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Sunday, June 5, 2011

Somehow I Survived Binah may, 2011

Somehow, I Survived

Byline: As told to Debbie Shapiro


While the world was preparing for war, I was enjoying myself at the Bais Yaakov summer retreat in the Carpathian Mountains. We were a small, close-knit group; many of my schoolmates had come from afar to attend the only girls' seminary then in existence. Although Frau Schenirer's school was tiny, it was from this seed — this kernel of kedushah — that today's Bais Yaakov movement emerged.

We were oblivious to the thunderous black cloud threatening to engulf us, until, like a lightning bolt on a clear day, one of the girls received a letter from her parents with money and instructions to return home immediately — “before the war erupts.” The camp was immediately closed and we all returned to Cracow, where the seminary was located. I suddenly realized that there really was a possibility of war.

We arrived in Cracow on Monday. Everyone — the wealthy, the intellectuals, the simple people — were working together to dig bomb shelters. The government had already declared a blackout, which meant that at night all lights had to be covered to prevent enemy planes from identifying the city. Although there was an ominous feeling that something terrible was about to happen, we had no idea what, or just how terrible it would be. Even as the hanhalah frantically worked to return us to our families, they kept on reassuring us that there was absolutely nothing to worry about, and that before long everything would return to normal.

The following morning I received a letter from my parents with instructions to return home to Slonim immediately; I was one of the twenty girls who left Cracow before the air raids began. When I left that Wednesday night, I was positive that I'd soon be back and that life would return to normal. But of course, it never did.

The ten of us continuing east from Warsaw missed our connecting train and spent the day at the home of one of my classmates. We kept on phoning the train station to find out when there would be another train heading east, until finally we were informed that there was one at four o'clock that afternoon. Although we had no idea how far east the train was going, at least it would bring us closer to our destination, and we decided to try our luck. I left my heavy suitcase — the one that contained all my sefarim — in Warsaw with my friend, positive that I would soon be back to fetch it.

The train heading east was packed with Polish army recruits. We were petrified to board — ten girls alone with hundreds of Polish soldiers! As we were standing on the platform, wondering what to do, we noticed one empty train compartment and quietly slipped in through the open window. We remained silent the entire trip, praying that the soldiers would not notice us.

The train ground to a stop in Bialystok. Not long afterwards, a cattle train heading east pulled into the station. This train was also packed with drunk Polish Army recruits, but it was the middle of the night and the men were sleeping, so we slipped inside and quietly spread out, blending into the surrounding darkness. Although we were not noticed, one drunken soldier stepped on me. His boots were so sharp that they cut my navy blue (and very fashionable) shoe in half! I was just grateful that it was my shoe, not me!

I arrived at the Slonim train station at 4:55 in the morning and bid my friends goodbye. Of course I didn’t know it then, but of the ten girls who traveled with me from Warsaw, I was the only one who would survive the war.

I disembarked the train and started walking home. A few minutes’ walking distance from my house, I ran into my mother, who was shocked and overjoyed upon seeing me. She had heard that a train had arrived, and hoped that I would be on it. Years later, Reb Zelig Epstein, zt"l, who had spent the previous night at my parents' house, told me that my parents had assumed they'd never see me again.

The day I arrived home was September 3, 1939. Our neighbor's window was open, and we could hear her radio from our living room. At five o'clock, we heard the announcement that war was officially declared. Although it wasn't a surprise — fighting had erupted on September 1 with the German invasion of Poland — we were still shocked. The air raid sirens began wailing almost immediately.

Prior to the official declaration of war, the Germans had signed a treaty with the Russians, called the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, dividing Poland between the two allies. We were now part of the Soviet Union and positive that Germany would never attack us, so despite the shrill wailing of the air raid sirens, we felt relatively safe.

Upon hearing the declaration of war, an uncle of mine who lived on the German side of the border grabbed the two sifrei Torah and his set of Shas, and fled to the relative safety of Soviet-controlled Slonim. Hoping to escape notice, he traveled on the back roads and little-used dirt paths. Crossing what he assumed was a nothing more than a muddy patch of the road, his wagon sunk into the quicksand, and he barely escaped with his life. Although at the time the destruction of the two Torah scrolls and Gemara set seemed tragic, we later realized that it was a blessing in disguise, because in this way they escaped defilement in the Nazis' hands.

