Balta, my grandpa's birthplace
From Moscow I took a 20 hour train ride to Balta, a town in the Odessa region of Ukraine where my grandfather happened to spend the first 10 years of his life. I had been invited by a group of graduate students from St. Petersburg Judaica Institute to join them on expedition. They would be interviewing the small community of Balta Jews, many of whose family's have been living in Balta for many generations, to learn as much as possible about the old customs, traditions, and ways of life of the shtetl Jews. Pictured below is most of the group in front of the high school dorm we stayed in. As you can see, the students were almost all female. I would say this week was the most intellectually stimulating of my whole time away and I'm really gratefull that I got to work with some interesting Russian graduate students. Only about half of the students were Jewish, which was really surprising to me since I had never before met ethnographers interested in Jewish life who weren't Jewish. My interview partner, though not Jewish at all, knew much more than me about Jewish traditions and holidays and she was even able to speak Yiddish to our informers. One night I even got to talking to one of the students about what I studied in college - domestication and evolution - which was fun but very challenging to do in Russian.
Our first night in Balta we took a walk along the streets that would have been "the Jewish streets" pre-WWII and talked about how the Jewish houses were built. Pictured below is a house built in the style common for a Jewish home during the first half of the 20th century. It looked pretty runned down and abandoned. I imagined my grandfather growing up in one of these houses.
Balta was a chance for me to get in touch with the side of me that really loves small town/village life. I'm pictured below pulling water up from a well on the way back to base from an interview. We 'd do a few interviews each day and spend the rest of our time wandering around the town, drinking homemade wine from the market, swimming in the lake, and my favorite - picking delicious berries of all kinds from trees along the roads.
The aforementioned lake is pictured below. Young boys are jumping off something that looks like a shipping crate from a freight train.
In Balta there are one family houses right next to low apartment buildings, no more than 6 stories tall. These buildings are decorated with tile mosaics, as pictured below, something I didn't see in any other place on my trip.
In the center of town there's this Lenin bust with a few amusement ride type things in front of it. After drinking some homemade wine with our lunchbox lunch one day my two interview partners thought it would be a great idea to get on this ride. I didn't feel so good afterwards.
There is something about little ducklings that is irresistable to me. Most of you know that already. Below, a little Ukrainian boy holding a duckling I picked up from his family's yard and put in his hand, me holding a little duckling, and a woman at the market selling little chicks (not ducklings, but close enough).
Our first night in Balta we took a walk along the streets that would have been "the Jewish streets" pre-WWII and talked about how the Jewish houses were built. Pictured below is a house built in the style common for a Jewish home during the first half of the 20th century. It looked pretty runned down and abandoned. I imagined my grandfather growing up in one of these houses.
Balta was a chance for me to get in touch with the side of me that really loves small town/village life. I'm pictured below pulling water up from a well on the way back to base from an interview. We 'd do a few interviews each day and spend the rest of our time wandering around the town, drinking homemade wine from the market, swimming in the lake, and my favorite - picking delicious berries of all kinds from trees along the roads.
The aforementioned lake is pictured below. Young boys are jumping off something that looks like a shipping crate from a freight train.
In Balta there are one family houses right next to low apartment buildings, no more than 6 stories tall. These buildings are decorated with tile mosaics, as pictured below, something I didn't see in any other place on my trip.
In the center of town there's this Lenin bust with a few amusement ride type things in front of it. After drinking some homemade wine with our lunchbox lunch one day my two interview partners thought it would be a great idea to get on this ride. I didn't feel so good afterwards.
There is something about little ducklings that is irresistable to me. Most of you know that already. Below, a little Ukrainian boy holding a duckling I picked up from his family's yard and put in his hand, me holding a little duckling, and a woman at the market selling little chicks (not ducklings, but close enough).
posted by duckie at 1:32 AM
0 comments
Below is Lenin's Mausoleum, where he's layed since his death in 1924. It's situated at the Western side of Red Square in front of the red Kremlin wall (which gives Red Square is name). Tourists and Communist crazies are allowed free entrance 10AM-1PM only three days per week, though you have to pay to check any cameras, camera-capable phone, or bags you may have with you (mandatory). Most people waiting in line to enter the tomb were part of tour groups and there was one particularly annoying huge Chinese tour group right in front of me which I managed to skip in front of at one point. Once I got to the front of the line I was allowed into the square to check my camera and then I proceeded to the entrance of the Mausoleum. The tour group which had entered the suare before me was standing outside the building getting a lecture on Lenin and on what to do and what not to do when inside. I ran ahead and found myself in the Mausoleum all alone with Lenin. Aside from the militiamen inside at each turn who used their arms to direct me through the dark, maze like, structure I was totally alone with Vladimir Ilyich. I had been warned of the rules - no standing, no hands in the pockets, no talking - and I walked very very slowly around Lenin's body staring at his face, his suit, his hands, the red velvet draped around where he lay. The looks on the guarding soldiers' faces were the most somber, lifeless ones I had ever seen. The whole experience - especially being in there alone- was incredibly eerie and almost hypnotizing. I would recommend it to anyone visiting Russia.
About those Communist crazies. There are lots of them around Red Square. These Lenin, Stalin, and (does anyone know who the third guy is supposed to be?) impersonators are there everyday behind Red Square near the entrance to the Lenin Museum and tourists like to take photos with them. When I was there I saw some elderly Communists come up to the Lenin-look-alike, shake his hand, hug him and exchange famous Communist slogans.
Directly in front of the entrance to the Lenin Museum there was a crowd of elderly Communists. Mostly Russian babushkas dressed in "halats" or colorful peasant housewife robes. Some were waving red flags and enthusiastically singing Communist work songs while others simply stood and watched or sat on the steps looking depressed and nostalgic for what the Soviet Union used to be, or maybe just nostalgic for what it used to represent.
The most amazing part of this experience was that Sergo Bengilsdorf, the journalist/music professor/Yiddish star whom I lived with in Kishinev was there! I had no idea he was going to be there and when I heard him being introduced by the MC I almost jumped out of my seat. I thought I'd never see him again. Suddently all of my Kishinev memories came back. It was as if my trip had come full circle. I remembered Sergo lovingly feeding his cat Lucya tiny bits of cow liver he cut up for her in the kitchen. I remembered him and his wife listening to his Yiddish-language radioshow (which every Jew in Kishinev knew about and every Yiddish-speaker listened to). Sergo and his wife welcomed me, a total stranger, as if I were their granddaughter. And it was so good to feel at home in a place so foreign as Kishinev and so cold. I cannot express what it was about this couple. They just radiated with love, devotion, and happiness - and projected these feelings onto eachother, onto their narod, and onto me. Of all the wonderful people I've met on this trip, Sergo was the most amazing and inspiring. I ran upto him at intermission and he gave me the warmest, happiest hug and in his ho-ho-ho Santa Claus voice told me that he hoped (and knew somehow) he'd see me here since I had told him I'd be in Piter in mid-June. I'm so glad that I didn't decide to go to Moscow one day earlier. I could have easily missed him. That's him in the photo playing the piano and playing a little skit with his singer (beyond the frame).
