Culture : Russia’s Jewish Homeland Possesses Soviet Soul : Dreams of religious freedom were crushed long ago. Today, few authentic Jewish traditions remain.

Plump and effusive, Alla Alpateva has anointed herself the caretaker of Jewish culture in this bedraggled, mosquito-infested marshland a few hours’ drive from China.

She teaches her granddaughter Yiddish, encourages friends to take pride in their heritage and boasts that her restaurant serves “authentic” Jewish cuisine.

“After all,” the 52-year-old cook says, “this is the Jewish Autonomous Region.”

And so it is--a remote, swampy territory bigger than Israel that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin set aside for Jews in 1934 as a Communist rival to the Zionists’ hoped-for homeland in what was then Palestine. He couldn’t promise milk and honey, but he did offer settlers bread and land.

About 22,000 Jews from across the Soviet Union, as well as from Argentina, France and the United States, answered Stalin’s call.

“This region was a Stalinist experiment, an artificial construction, but nonetheless it was built by Jews who wanted a Jewish land,” says Vladimir Belinkir, 38, editor of Birobidzhan’s Russian-Yiddish newspaper. “We didn’t know about Israel--our government told us that Zionism was tantamount to fascism--so this became our homeland.”

Yet today, there seem to be nearly no Jews in this Jewish homeland.

Stalin’s purges--which first hit Birobidzhan in 1949 when he ordered the Jewish theater closed and the Jewish museum collection burned--swiftly dispelled the settlers’ dreams of religious freedom. Hundreds of Birobidzhan residents ended up in labor camps in Siberia, convicted of “crimes” such as having in-laws who knew people living in Palestine.

Inevitably, the crushing conformity of communism triumphed even in this distant backwater, where houses are wooden and goats roam the potholed streets.

Birobidzhan, a city of 87,500 that holds most of the Jewish Autonomous Region’s population, lost its unique flavor and became a generic Soviet municipality. Today, only about 4,500 Jews--a negligible percentage of Russia’s total Jewish population--live in Birobidzhan. Ethnic Ukrainians and Russians make up the vast majority here.

University student Yuri Nekhin, 23, summed up his generation’s plight simply: “Technically, I’m Jewish. But I grew up in a Soviet family.”

Birobidzhan today is a city of oddities. A few reminders of the region’s raison d’etre remain, but most remnants of Jewish culture seem so distorted that they mock the very concept of a Jewish homeland.

Alpateva’s self-proclaimed “Jewish” restaurant, for example, serves the most traditional of Russian foods: borscht--a thick beet and cabbage soup--and Siberian pelmeni --dumplings filled with beef and smothered in sour cream. The latter violate Orthodox Jewish dietary laws that forbid mixing meat and dairy products.

In fact, nothing on Alpateva’s small menu is kosher.

Nonetheless, she insists that her dishes “show people what Jewish food is like.”

“Real Jews wouldn’t eat pelmeni ,” countered her childhood friend, a gruff taxi driver who identified himself only as Josef. “They would eat matzo.”

This confused sense of identity emerges again and again, most dramatically in the tiny wooden synagogue tucked away on a dirt road near the town’s center.

Although the synagogue’s caretaker, Boris Kaufman, looks as if he has just stepped out of a shtetl from “Fiddler on the Roof,” the white-bearded, rabbinical-looking man actually belongs to a Christian sect similar to the Seventh-day Adventists. Its members profess to follow Jewish traditions and celebrate Jewish holidays, but they believe in Jesus Christ.

Kaufman and a handful of fellow worshipers are the only Birobidzhan residents to use the synagogue regularly.

They rarely gather a minyan , the 10-man quorum required under Jewish law before prayer and Torah reading can begin.

However, as Kaufman says, “a minyan isn’t so important for us anyway,” because the synagogue’s Torah vanished four years ago and hasn’t been replaced. The synagogue also lacks a rabbi. But the leaders of the Jewish community here seem more interested in finding a photocopier than in filling these gaps.

“Our synagogue is a disgrace,” Josef said, running a calloused hand through his thinning gray hair.

As a child, Josef sometimes attended synagogue services with his parents, who moved to Birobidzhan from Ukraine in 1935, seeking a land where Jews could feel at home. Since then, however, he has watched Jewish culture here wane.

Even the young notice this trend. Tatyana Bosistaya, 21, a day-care worker on a collective farm, said her community used to sponsor celebrations of “Jewish Christmas and Jewish Easter.” She was unable to recall the Russian words for Hanukkah and Passover, but she remembered the festivities fondly anyway.

The emigration of about 20% of Birobidzhan’s Jews over the last two years has accelerated this decline. About 1,200 have left for Israel. And shortages of housing and jobs make it virtually impossible for the area to lure new settlers, according to regional Parliament Chairman Alexander A. Skachkov.

But from the very start, the Jewish Autonomous Region was, at best, a quirky amalgam of Jewish symbols and Soviet ideology.

Birobidzhan’s main road is called Sholom Aleichem, the pen name of Solomon J. Rabinowitz, the renowned Russian-Jewish author of the late 19th Century. Just around the corner, however, run Lenin and Soviet streets.

Signs covered with Hebrew letters hang next to Russian-language plaques on government buildings. But the words are Yiddish.

Stalin associated Hebrew itself with the hated Zionists, and he decreed that only Yiddish be used here.

As a result, no one in Birobidzhan speaks a word of Hebrew, the language of Jewish religious life. When visiting Israeli diplomats recently proposed a simple toast, their Jewish hosts sheepishly admitted they couldn’t understand.

The two-day visit by Israeli diplomats, which took place just a few weeks before Monday’s opening of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, was a first for the Jewish Autonomous Region.

In true Soviet fashion, city leaders took the Israeli delegation on a tour of the local factories and chess club--but omitted the synagogue. It was later added to the itinerary at the ambassador’s insistence.

But throughout the Israelis’ stay, officials touted local efforts to revive Jewish culture, proudly describing the new Sunday religious school, Yiddish classes and Jewish community groups.

Despite this heavy promotion of a supposed spiritual rebirth, the Israelis came away feeling that leaders here had a not-so-hidden agenda: to cash in on Birobidzhan’s status and secure aid and trade from that other Jewish homeland.

“Many other governments, including the United States and Japan, have expressed more interest in us than Israel,” Josef D. Nekhin, the local representative of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, told Israel’s ambassador to Moscow, Arieh Levin.

Levin, beset by demands for Israeli funds, said his 3,800-mile trip here from Moscow left him disillusioned.

“They have other things on their mind beside Jewish culture--they’re businessmen,” Levin said.

Indeed, even when they set out to woo the Israelis, Birobidzhan authorities seemed a little confused about their own heritage.

At a welcoming dinner, community leader Lev Toitman was reminiscing about moving to Birobidzhan with his parents 60 years ago.

Pausing between anecdotes to load up on cold cuts, Toitman blanched. With a stricken look, he examined the meat on his fork, then glanced at the Israeli delegation.

“Look what we’ve done,” he whispered. “We’re serving them pork!”