Although we were safe from the Nazis’ harassment of Jews (at least that's what we thought it was then — we had no idea that they were planning to kill us all), we were afraid of becoming Soviet citizens. The USSR was an anti-religious state, and we knew that it would be almost impossible to remain G-d fearing Jews under the Communists. So, when the Soviet Union announced that it would be granting independence to the tiny state of Lithuania, thousands of Jews, including many of the great Polish yeshivos that were now inside the USSR, raced to get there during the two weeks that Lithuania was still part of Russia, before the border would close. For many, including almost the entire Mirrer Yeshiva, this window of opportunity became their passport to life.

My mother was an extremely realistic and intelligent woman. Although she was not aware that many of the yeshivos were escaping to Vilna, she wanted my brother and me to flee the Soviet Union. My father, on the other hand, felt that we were much too young to undertake such a dangerous journey. Later on, when they learned that many of the yeshivos had taken that route, he changed his mind. But by then the borders were closed. So we made preparations to flee illegally.


I had just turned seventeen when I fled from Soviet-controlled Poland to Lithuania together with another five young people: my younger brother and his two friends, and another two girls. We took the train to the Lithuanian border, where we were immediately arrested and thrown into prison; but when the guards left their posts for a few minutes, we slipped out the back door into the surrounding forest. After several hours of crawling in the snow, we saw a small, decrepit old hut and knocked at the door to beg for help. An old Jewish woman let us in. She pointed to her one piece of furniture — a shaky, old bed — and told us to hide underneath it. That night, she found a professional smuggler to guide us across the border.

On the Lithuanian side of the border, we were also caught and thrown into prison. This time, we bribed our way out. On our way to Aishishok, we met a Jew who told us that the city was now a closed military zone, and he kindly hid us in the back room of his home. Meanwhile, we asked him to deliver a note to an acquaintance of mine who lived in Aishishok.

It was Wednesday. We had been walking and crawling in waist-high snow since Sunday, and were so exhausted from the ordeal that we fell into a deep sleep. A few hours later, three Russian army officers burst into our hiding place. Seeing our shocked expressions, they said, “Yidden, don't be afraid. Your friend sent us to you. We'll be back tomorrow.”

The following afternoon, the soldiers arrived at our hiding place to take us three girls out for a stroll. We looked like three couples out on a date. They brought us to a Lithuanian hotel, gave us some Lithuanian currency, and instructed the hotel owner to put us on the train that left to Vilna at five o'clock the following morning.

We arrived in Vilna at seven o'clock Friday morning. My brother and his friends arrived shortly afterwards. Rav Aharon Kotler's daughter learned with me in Cracow, so we went straight to her house, where we were warmly welcomed. The Kotlers told us about a dormitory there in Vilna that had opened up for Bais Yaakov girls, and warned us that it was dangerous to walk on the street before becoming legal residents. So, after putting our bags in the dormitory, my friends and I went straight to the government office to apply for our official papers. On our way there, I ran into a neighbor of ours from Slonim, who helped us get our papers and then insisted that we spend Shabbos with her family.

My father's cousin, who had come to Vilna with the Mirrer yeshiva, visited that family over Shabbos while I was there. After Shabbos, he suggested that instead of returning to the dormitory, I rent a room in the home of one of the Mirrer rabbonim. I stayed there for an entire year, and as a result I became an integral part of the Mirrer community, which meant that when an opportunity to escape arose, I knew about it. So many times in our lives we never fathom events' true ramifications. I “happened” to meet a friend from Slonim and accept her invitation for Shabbos, and as a result, my life was spared.

I knew Russian and some English, and became the unofficial yeshiva secretary — the one who composed the telegrams to the Mirrer talmidim in the States, and took care of all the official government business. Since I was so involved in helping the community, I knew everything that was going on. This knowledge was crucial to my ultimate survival. In the summer of 1941, the Japanese consul began handing out temporary visas to Japan. At first, we were skeptical. We thought it was a ruse to send us to Siberia. But when we heard that some bachurim had succeeded in getting there safely, we started investigating the possibility.

