1996-1997 Rothberg Yearbook

Operation Pesach.
Question: W hat’s the most meaningful way to spent your Pesach?
Answer: Fly to Kiev, take a ten-hour ride in a little red bus filled with
matzot, wine, and haggadot to the villages in the Pale o f western
Ukraine. Go to school rooms, bams, gymnasiums, and broken old
synagogues and lead Seders - one or two a day for four days - for Jews
who have fallen victim and miraculously survived the two most
oppressive regimes o f the century: the Nazis, who savagely killed their
families, and the Communists, who stole their Judaism.
It may sound implausible but that is exactly what twenty five o f my
class-mates from the Rothberg School for Overseas Students at the
Hebrew University o f Jerusalem and I did this past Pesach. We
participated in a special Pesach Project co-sponsored by the United
Jewish Appeal, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life and the
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which provided us
with the challenge and opportunity to bring Jewish life to a place where
a once dominant Jewish spirit has been dead, not to mention illegal, for
nearly seventy years. Before I begin, I must say that the Jews we met in
the Ukraine deserve a great deal o f respect. After all the years o f
hiding, most Jewish tradition and thought were forgotten. These
people are making concerted efforts to bring Judaism back into their
world.