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In just over a month I will be celebrating 14 years since my rabbinic ordination. It has been an incredible experience, and I am grateful every day for the opportunity to do what I love – to spend my days taking care of the Jewish people and my beloved community, Temple Emanuel. Early in my career I have moved around the world, and so it is only now that I am approaching my first sabbatical – an opportunity to step back from my daily routine, to study and to learn from others, to find new ways to enrich my rabbinate. It is perhaps symbolic that the first act of my sabbatical (to be taken over the course of the next three years) was to attend the biennial conference of the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ).  I feel in many ways that I am a poster child for the World Union – it had inspired me to become a Jewish leader when I was a teen, offered me an invaluable Jewish education at Machon (Moscow institute of Jewish studies) where I met my wife Olga, a fellow student who has become my life-long partner in life and work. I was honored to return to the FSU as a rabbi and to continue to serve my movement as best as I could. The WUPJ has seen me grow from a teen with leadership potential into a Jewish professional, and so it was really exciting for me to attend the Connections 2015 in Rio as part of my sabbatical!

Hundreds of people from all over the world, multiple languages spoken. Rabbis, cantors, youth leaders, lay leaders, fellow travelers. People who have supported the WUPJ for years – indeed decades – and brand new faces. Dozens and dozens of attendees from Latin America – Brazil, Argentina, Chile – hosting the WUPJ conference in their part of the world for the very first time. Shabbat services hosted by the ARI synagogue in Rio, a 900-family strong community which so lovingly welcomed us all into their synagogue and their homes for shabbat meals afterwards. A chance to learn about the realities faced by reform and progressive communities all around the globe, a chance to see old friends (including Rabbi Elena Rubinstein from St. Petersburg) and to make new ones. To learn and to teach, to pray together and to laugh. To take in the Copacabana sun and to learn to say ‘obrigato’ to the friendly waiters and taxi drivers. A chance to celebrate this worldwide Jewish community, to thank the outgoing Chair Mike Grabiner (London) for his work, to install the new Chair of WUPJ Carole Sterling (Toronto), to sing and to dance. To be together. It doesn’t happen all that often – but when it does, it is an honor and a privilege to be part of this wonderful gathering.

I am very grateful to my TE community for giving me this opportunity to begin this process of renewal by reconnecting with my roots. As my sabbatical plans continue to take shape, I am excited to know that we are off to a good start!

This year marks the 70^th anniversary of the end of the WWII. This symbolic date is marked on different days in different parts of the world. It is a date that is recorded differently in the psyche of the nations that see themselves as participants of that massive conflict. Most likely there will be little to mark this occasion in the American and British media this spring. In Britain, it is Remembrance Day (11/11) that is widely used to commemorate the lives lost in the sacrifices of that generation. In United States, you may hear a reference to WWII around Memorial Day. The Nazi Germany capitulated on April 30, 1945, and in many history books this day marks the end of the war with Germany. Of course, the conflict continued in the Pacific until the fall of 1945, but for most Europeans, this was the end of the war.

The former Soviet Union marks the victory day on May 9^th, the day when the first victory parade was held in Moscow in Red Square in 1945. Every year as a child when I would watch the veterans walk down the central street of my city, I would greet them with flowers and listen to their stories. I would think what it would be like to have my grandfathers in my life, sharing stories about the war on that day…

I never met either of my grandfathers, Shmuil Farbman and Yakov Chernov. In fact, my parents don’t really remember their fathers either – they were one and two years old when their fathers kissed their families goodbye, put them on trains headed east and marched into the conscription office to volunteer to go to the front… Neither one came back alive, and we do not even know where they were buried – or if they were buried at all…  In those days, “lost in action” (the military term in Russian is actually “lost without a trace”) was all too common, especially in the first days and months of the war, which claimed millions of lives of Soviet soldiers and civilians – close to 40 million total losses estimated. My uncle turned 18 during the war and was drafted, never to return home. He, too, was lost without a trace: no date of death, no grave to visit, no stone to erect.

May 9^th was always about three things for me: the parade of the veterans in my town, the big military parade in Red Square (that I would watch on TV sometimes) and the quiet family gatherings, somber in spirit. The sadness of that day belonged to everyone – the many songs that were written and performed on that day spoke about ‘happiness with tears of sadness in your eyes.’ This was the only day when we could mourn and remember my grandfathers.

When I moved to England to attend rabbinical school, there weren’t any commemorations on May 9^th, and the military parades in Red Square looked so strange and out of place from a distance… As a young man, I didn’t pay too much attention to this. In fact, I developed a healthy, skeptical view of the way Russians marked that victory. When the iron curtain fell it became painfully obvious that the victors were in much worse shape than the country they defeated, and so I began to question the entire idea of the annual celebration, as did many others. When we returned to Russia in 2004 I was dismayed to find the country spending millions on military parades while often failing to provide the basic needs for the very few remaining veterans of that war… I was angry at the system, but I would also get caught up in the spirit of the day and think of the war and my grandfathers and my uncle Moses, whose name I carry as my Hebrew name (Moshe).

For the last seven years I have largely ignored the day here in America. I would call my parents, mostly because I knew they needed to receive that call from me. This year, on the 70th anniversary of that first parade, things will be different. I will take my parents to a special concert in New York on May 8^th, and I will talk about the day and what it means that evening at Shabbat services. I will talk to the veterans I know, who somehow survived that devastating war. I will remember my grandfathers and my uncle, people I have never met but whose DNA I carry. I will ignore the parade on the Red Square and all the political madness that surrounds it. I will work hard not to allow the Russian propaganda machine upset me. I will reclaim the part of that day I remember from childhood – honor for the living and memory of the fallen… This year, I will mark the 70^th anniversary of this victory in the most personal way I know: by lighting a yizkor candle and by telling my children why the sacrifices of my grandfathers mattered. May their memory endure for a blessing…