When Schlemiel Went to Moscow

When I was in the fifth grade, I remember reading an Isaac Bashevis Singer story called "When Schlemiel Went to Warsaw." The story was about a simpleton named Schlemiel who, dissatisfied with his life in the tiny shtetl of Chelm, decided to set off for Warsaw. After he had walked a full day, he became tired and lay down to sleep by the side of the road. To remember which way to walk in the morning, he placed his boots with the toes pointed toward Warsaw.

Schlemiel's arrival in Warsaw was not to be, however, for as soon as Schlemiel fell asleep, a mischievous peasant who has seen him put his boots toward Warsaw turned them around. When Schlemiel awoke in the morning, he began waling, and soon found himself back in Chelm.

At first, Schlemiel was befuddled. But then he remembered something he had heard the wise men of Chelm say: the earth is the same everywhere. From this, Schlemiel concluded that he had return not to Chelm at all but rather arrived in another village exactly like the one he had left.

I thought of poor Schlemiel this Friday evening as I made my way from Chabad-Lubavitch of Central Moscow. On coming to Moscow, I had expected to find a Jewish community still in the throes of Soviet repression. What I found instead matched descriptions I have heard of Chabad houses in Manhattan. Although my guidebook described the building as having been built in 1926--the only synagogue constructed in Moscow during the whole of the Soviet era, it said--what I found instead was a far newer building that could just as easily have been the Hillel on an American college campus, right down to the tacky donor plaques bearing the name of wealthy American Jewish businessmen. The service followed a format we liberal Jews refer to as "Ortho-mumble"--prayer approaching the speed of light, difficult for outsiders to follow.

When I entered the building, I had initially been unsure whether I was in the right place, as I did not know if I had been right in interpreting "Evreuski" on the building's exterior as "Jewish". I made an inquiry in halting Russian and was told to speak into a cell phone to someone who spoke English. This turned out to be the Chabad rabbi, who told me I was indeed in the right place and invited me to stay for Shabbat dinner.

Shabbat dinner at Chabad Moscow was about what one might expect at any Chabad house, with only a few minor diffrences from Shabbat dinners I have experienced Stateside. A first course of zakusi (appetizers) was served, though these naturally differed from standard Russian zakusi, which are usually pork-based. I availed myself of some Israeli salad and smoke salmon, piling the latter on top of my challah. Smoked salmon--I can't quite call it lox--is popular with Jewish and non-Jewish Russians alike, but Russian Jews seem not to know they're supposed to enjoy it with round bread products and cream cheese. Ah well--not all remains the same when one ventures outside of Chelm.

The main course consisted of something the Chabadniks called schnitzel, though it resembled in no way the schnitzel I remembered from Shabbat meals in Columbia/Barnard Hillel. It was neither breaded nor fried. Some day I would like someone to point out chapter and verse of the Talmud requiring Shabbat dinner to be chicken, but I doubt that day will be soon.

Overall, the experience of being at Chabad was both comforting and disappointing. It was comforting because it was good to find solid proof that, the whole world over, kiddush (the traditional Jewish blessing over wine before the Shabbat meal) is kuddish, ha motzi (the blessing over bread) is still ha motzi, and the Grace After Meals is still the Grace After Meals. But it was disappointing in the sense that I got no real sense of being in a specifically Russian Jewish community. I witnessed no particular local minhagim (customs) on which I can report.

It is not only the Jewish community in Moscow that makes me wonder if Schlemiel didn't have it right--if the earth is indeed the same everywhere. These days, Coke and Pepsi are far easier to find in Moscow than Communist propaganda. When I left New York eight months ago, banks were creeping into every available crevice along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue; now, having seen Citibank signs in Taiwan and Hong Kong, I find Citibank signs in Cyrillic all over what somtimes feels like the Far Upper East Side.

Twenty years ago, it was world news when a McDonald's opened up on Pushkinskaya Ploshad--a clear harbinger of a coming world in which Russians too would be free to scarf down Big Macs and chocolate shakes. But I find neither promise nor excitement when I walk into a Moscow McDonald's today. The one Mickey D's in Pushkinskaya Ploshad has multiplied into branches all over the city. The counter people may speak Russian, but the menu is unmistakably American, its items barely translated. There are perfectly good Russian words for "chicken nuggets" and "Big and Tasty," but at McDonald's, Cyrillic transliterations are used in preference to them. Russians may still be wild about having an "American" experience when they go to McDonald's, but to a real American, seeing the Golden Arches spread across a land famous for borsch and pelmeni makes you wonder why you bothered crossing the Baltic.

Here in this second Chelm, I find myself oddly nostalgic for the first one I left eight months ago. Don't get me wrong--Moscow is everything I thought it would be, and more--but I know I'll want to find my way home soon. I have been looking at graduate programs all over the United States, but I find myself most attracted to ones that will bring me back, at least temporarily, to New York.

Close to the end of Isaac Bashevis Singer's story, an exchange occurs between Schlemiel and his wife. Convinced she is not the woman he married but a facsimile in a second Chelm, Schlemiel claims he doesn't have to work and support her. His wife retorts that, in that case, she doesn't have to cook his dinner and darn his socks.

In that respect, at least, I know better than Schlemiel. For all of its Coca-Cola and Citibanks, for all of its ads for Caribbean vacations and Carrie Bradshaw wannabes, Moscow is not New York. But if I am able to return to New York at the end of my contract, I will be more faithful to her.