Washington Jewish Week - 01.09.2003

 

 

 

 

Also read:

Harold Paul Luks Biography

February 2001 Interview

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Washington Jewish Week

'It's like looking at a mirror'
Jewish activist wants efforts in FSU expanded 

by Eric Fingerhut, Staff Writer After completing his tenure as head of an organization that advocates for Jews in the former Soviet Union, North Bethesda resident Harold Paul Luks said he feels one great frustration -- not being able to get the American Jewish community to pay more attention to the revival of Jewish life in the former Soviet Union.

Former NCSJ Chairman Harold Paul Luks (at right) meeting Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma in Kyiv

"As American Jews we spend millions of dollars to honor the memory, rightly so, of the Six Million who were killed" in the Holocaust, said Luks in a recent interview, a few weeks after his 2-year term expired as chair of NCSJ: Advocates on Behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia. 

"To me, the greatest memorial for the Six Million who were killed would be to return hundreds of thousands of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus to the Jewish people." 

Luks notes that most Jews in the former Soviet Union "have been, in essence, by cultural and religious genocide, stripped away from the Jewish people. ... It's hard for Americans to understand how thoroughly and completely the Soviets stripped away Jewish life. It's as though they took a bright-colored tapestry and soaked it for a week in Clorox, and bleached everything out." 

Thus, much of the Jewish community in places like Russia and Ukraine has little, if any, recollection of Judaism, or what it means to be Jewish, said Luks. The intermarriage rate is upwards of 90 percent, he said, and a Russian Jewish leader has told him that in terms of assimilation, "We have gone beyond where you are afraid to go." 

And yet, there is opportunity. This past fall, Luks traveled to Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, with NCSJ, and visited a synagogue "that was stolen from the Jewish people 70 years ago" but had now been restored, with a Jewish community center right behind it. 

"The synagogue looks like any other synagogue in New York or Cleveland," he said, as do the Jews in Dnipropetrovsk. Luks said that when he looked at the faces of the children in the community orphanage, "it's like looking at kids here, the faces are the faces we see at shul. ... It's like looking at the mirror." 

Luks said the only way to ensure the revival of Jewish life in the former Soviet Union is for others in the Jewish world to further what NCSJ is doing and increase their efforts in the region. He specifically hopes that all the major streams of Judaism -- Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist -- will expand their endeavors so that the Jews of the former Soviet Union can be exposed to all kinds of religious options. 

"For the American Jewish community, with our own problems of assimilation, if we embark on a national effort not just to bring people back into the community, but to help build Jewish leadership in these places through training and education and workshops and seminars, I think as American Jews we will also help to rediscover our core strengths," Luks said. 

Luks calls his term as NCSJ chair "one of the most enjoyable and challenging experiences of my life," with one reason being the progress made toward "graduating" Russia and Ukraine from the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. That legislation ties trade between the U.S. and the republics to Jewish emigration and human rights issues. 

Ironically, the American business community, which since the law's passage had often argued that the legislation was an impediment to improved relations, has held up progress on Jackson-Vanik graduation. Some industries argue that they would be harmed because cheaper Russian products would now be sold in the United States, while they would not, in turn, benefit from entering the Russian market. 

But NCSJ is satisfied with the framework of assurances the U.S. and the former Soviet republics have set up respecting certain rights and prerogatives of the Jewish community. Luks said he hopes there will be an effort in the new Congress to finally graduate Russia. 

"Is the situation perfect? No. Does the Russian government interfere in the religious affairs of the Jewish community? Yes, they do," said Luks. 

"We support graduation because the Russian government has acted not only to permit but to support the re-emergence of Jewish life, and there are not barriers to immigration," he said, adding that when there are problems, "we can pick up the phone and call [Russian] Ambassador [to the U.S.] Yuri Ushakov and address the issue -- and that is the great change."