Countywide : Soviet Immigrants Celebrate Passover

Ilya Tsukerman remembers finding egg splattered on his car and his front door broken from its hinges by vandals in his native Minsk, the capital of Byelorussia in the western Soviet Union.

He recalls seeing a derogatory Russian word for Jew scrawled in big, black letters on the side of his apartment.

“We were afraid to live in Russia,” Tsukerman said.

A month ago, the 41-year-old Tsukerman emigrated to Orange County, and this week he celebrated Passover for only the second time in his life.

Along with more than 50 other Soviet Jewish immigrants--many of them newly arrived--Tsukerman participated in a Passover seder Tuesday night at Anaheim’s Temple Beth Emet. The Seder is a special feast commemorating the Jewish exodus from Egypt more than 3,000 years ago.

Tsukerman celebrated his first seder Monday night, the beginning of Passover, in a smaller ceremony with his wife and two children.

“We felt like the people who left from Egypt many years ago,” said Tsukerman’s wife, Zinaida, referring to the Jews that Moses led out of Egypt on a 40-year trek through the desert.

In Minsk, it was difficult for him and his family to practice their religion because there are no synagogues, religious schools or teachers for Jews, Tsukerman said.

He and his wife applied for permission to leave the Soviet Union several years ago, he said, but the government turned them down initially. Finally, a little over a month ago, Tsukerman said he received word that he and his family would be allowed to leave their country.

“We packed up our small things, took our children, took a train and left Russia,” Tsukerman said in halting but precise English.

The train pulled into a station in Vienna, a common transfer point for Russian immigrants to this country. There Tsukerman applied to join his brother, who had immigrated from Minsk to Orange County 11 years ago.

After another 21 days of waiting, the Tsukermans finally made it to America.

The Krylovetskys family, also at the seder Tuesday night, had an even longer journey to America.

They left the Byelorussian town of Gomel last year and made it to a Jewish settlement outside of Rome by way of Austria.

There, they waited with more than 5,000 other Russian Jews until they were finally allowed to come to the United States three weeks ago.

The experience is common to Jewish immigrants who have been pouring into the United States since Moscow relaxed its immigration policies over the last few years. About 70,000 Soviet Jews are expected to immigrate to the United States by the end of this year.

Last year, 70 Russian Jews emigrated to Orange County and 120 more are expected to settle here by the end of this year, said Charlene Edwards, director of special services for Jewish Family Services. The organization invited all Russian immigrants experiencing their first Passover in the United States to the seder, Edwards said.

Another immigrant at the Seder, Anna Livshits, who has lived in the county for almost a year, said her mother and brother are still in Minsk, waiting for permission to leave. She said she hopes they make it here by next year’s Passover seder.

“Oh, it would be wonderful,” she said. “This is our dream.”