Odessa - Day 1

It is hard to believe we have only been gone for 28 hours! In 1996 I was privileged to travel to Odessa and Kishinev. I have been looking forward to this return visit to see how things have change in 16 years. In 1996 Jewish life was just starting to rebloom in Odessa. At that time it was hard to imagine that some of our greatest Jewish thought leaders, poets and Zionist visionaries hailed from Odessa. I remembered an Odessa in various shades of grey (not the book)and a lot of what I called industrial Soviet blue. Clearly the Soviet Union had one paint production facility and they created grey and blue paint. The Odessa that we saw today looks like and feels like a different place than it was just 16 years ago. While there are many remnants of Soviet infrastructure, a rejuvenated Odessa has reemrged hearkening back to its former glory. Odessa was a city of not only liberalism, but Jewish renaissance throughout the 1800 and early 1900's. The famous Ze'ev Jabotinsky was born here www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/jabotinsky.html (link for into. on Jabotinsky). Great writers and poets like Sholom Aleichem, Ahad Ha'am and Nachman Bialik all lived at times in Odessa. Upon arriving today we had a brief meeting with our other mission participants and then we headed out for an historical tour of Odessa. After our tour we visited sites of the rich Jewish history in Odessa. From there we had dinner with Jewish residents of Ukraine. I wanted to post pictures to go along with this post but I am having some technical complications with uploading pictures to the blog. It could be the website or it could be that I have barely slept in the last 28 hours. I will share a quick story and upload the photo(s) to Facebook. Just go to Jewish Western Mass on facebook to see them. We had dinner with Oksana. She did not know she was Jewish but Hillel at her college in Ukraine piqued her interest. She knew nothing of Judaism but she connected and began to delve into her roots. Her father's family had been Jewish but their faith was lost under the Soviet regime. Our work in Ukraine funded the Hillel where she connected with other Jewish students, eventually met her husband and reconnected her to our rich past. Today she is a leader in the Jewish community and she thanked us profusely for giving her the opportunity to find herself. She and her husband have one son who attended a Jewish pre-school in her Ukranian JCC. Without us, Oksana never would have known who she was or where she came from. We had a wonderful time with her and it was an honor to hear her story.