In order to attain a Japanese visa, I needed a Polish passport. But although I had a birth certificate stating that I was born in Poland (Slonim belonged to Poland before being transferred to the Soviet Union at the start of WWII), I’d never had a Polish passport, and was planning to travel to Kovno to apply for one. But the evening before I was supposed to go, I received a telegram from my father instructing me not to go. He wrote that all Jews residing in Slonim who had made official arrangements to flee the country had been exiled to Siberia. Although this later proved to be their salvation, at the time we viewed it as tragic.


With no other choice, I ended up leaving Lithuania on a forged passport. I flew (yes, flew!) to Moscow, as I had received papers from America entitling me to get an American visa. When that didn't work out, I boarded a train heading to the Japanese border. But my visas were not in order, and I was caught in Wladivostok, the last stop before Japan. I was interrogated for close to five hours. When they asked me to sign my name, I purposefully wrote a Polish “r” instead of a Russian “p.” When they saw me sign my name like a Pole, they laughed and told me that I could continue on, even though my passport was obviously forged. I still don't know how I managed to keep my cool!

Although the Soviets accepted my Polish passport, I remained in Wladivostok for seven weeks waiting for a Japanese visa. All the Jewish refugees stayed in one hotel. I was friendly with a group of six other young people, so for Pesach, we joined together to make a Seder. Even those Jews who were very far from religious observance refrained from eating chametz on Pesach. One of the Mirrer bachurim gave us one of his two matzos when he left for Japan. Another bachur found a potato somewhere, which we cooked in an electric kettle. For the arba kosos, we boiled dried fruit and used the water for wine. Although the refugees conducted several Sedarim at the hotel, it was all done very quietly, as no one wanted to draw the attention of the authorities.

I'll never forget how hungry I was that Pesach. Every day we went out searching for food, but mainly, we survived on air. One girl's feet became so swollen from malnutrition that she was unable to walk. It was a very difficult time for all of us.

Finally, after seven weeks, we received our visas. Years later, when a contingent of Japanese historians came to Israel to learn about Japan's role in saving the refugees, they examined my visa and told me, much to my shock, that the consul had stamped it with the wrong date, to make it appear as if it had been issued earlier, as by then it was illegal for him to issue visas!

Visa in hand, I traveled to Kobe, Japan, where I remained for the next five and a half months. Now that I was relatively safe, I decided to get a legitimate Polish passport, and went to the Polish consulate together with the required two witnesses. It turned out that the Polish Consul was also from Slonim, and knew me and my family well. After spending over half an hour talking about life back in our home town, he issued a passport on the spot. Now that I had an "in" with the consul, I often turned to him for help with other Jewish refugees.

Kobe was crowded with Jews in transit. Most people were permitted to remain for just ten days before continuing on to Shanghai, but for some unexplainable reason, I was given a six-month visa. Still, I didn't want to be in Kobe for Yom Kippur; due to its close proximity to the international dateline there was a question as to which day Yom Kippur was — and I certainly didn't want to fast for both days! I made arrangements to travel to Shanghai, but since the rickety old boat that had transported most of the refugees to Shanghai was no longer in service, I traveled on a fancy cruise ship via Korea! The Jewish refugees on board, along with the other passengers, were served gorgeous five-course meals, which of course we couldn't eat.

Shanghai was a different world, totally unlike anything I had ever experienced. It rained constantly throughout the summer, and with each rain the heat became more intense. Sometimes the rain was so heavy that it was impossible to leave the house. Winters were dry, without snow, and freezing cold. It was a city of stark contrasts. The rich were extremely affluent, whereas the poor starved. The established Jewish community consisted of Russian Jews who had immigrated to Shanghai prior to the First World War. They were well off and lived in large, spacious homes with numerous servants. They had magnificent shuls and an independent educational system. They were also big baalei chessed who helped us in many different ways, such as assisting newlyweds in setting up their households. Although we refugees did not have much money, we were able to reciprocate in our own way. For example, I made two aufrufs for one of the families that had been influenced by the yeshiva to become more observant. I even prepared cakes and baked them in the bakery's oven.

In addition to the established Russian Jewish community, some 15-20,000 German Jews had fled to Shanghai after Hitler rose to power. The majority were able to take along at least part of their wealth, which they used to establish businesses and become financially independent. Only a small percentage of the German Jews, however, were religious, and with our arrival in 1940, the few religious German refugees joined our kehillah.

