tunes as loudly as
possible. "We no longer had to
care what the neighbors
would think," says Mr. Lit-
manowich. "We had come out
of the wilderness."
Arkady Tsykin, a cartoonist
and art teacher from Odessa,
never participated in a seder
until last year. "In the
Ukraine we were accultur-
ated, almost assimilated, and
knew nothing about Juda-
ism," he says. "I knew Pesach
had something to do with
leaving Egypt and had tasted
matzah, but that was about
all. Some two percent of Jews
in Odessa celebrate Pesach,
but most don't even know
that the festival exists."
Forty-five-year-old Mr.
Tsykin now dons a kippah
each day to teach art in a
religious school in Petach
Tikvah. "Our Soviet friends
would have laughed at us if
we had stopped eating bread
for a week," he adds. "It
would have been seen as pri-
mitive superstition."
For his wife Lida, Pesach is
a sentimental rather than
religious occasion. "It was a
nice feeling making the seder
in our Rishon L'Zion home,"
she recalls. "All the family
had arrived in Israel — my
parents and my daughters. I
felt safe and secure. We did
not know the tunes to the
songs but we improvised."

a.

An immigrant child reads
from the Haggadah.

Dr. Boris Moerman from
Leningrad (now St. Peters-
burg), who emigrated in the
summer of 1990, had also
never celebrated Pesach until
last year. His first Pesach in
Israel was going to be a
special occasion, but when he
received an invitation for his
family to attend President
Chaim Herzog's family seder,
he had to pinch himself.
"I come from a very
assimilated family," says Dr.
Moerman. "I had eaten mat-
zah once or twice and had
heard of the prayer 'Next Year
in Jerusalem,' but I never
dreamed that I would be in
Jerusalem as a guest at the
President's Residence."
The Moermans' two sons,
Yevgeny, 18, and Alexander,
7, attended the seder and
Alexander recited the four
questions impeccably. "It was
such a magnificent moment
for us," says Larissa, a
pediatrician, bursting with
maternal pride. "As a child in
Kishinev we celebrated
Pesach each year at my
grandparents' house," she
recalls. "But I never imagin-
ed my own child being so self-
confident in Hebrew."
Life in Israel for the Moer-
mans, however, has been far
from wine and roses. Neither
have yet succeeded in obtain-
ing licenses to practice
medicine in Israel. "I am sud-
denly a nobody," says Dr.
Moerman. "In Russia I was a
specialist in a prestigious in-
stitute. Now I am doing
casual work like picking
avocados and my wife takes
care of children. We will be
truly free when we are work-
ing in our professions."
Twenty-year-old Bella
Vachnovetsky is studying
nursing at the Hadassah
University Hospital in
Jerusalem. For her, last

Healthy and
Happy
fassover

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