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".

Walking around town

The following are the top 10 most common sights you'll see around this city:

1. It's normal to see people walking around with a bottle of beer in their hand, even at 9 AM.
2. Trucks spewing (and I mean spewing) fumes into the air. There are definitely no low sulfur diesel restrictions in this country.
3. People making out.
4. If it's a weekend, in any scenic place you are bound to find a bride and groom taking wedding pictures. They will have their entourage with them and all will most likely be drinking.
5. Stray dogs. This is sad, but amazingly the ones near where I live know how to cross at the crosswalk.
   
6. Some sort of construction being performed by only about 2 of the 10 people that are supposed to be doing the work. The rest are taking a cigarette break.
7. Although I don't take the metro that often there are always people selling things. This week it was band-aids.
8. Cruise tourist groups. Very easy to spot. Some even wear nametags that say things like "Captains quarters."
   
9. On almost every block you'll find a Beauty Salon, a Pharmacy, a 24-hour convenience store, a shoe repair shop, and a Bar/Restaurant.
10. Mothers walking arm-in-arm or holding hands with their daughters.

And finally, some of the most beautiful architecture and historic sites in the world. Here's a new set of pictures.

The only statue of Catherine the Great inside of St. Pete. Here, she is surrounded/supported by philosophers like Voltaire and Diderot.

The State Russian Museum

Last year I went to an exhibit at the Guggenheim in NYC called Russia!, which showcased for the first time since the end of the Cold War a chronological set of Russian art in the United States. Frankly, I was blown away. For those of you whose concept of Russian art is Kandinsky and Chagall (as mine was), there were many other artist to discover. Plus, the exhibition was interesting in that it divided Russian art during the Soviet period into art sanctioned and not sanctioned by the state.

This afternoon I went to the Russian Museum, indeed in search of Kandinskys and Chagalls (even though they had very few), but more to see the art that couldn't make it across the ocean. It turns out that a lot of the art, especially from the Soviet period is on exhibition elsewhere. I wasn't disappointed though, and a number of the same pictures I saw today had been at the Guggenheim exhibit too. Here's one of them.

lya Repin, Barge Haulers on the Volga, 1870–73

Just FYI, what you read from here on out comes from the humble opinion of an artist's son. I can take nice landscape pictures and draw nice stick figures, but I'm definitly not an art critic. So, just bear that in mind. Really, though, I'm not going to critique much, I just liked the art. Second, for those of you who don't care about art-- don't worry. I am going to be writing about Russian cars, Russian fashion, and more Russian food in the next couple days.

Although a lot of the art was inspired by neo-classical, romantic, realist, and then impressionist movements it was the subject matter that was slightly different. The theme of "work" or "the worker" is pervasive during all time periods, as are landscapes. I'm a sucker for landscape pictures (clouds, fields, oceans, sunsets, etc) so I found that art impressive.
On a modern note, one of the special exhibits going on right now is about Malevich's black square. An informational thing at the beginning claimed that this symbol is the second most recognizable symbol in art next to the Mona Lisa. I'm not so sure that's completely true though.

A lot of the art showed lots of sadness. I counted at least five pictures that were simply just titled "Grief" or some variation of it. The art leading up to the 1917 revolution almost entirely portrayed the life of peasants.

Boris Grigoriev, Indigenous Land, 1917-18

I'm also not a huge fan of portraiture, but I thought a lot of the way people were being portrayed was similar to Manet, with a stark background and with the subject in his/her element. I don't know who took their cue from whom, but this picture was one of my favorites.

Leon Bakst, Supper. 1902

The rest of the pictures are posted on kodakgallery and you can take a look if you'd like.

In other news, I'm happy to report I have a brand new towel that doesn't smell like it's 20 years old, although the water still smells here. It's not safe to drink because its chlorinated. I'm beginning to get a little tired of potatoes and fish (when you eat it almost twice a day that's bound to happen), although variations on the theme, like the potato latkes that I had at the student center today, were quite tasty.

A Discussion on Human Rights with Russians

Last night I led the english discussion club at YESOD on human rights. We had a small discussion about the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which we passed out in Russian and English, and then drew some connections to Judaism and Jewish texts. We then broke up into little groups to make up our own non-profit organizations to try to "tackle" (a new word for most of the Russians) some of the problems (Darfur, Child Slavery, Freedom of the Press in Russia, spread of AIDS, and a couple others.) The Russians were quite knowledgeable about some of these world issues, but the concept of a non-profit was a bit foreign to them. We had to re-emphasize that the state was not trying to solve the problems, but instead might be the biggest challenge to being able to work.

There were a couple interesting observations that I made during the discussion club. First, when I asked everyone to go around the room and introduce themselves, the last person told me that he wasn't accustomed to this, and asked why we (Americans do it). I explained my hope was for them to find common ground, and to make for a more intimate discussion. I think they understood.

When the group presented the non-profit group to try to encourage freedom of speech in Russia, one of the girls challenged her as to where the money would be coming from. If that money came from the oligarchs (like the Abramovitch's, Gusinsky's, or Khodorkovsky's of the 90s), then that's not truly free speech, but is just speech subject to new interests. There was much debate about whether free speech truly exists in Russia today. Surprisingly many said it does.

Joe, my co-leader, asked the students if they trust the police here. Two (of the 12 or so that were there) spoke about apartments they had rented where police were running a heroin racket. One of them even had a judge living in the same apartment building and even she chose not to do anything about it. Both ended up just moving out because they didn't want to have to rely on the police. Others agreed they try to minimize having to rely on them. I was lucky the other day as I walked down Nevsky Prospekt (the main street) since two Asian tourists were stopped right next to me by the police. Luckily my documents are all in order, and I think I've been doing a good job of blending in (which involves not smiling a lot).

In all, I think we had a good discussion; the point is really to get them talking in English. A lot of them don't know each other outside the weekly meetings, so we're planning to all go out socially to get to know each other better.

Otherwise I've been adjusting to life here fine. Today is Tisha B'av, and I fasted a little bit. Now I'm going to go reward myself with a Blini (like a crepe or a blintz). This weekend I plan on seeing Carmen in the Mariinsky Theater down the street. It'll be in Italian, probably with Russian subtitles. I will be lucky if I understand any of it. On Sunday I'll be going to the city of Pushkin, or Tsarskoye Selo, the home of Catherine the Great's palace.

Peterhof Pictures

I took a day trip on Saturday to Peterhof, which is the Summer Palace of Peter the Great on the Gulf of Finland. You can click here to see just a few the pictures I took when I was there (trust me I took a lot more, but I'll spare you). I'm gearing up for another week of class after doing some intensive studying this weekend. I'll be blogging about some more substantive issues this week, but I should sleep a bit.