I arrived in Shanghai the day before Yom Kippur. Two weeks later, my friends and I opened a Bais Yaakov. I taught my first graders in the little one room apartment that I shared with three other girls. Until December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and America and Japan went to war, we received a regular stipend from the United States, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (commonly known as the Joint) paid our rent each month. After that, it was all nissim!

I was the “baby” of the community, the youngest girl living in Shanghai without her family. After my roommates married, I was the only single girl in the yeshiva community. But I didn't stay that way for long. My husband and I were married in 1941, just eleven months after I arrived in Shanghai.

During all this time, I had no contact whatsoever with my family. I constantly hoped for the best and prayed for their safety. It was only after the war that I discovered they had all been killed, Hy”d, including my brother.


Running a household in Shanghai was a full time job, even with a servant to help me. Our one tiny room served as a living room, bedroom and kitchen. Each morning I went to the marketplace to shop for fresh food, as in the dense heat and without any refrigeration, food spoiled quickly. If I wanted chicken for supper, I would purchase a live chicken and take it to the shochet. Afterwards, I'd bring it back home, where I'd pluck it and clean it, and, more often than not, I'd have to bring it to the rav to ask a shailah. (One erev Yom Tov, three of my four chickens were treif!) If the rav paskened that the chicken was kosher, I'd return home to kasher it and only then could I start preparing the meal!

Disease was rampant, and everything, including the water, had to be boiled; even the fruits and vegetables that we peeled had to be sanitized with boiling water before they could be eaten. Although many of the people in the yeshiva community came down with dysentery and typhoid, none of them succumbed to the disease. It was absolutely amazing; all those who joined our community survived!

I was constantly battling the dirt and trying to stay on top of the laundry, which we washed by hand. Despite the tedious, almost non-stop work, my house was always immaculate, and my two children clean and well-dressed. They never looked like poor, neglected refugee children.

After Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese and the Germans became allies, the Jewish refugees were confined to a ghetto, whereas Jews who had lived in Shanghai prior to the war were allowed to continue living outside of the ghetto. That was the beginning of the anti-Jewish edicts, when the Germans pressured the Japanese to kill their Jewish population. Any Jews caught outside the ghetto without a proper pass were immediately thrown into jail, where they usually died of disease. (Although, as mentioned, no one from the yeshiva community ever succumbed to disease, baruch Hashem.) Since the yeshiva was located outside the ghetto, the yeshivaleit received special passes allowing them to be outside the ghetto from six in the morning until eleven o'clock at night.

For us, trouble came when my husband's coat was stolen. We were, of course, upset at losing such a warm, expensive coat, which we could not possibly replace. But even more worrisome was the fact that he kept his identity badge in his coat, so although he was issued a new identity badge, the new number did not match the number on his pass. When the Japanese restricted us further and stopped allowing us to leave the ghetto at all, they collected all the passes and saw that my husband's numbers did not match. They threw him into jail.

Thanks to the askanim's tireless efforts on my husband's behalf, he was only imprisoned for a very short time — but it was still long enough for him to contract typhus. Everyone tried to convince me to send him to the hospital, but I was afraid. Many people never left the hospital alive. Eventually I found a doctor willing to come to our one-room apartment to examine my husband. When he saw how spotless everything was, he told me, “If you want your husband to survive, keep him at home.” Meanwhile, the bachurim in the adjacent apartment vacated their home, and I moved in there with my ten-month-old baby so we wouldn’t be living in close proximity to my sick husband. For the next few weeks, although my baby remained in the other room and I took care of all of our needs there, I devoted every minute of the day to taking care of my husband. Every morning, a friend would come to my window and I'd give her money to purchase food and other necessities. Although bachurim came to help feed my husband and tend to his needs, miraculously, none of them caught the disease.

The heavy bombings began in 1945, when American forces started shelling the city. We lived in rickety shacks, with no place to run. In one air raid, a glass picture fell off the wall, and my knee was so badly cut that I needed stitches and couldn't walk properly for three months. We saw many nissim, too. In a neighboring house, the ceiling collapsed onto two just-vacated beds, forming a canopy over the third bed, where a yeshiva bachur was trying, unsuccessfully, to get some sleep! In another house, a bachur was learning when a piece of shrapnel went through the roof of the building and got stuck in the ceiling over his head. He was very frightened, but l'maaseh, nothing happened.

