world Rites Of Passage Even in Siberia, it's never too late for a Jewish awakening. * 2015-2016 Bar/Bat Mitzvah Dates Still Available! 11111r. AMIN& B'NAI ) 1 MOSHE riv With an offer like this you can't afford not to! You set your first year dues level Call Steve Fine at the synagogue office at 248-788-0600 for more information f Congregation B'nai Moshe 6800 Drake Road 1 West Bloomfield, MI 48322 1 www.bnaimoshe.org 74 September 18 • 2014 m Participants in the Bar/Bat Mitzvah Family Camp read from a Torah scroll in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk in August. Elaine Berke JNS.org S Iberia is not known for its welcoming appeal. But in 2005, I stood for the first time in the warm glow of a small group of eager Jewish students in Khabarovsk, a remote Siberian town on the border with China, and asked how many of them had a bar or bat mitzvah. Two raised their hands. While many said they would have liked to have celebrated that Elaine Berke Jewish rite of pas- sage, they felt too old to do so. Yet three weeks ago on Shabbat — nine years later — I stood in awe as more than 70 Jews from across this vast region of Russia recited prayers, read Torah and learned about Judaism at a hotel in Novosibirsk, the unofficial capital of Siberia. They were participants in the Bar/ Bat Mitzvah Family Camp, a pro- gram I founded together with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) that trains Jewish youths and adults to undergo bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies and to strengthen their Jewish identities. Witnessing this event was, for me, the culmination of the effort that started back in 2005 with my initial trip to the Russian hinterland, evoca- tive of so much history. At that time, Jewish communities across the vast expanses of Siberia — stretching from the Pacific Ocean in the east all the way to the Ural Mountains in the west — were start- ing to re-emerge after decades of oppression under Communism. In cities like Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk and oth- ers, tens of thousands of people were reclaim- ing their Jewish iden- tities and rebuilding synagogues and community centers, with the help of a number of Jewish organizations and local initiatives. But because of decades of Soviet oppression — including bans on Jewish religious practice and Jewish quotas in a variety of Soviet institu- tions — they did not have the tools to do so on their own. Important rites like being bar or bat mitzvahed were rare. That saddened me at the time because of the value I believe that Jewish tradition has, a value I imparted to my children. So I was