z
Ex-Detroiter Speaks
At Harvard Exercises
STEVE STEIN STAFF WRITER
R
ob Rader says he wasn't
nervous speaking in front
of an estimated 27,000 peo-
ple, including Vice Presi-
dent Al Gore, last month at
Harvard University's com-
mencement exercises.
"No, I looked at it as an oppor-
tunity to lecture the university
after I'd been lectured to for sev-
en years," said Mr. Rader, 27, a
Detroit native.
"I was more tense during the
second round of tryouts for the
graduate speaker because I'd
been told I was the front-runner
among the six remaining candi-
dates," Mr. Rader said. "At that
point, I didn't want to blow it.
"I thought my speech went
over well. Everyone clapped at
the right times and they laughed
a lot at my jokes, so I assume they
understood what I was trying to
get across.
"Vice President Gore seemed
to like it. I'm a Democrat, so it
was a real thrill to have him
there."
Three students speak at Har-
students. Through tryouts, Mr.
Rader earned the latter opportu-
nity.
His talk was titled "The Next
Goal." During the eight-minute
speech, which took him about two
hours to write, Mr. Rader told the
audience that Harvard students,
like himself, are goal-oriented,
but he believes this determina-
tion often can be detrimental.
"If we spend all our time con-
trolling ourselves in order to
achieve our objectives, when will
we have truly lived?" Mr. Rader
said in his speech.
"... How can you stop and smell
the roses when you're already
eyeing the orchids farther down?
And when you're planning on vis-
iting the azaleas down the street?
"... The problem we face is not
working for our goals, but escap-
ing from them. We're people, not
goals. We must build lives that
include accomplishment, but are
not defined exclusively by ac-
complishment.
"... Can we be more than our
resumes? That is our next goal."
Mr. Rader used quotes
from the music group Talk-
ing Heads, Groucho Marx,
the movie Stripes and
Ralph Waldo Emerson, a
Harvard graduate, to make
his points.
Mr. Rader earned a
bachelor's degree in sociol-
ogy from Harvard in 1989,
went to law school there for
a year, then pursued a
master's degree in sociolo-
gy at Stanford University
in California for one year
before returning to Har-
vard to complete law
school. He graduated
magna cum laude from
Harvard both times.
"I went comparison
shopping," Mr. Rader ex-
plained about his time at
Stanford. "I decided I didn't
want to be a professor of so-
ciology, so I returned to law
school."
Rob Rader quoted from Groucho Marx and Ralph
Now that law school and
Waldo Emerson.
his commencement speech
are history, Mr. Rader is
vard's tradition-dominated exer- studying for the California bar
cises in the Tercentenary exam, which he plans to take in
Theatre, an area between Memo- late July. He has been offered a
rial Church and Widener Library job at a Los Angeles law firm.
on the Cambridge, Mass., cam-
Eventually, Mr. Rader would
pus.
like to make writing his career.
One addresses the crowd in He's already published a paper-
Latin, one represents the seniors back titled Rob Rader: The Early
and one speaks for the graduate Years. 111
.
Rimma Novojenova:
"Shabbat Is Tike having a vacation once a week."
Teaching A 'Scientific'
Torah To Immigrants
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM ASSOCIATE EDITOR
imma Novojenova says she knows what
Russian Jews need to hear about religion,
and it has nothing to do with God. A for-
mer leading psychologist with Boris
Yeltsin's revamped Russian Federation Ministry
of Education, Ms. Novojenova came last year to
the United States with nothing more than a suit-
case and memories of her mother's gefilte fish.
Her knowledge ofJu.dthsm, she says, was nonex-
istent.
Then Ms. Novojenova found work as a clean-
ing woman for an observant family in Oak Park.
Her continual questions of why -- Why not eat
meat with milk? Why not drive on the Sabbath?
— led, she says, to her decision to become reli-
gious.
Today, Ms. Novojenova hopes to bring that
same interest to other Russian immigrants.
Ms. Novojenova is an instructor for FREE,
Friends of Refugees of Eastern Europe, where
she teaches other Russian Jews about religion.
Her approach: consider the logic of Torah and fo-
cus on the intellectual. She describes her class-
es as "scientific."
For example, instead of telling students "you
can't cook on Shabbat" and "you can't watch TV,"
Ms. Novojenova explains the benefits of being
shomer Shabbat, Sabbath observant.
"What is Shabbat?" she said. "It's a day when
you can turn your phone off. It's a day you can
throw out your stress. It's a day you make a break
and improve yourself. It's like having a vacation
once a week -- who could imagine?
"What I want is to give objective information,"
she continues.
"When they (Russian Jews) hear 'God,' they
run away."
The concept of practicing religion, ritual and
rules for everyday behavior are too foreign to be
of any interest to Russian immigrants, she said
"In Russia, they never hear about God or what
it means to be Jewish. Maybe for genemtions they
never know anything Jewish.
Her grandfather was active in
the Bolshevik Revolution.
"You cannot speak in French to Russian peo-
ple. I cannot explain the beauty of Torah life to
people who don't know the word 'God.' But ob-
jective technology can really open up people's eyes.
"I don't expect people to become /rum (religious),
but they have to decide what is right, and to de-
cide what is right you have to know (what Ju-
daism says)," she said.
Students — she recently lectured to 55 in one
class — love the learning. "If you begin an inter-
esting book, how can you stop?" said Ms. Novo-
jenova, whose first article will soon appear in B'Or
HaTorah, a Jerusalem publication of the Associ-
ation of Religious Professionals from the former
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
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