The last air raid took place on the seventh of Av, 1945. We stood near the glass doors and watched the bombs falling one after the other. The air was grey with dust. The following day, erev Tisha b'Av, there were many, many funerals among the refugees, but everyone in the yeshiva community survived.

The war ended on a Friday night. Instead of air raids, we heard yelling and screaming. Although we realized that something unusual was going on, we were afraid to leave our homes to investigate. In the morning, when the men went to shul, they discovered that the doors to the ghetto were open and that we were free to leave. The war was finally over!


Looking back, I'm amazed how, during these difficult times, when we were living in the ghetto, completely cut off from our families and without enough food to eat, we were able to lead normal lives. We married, we raised families, we invited guests for Shabbos meals; somehow we succeeded in living a rich, full Jewish life. I remember one Purim when a group of bachurim came to visit. We were sitting around our table, eating a desert that I had prepared from dried figs and dates. Since no one had money to prepare proper shalach manos, each bachur passed his plate to the boy sitting next to him, and we all rejoiced in what we had. It was beautiful.

We were really one huge family. We didn't have much, but whatever we had, we shared. And even today, some sixty-five years after liberation, those of us who were part of that yeshiva community of refugees feel like one, enormous family. The connection is very, very deep. When alter Mirrers get together, the years melt away as we share each other's joy and pain.

Debbie Shapiro is a wife, mother, grandmother and longtime Jerusalem resident.. Her latest book, Women Talk  is a compilation of interviews with great Jewish women. If you'd like tocontact Debbie, please write to her at  debbieshapiro@binahmagazine.com .


matches made in Russia Hamodia May 2011


Matches Made in Russia

By Debbie Shapiro

In August, 2007, when Rabbi Shimon Levin, Rosh Kollel of Saratov, Russia (see In the Merit of our Fathers—Returning the Children of Saratov to their Jewish Roots, December 2010), convinced Chaim and Tzippy Blumenfeld join his Kollel and work in outreach, they thought it would be nothing more than a one-year adventure. Little did they imagine that it would turn into their life's calling.

“We were a typical yeshiva couple. I grew up in Bnei Brak, my wife in Beit Chelkiya, an Agudah Moshav between Tel Aviv and Yerushalayim. Both of us thought it would be fun to spend a couple of years in outreach, and planned on teaching in some small, secular Israeli town. Instead, we ended up in Saratov, Russia, a university town with almost no Yiddishkeit. It was our job to create a community and do outreach with the university students. We were only twenty-three years old at the time.”

A Bit of History

Located on the Volga River in southern Russia, Saratov is a major metropolis with close to a million residents. An important cultural and scientific center, the city boasts six institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences in addition to it twenty-one research institutes, nineteen project institutes and three large universities. Students – including many Jewish students – flock to Saratov from the entire region, which is why, among the locals, it's often referred to as "student town."

Interesting enough, the Jewish community originally consisted of former Cantonists, Jews who were forced as young children to join the Czar's army and reject their religion. After serving a minimum of twenty-five years, many of them, in an incredible display of Jewish fortitude, returned to the faith of their fathers.  Although I wasn't able to find any conclusive information as to why the Cantonists chose to settle in Saratov, I did learn that in the early eighteen hundreds the city was a center for Sabbatarians, Russian Christians who secretly embraced Judaism, and who were extremely kind to these Jewish recruits. I read one story of two Cantonists on leave from the Army who ended up spending a wonderful Pesach with this underground Jewish community, and were showered with presents, and even more important, encouraging words, before returning to their arm base. I assume that this was not an isolated incident, and that that was the reason that many of these Cantonists eventually settled there, to create a vibrant Jewish community founded on mesirus nefesh.

Today, two synagogues serves Saratov's 5000 Jews. When the Blumenfelds arrived four years ago, there were only four religious families in the city. Today, there are twelve.

@A New Life

The Blumenfeld's found themselves in a completely different world from the one they had been used to. “In Israel, we would go to the local supermarket and pile the shopping cart with tons of processed foods and readymade snacks. Here, except for a few Osem products, we couldn't find the stuff. So we ate lots of fresh vegetables and legumes, baked our own bread and cakes, and felt much, much healthier than we had ever felt in Israel.

