Georgian Shabbat - Part 2 ("Don't Worry be Happy")

Last night, as I mentioned last week, I went to a Georgian Jewish family's house for dinner. They live down the street from me in a modest little apartment similar to the one I live in. Yaakov, the man who invited me (turns out he's only 26) lives with his mother and father, his grandmother, his 6-7 month pregnant wife and his two children (1 and 4 years old). The house is filled with pictures of the rebbe and the family. He was quick to show me pictures of his wedding which took place in T'bilisi two years ago, and he was overjoyed ("Mazel Tov, Mazel Tov!") to find that I am also getting married. He insisted I send him pictures.

My night consisted of a combination of Hebrew, English, and Russian (this is after spending the day at the Hermitage with two German friends from class). Needless to say, my mind's on language overload today. Anyway, dinner began with Shalom Alechem, a tradional song sung at the beginning of the Shabbat meal, followed by Kiddush (blessing over the wine). The amazing thing is that one could walk into any Jewish familiy's home in the entire world and find almost identical customs of observing the sabbath (Same blessings, same main food items, same songs, etc). I had to take a step back and think again about how lucky I was tonight to find this community who welcomed me, in Yaacov's words, "as my brother" and one that within 1 minute of coming inside encouraged me to act in their home as I would in mine.

The salad smorgasbord consisted of marinated eggplant slices wrapped over a crushed almond/nut spread, two types of salmon (one with a spicy crust, one normal), cabbage latkes with a horseradish spread topping (one of my favorites), a garlic houmus type thing that looked exactly like chopped liver and tasted spicy ...like nothing I've ever tasted before, tomato and cucumber salad with parsely and dill, another beet/cabbage salad, cooked tomatoes with an egg white topping, and probably 2 or 3 other things that I can't remember off the top of my head. Main course was chicken and rice (it's very hard and expensive to get kosher meat here), and dessert was melons, cherries, peaches, and date-filled ginger cookies. It was all excellent and I was happy my conversational Russian is improving so that I could thank them properly for their hospitality and carry on a conversation with them.

There are supposedly 200 Georgian Jews in St. Petersburg, and, from what they told me, a very lively community of around 1000 Jews back in T'bilisi. There are also a couple rabbis here for the community, but they all are on vacation for the summer. Yaacov has his MBA from St. Petersburg State, also in Economics, but I couldn't really gather what he really does for a living. "Baruch Ha'Shem" (lit. Blessed is G-d, but figuratively it means that G-d will provide.") He would usually follow statements like this with "Don't Worry Be Happy." This was also his response to, "How is life for Jews in Georgia, or in St. Pete?" Unfortunately, now I have that song in my head.

As if the world couldn't get any smaller, his father, get this, used to be Minister of Energy under Shevardnadze, but unfortunately he speaks very very little Russian and he now works in a restaurant in the city. He didn't say much at all the whole night. I think it's partly since he is now relegated to working in a restaurant; Yaakov said there are just not that many jobs back in Georgia. Whether or not it's because of their affinity for Shevardnadze, they repeatedly called Saakashvili, Georgia's current Columbia and GW-educated leader, a puppet of the West. In all, it was a very interesting night.

Today I went on a great Dostoevsky walking tour with some people from the Consulate here. They're all very nice, and one of them is actually in my program. He and his wife have a great blog about their adventures. Be sure to check it out, especially a forthcoming post entitled something like "Russia: The Land that OSHA forgot".