"Today, we don't even miss it, and our kids don't want it. We're presently visiting Israel with our children, and this last Erev Shabbos my mother asked my four year old daughter what treat she would like for her Shabbos pekalah. But she wasn't interested in some sugary coated candy bar. Instead, she requested a bright red apple, like we buy her in Russia l'kavod Shabbos kodesh. My mother was flabbergasted!”

But the Blumenfelds had to deal with much more than just than a lack of ready-to-eat convenience foods. "Our chicken and meat was sent from Moscow, eighteen hours by train from Saratov. But sometimes, it just didn't come; and don't forget, the reason we were living in Saratov was to do outreach, so our Shabbos table was always crowded with at least a dozen young people interested in learning more about their heritage. One time, I realized Thursday evening that the chickens would not be arriving before Shabbos, and I phoned a friend of mine, another outreach worker living in Volgograd (formerly called Stalingrad and St. Petersburg),which is some eight hundred kilometers (approximately 500 miles) from Sarotov and asked him to send me chickens. He immediately slaughtered a dozen chickens, kashered them, and put them on a bus to Saratov. Friday morning, I was up at the crack of dawn to get to the bus station on time to pick up the chickens l'kavod Shabbos kodesh."

@At Least it was Interesting

Rabbi Blumenfeld continues, "After living in Saratov for over a year without eating any milchigs, I decided that I was going to find a cow and watch it be milked so that I could have chalav Yisrael. So I went to the marketplace and asked all the old ladies selling their produce if any of them had a cow. When I found one, I proceeded to ask her if I could come to her village to watch her milk it. Although she looked at me as if I had just walked in from outer-space, she agreed. She gave me directions to her house and added, 'Just make sure to be there very, very early in the morning.'

"The next day my friend and I left in the predawn darkness so that we could make it to the farm by six. We spent three hours bumping across dirt roads, and by the time we arrived, our kishkes were knocked out and we were completely exhausted. But we returned home with several buckets of fresh milk, which we later pasteurized and made into cheese." With a mischievous grin, Rabbi Blumenfeld adds, "It wasn't very tasty, but it sure was interesting!"  

@Outreach in Saratov

Rabbi Blumenfeld and his wife succeeded in drawing close a small nucleus of Jewish students to Judaism. "Together with the other members of the Kollel, we opened a yeshiva-type program for the boys, where they studied at university during the day and learned Torah at night, and a similar seminary type of setup for the girls. Over the four years that we were there, some sixty-seventy students were involved in our programs. Many were really excited about Yiddishkiet and determined to live a Jewish life."

But then they discovered a serious problem, one with disastrous repercussions.

"We had one girl who was mamash a bas bayis in our home. She was such a fine, aidel young woman that the kollel families took her to be the nursery school teacher for our children – in other words, we trusted her with our kinderlachs' chinuch, something that all of us take very, very seriously.

"This sweet young woman dreamed of settling down and building a Jewish home. Although she often requested that we introduce her to a fine Jewish man with similar aspirations, none of the dozen or so young men in our baal teshuvah community were suitable for her, and the closest Jewish community was some seven hundred kilometers away. Of course whenever an outreach worker came to visit, I would make sure to ask if he knew of any eligible boys, but none of them really took my request seriously.

"To make a long story short, this lovely, frum Jewish girl met a 'nice' Muslim boy and wanted to marry him. We tried everything to prevent it: we got the girl's family involved, we threatened the boy, but nothing worked. In the end, she married him."

But this was far from an isolated case. "Like everyone else doing outreach in the FSU, we were so busy learning, organizing the community and doing outreach work that we couldn't devote ourselves wholeheartedly to helping our success stories find shidduchim, which, of course, is crucial to their remaining within the Jewish community. We had one student who was so dedicated to shmiras Shabbos that on Shabbos she would walk one and a half hours each way to attend the required university courses. The university punished her for refusing to take notes on Shabbos, and she was extremely careful to never eat anything that wasn't strictly kosher. (It's important to understand that we could not suggest that these young people leave university as they viewed it as the key to their future.)

@Guidance from a Gadol

"In the summer, while we were in Israel, visiting our families, my wife received a call from this girl to let us know that she was dating a lovely student, who had promised her that he would come to Moscow to convert! My wife almost fainted on the spot! The next morning I went to speak with Rav Steinman, shlita. When I told him about these two girls and asked him for his advice, he responded: 'I'm in Bnei Brak. You're there, and since you're there, you must do everything in your power to prevent intermarriage. If you bring someone close to Yiddishkiet and then that person marries out, what have you accomplished?'

"Baruch Hashem, that story ended on a positive note. We were able to break up the relationship, and today, this girl is a true bas Yisrael, studying in a Jerusalem seminary, and hoping to find her beshert."

@Ksharim is Born

These words, "You must do everything in your power to prevent intermarriage," were the catalyst that impelled Rabbi Blumenfeld to create an organization for the sole purpose of helping Russian speaking Jews find Jewish partners.

After discussing the idea with Rabbi Avraham Edelstein, head of Ner L'Elef, and Rabbi Yaakov Baum, Rosh Yeshiva of Shvut Ami and spiritual advisor for Ner L'elef's FSU communities, Rabbi Blumenfeld returned to Saratov and started making phone calls.

"It was the beginning of the year, and I was very busy organizing my regular outreach activities. But every couple of days I'd make a phone call to another community to ask if they had any young people who wanted to get married, and then hear the details. Although in the back of my mind I had this idea of creating an organization that would help Russian speakers throughout the world, at the time I was only concerned about the young people of my community.

"Our first shidduch was between one of my wife's students and a young man from Kiev. Like a father, I traveled to Kiev to meet him and see if he was suitable for our (spiritual) 'daughter.' There were lots of phone calls and long conversations, because in this case, as in all the shidduchim that we make, we were the shadchanim, the parents and the rabbonim, all rolled into one.

"For the first meeting, the girl traveled sixteen hours by train to Kiev. The second meeting, the boy traveled to Saratov. Just like parents, we covered all the transportation costs. Both my wife and I went to the vort in Kiev, and again, four months later, for the wedding. Throughout the entire time that the couple was meeting and later on, during their engagement, we were in constant contact with both of them, guiding them in making their decisions and teaching them the basics of keeping a kosher Jewish home.

“My wife walked our 'daughter' to the chupah. My wife broke into tears at sheva brachos the next evening when she saw her wearing a shaitel for the first time. This young woman had come to as a secular college student, and now here, standing before her, was a true eishes chayil! Today, our 'daughter and son-in-law' are active members of Kiev's frum community, and a true asset to Am Yisrael.

@Ksharim Reaches Out

"The organization's turning point was when I traveled to Volgograd to meet a group of frum girls, hoping to find a shidduch for one of our students in Saratov. Although I wasn't successful, I looked through my computerized list and ended up making a shidduch between one of these girls and a boy from a different community! But it wasn't just suggesting a match. It involved a lot more than just getting the two people together. I spent hours talking with the rabbonim involved, arranging long-distant meetings, counseling the couple through the dating process, engagement period and shana rishona. But again, we had the tremendous satisfaction of helping to create a mikdash me'at, strong roots for future generations of ehrlicher Yidden.

The following year we divided our time between our outreach work in Saratov and making shidduchim for Russian speaking young Jews. Slowly but surely our 'organization' expanded. We developed a large datebase of clients, employed a field worker to meet clients and Rabbonim across the FSU, as well as an extremely intuitive and experienced shadchen to interview our clients, and come up with possible matches.

@Ksharim Becomes Official

"Last year, at a Ner L'elef retreat for their outreach workers in Eastern Europe, most of the sessions focused on the problem of intermarriage and the importance of creating strong Jewish homes to assure Jewish continuity in Eastern Europe. My wife and I decided to devote ourselves solely to this project, and founded an official organization, Ksharim.

"Today, one year later, we've made dozens of shidduchim, and provided thousands of hours of hadracha. All of our young couples continue their Torah learning, and a large percentage take off a year from their university studies to learn full time. Through strengthening their Yiddishkeit, we are creating strong, committed families; families who will become the future leaders of the Russian speaking Jewish community."

To find out more about helping stop intermarriage among Russian Jews, please contact       ksharim2020@gmail.com     www.ksharim.org