Soviet Unions

“But your past boyfriends weren’t Jewish,” I said.

“But they should be,” she said. “My father is the most remarkable, generous man, and that is because he is Jew.” She smiled at a Spanish painter whose exhibit was on display at the Loft. He approached, air-kissed, and they exchanged pleasantries in Russian, but she shook her head as soon as his back was turned.

“Such an arrogant, annoying man,” she said. I dug into my carrot cake, but then couldn’t resist asking: “Not a Jew?”

Dasha’s St. Petersburg is far removed from pogroms, her Judaism has nothing to do with shtetls, matzoh balls, and potato blintzes. She avoids potatoes to maintain her figure. Yom Tov and Shabbat, she says, don’t figure into her identity. She insists it’s all about the men.

But it’s clear to me that that’s just a line. Her enthusiasm for Jewish men is about something far more sweeping: newly acquired excitement at the concept of a religious identity. After 70 years of repression by the Soviet Union and hundreds of years of anti-Semitism, to be able to freely express Jewishness is exciting and intriguing.

***

Judaism is experiencing an active revival across St. Petersburg. There is a Reform synagogue, built in 2007, and the Grand Choral Synagogue, built in 1893, is now run by an American-born Chabad rabbi. There is a Jewish Community Center and a Jewish senior citizen center. There are organizations dedicated to educating Jewish youth. There is a St. Petersburg Hillel, which hosts weekly Shabbat dinners. Many of these organizations receive funding from American Jewish organizations and philanthropists.

After Saturday dinner at a weekend retreat this fall for young Jews at a St. Petersburg hotel, a young woman approached me. “Tonight,” she informed me, “we are all going to leave and go to a Jewish Halloween party. We’ll stay at the club all night and come back here in the morning.” We got into her car and cranked up “I Love You Like a Love Song” as we sped through the winding avenues of St. Petersburg.

The club was subterranean and the waitresses there were dressed up as cats, vampires, and butterflies, serving Bloody Marys. Fake cobwebs dangled from the archways. A woman dressed in a skintight silver jumpsuit belly-danced in the middle of the floor, while men dressed as robots performed a light show behind her.

The theme was Halloween. This I could tell. I wasn’t sure where the Jewish aspect came in until the round of introductions began.

“Naomi is the daughter of a rabbi!” a friend screamed over the pounding music, referring to me.

“I didn’t know a rabbi’s daughter could dance!” said a Georgian boy I’d just met.

“I just started taking classes with a rabbi!” a girl with a cat mask chimed in.

“Welcome to Jewish Peter!” her boyfriend said.

We l’chaimed to shots of vodka with cherry juice.

The place was packed. A rhythm developed immediately: dance until covered in sweat, dash outside to the freezing temperatures, smoke a cigarette, and dash back in. I was told repeatedly that everyone young and everyone Jewish in St. Petersburg was there.

“WHO ORGANIZED THIS PARTY?” I yelled, over techno music.

“Kreme! This is a Kreme party!” said someone in a mask.

“WHAT’S KREME?”

“They throw four parties a year! Best parties!”

I coated my throat with vodka and spiced honey. I turned back to my dance partners. “WHO IS THE HEAD OF KREME?”

I vaguely heard Sasha, a nickname for Alexander.

Alexander and I met for lunch at Golden Café, one of three kosher restaurants in St. Petersburg. The walls were made of white brick, and the food was classic Russian fare: borscht, spicy Georgian chicken, shredded cabbage and carrot salad, and endless cups of black tea. The only notable Jewish features were photographs on the wall that resembled the ones in my home and the three visibly Orthodox businessmen eating lunch at the table next to ours.

Alexander—who, like many Russians I interviewed, declined to give his last name—discussed house music and mash-ups and explained his fascination with the obscure Gabrielite sect of Judaism. Then Alexander told me about his method for planning Kreme parties, something he began doing, along with two girls, five years ago. They are never on Shabbat or Yom Tov. “Not too many big, popular places give us Saturday night,” he said.

Alexander started Kreme, he said, because he asked himself, “What’s the best party I go to? A party where I walk into a bar and know everybody.” One goal is to “show Jewish youth a lot of different clubbing in the city.” Kreme rarely repeats locations. Parties are typically thrown on holidays like Hanukkah and Purim, but not on Passover because you can’t drink beer.

I mentioned Tel Aviv’s great nightlife, assuming he’d agree, but Alexander shook his head. “My girlfriend and I couldn’t find one kosher restaurant in Tel Aviv,” he said.

***

On another day, at Terminal Bar, located on the stylish Ulitsa Rubinsteina, a street filled with jazz bars, Thai food, and English pubs, I ordered a Prosecco and watched the bearded Russian next to me read the newspaper and drink Hennessy on the rocks while he chain smoked.

I was there to interview Sid, one of the three Jewish men who opened Terminal in 2010, now hugely popular. Sid emerged from the back, wild-haired and wild-eyed. I asked him how he was doing. “I haven’t seen myself for a few days,” he said. “But my friends say I’m doing good.”

He poured himself a glass of Bushmill and lit a cigarette. “This is a bar for your grand-daddy,” he said in English. “A bar where he shouts at the bartender.” Sid affected a cranky old man voice. “ ‘What? Red wine, white, what’s the difference?’ This is the kind of bar for someone who gets up and says, ‘Should I kill myself today or should I drink? Well, I should probably have a drink.’ ” Sid told me that he had nothing against young people, but frankly, “I don’t need no puke in my corner, no drugs in my toilet, and I’d prefer no screwing on my piano.”

I approached the Jewish questions delicately. “So, the three of you are all Jewish, yes?”

“All Jews,” he answered. “My grandmom was Jewish, my mom was Jewish. We don’t serve kosher food or kosher drinks, but we’ll never make it secret.”

Then Sid added, “Actually, for a while I wanted to put the Star of David on the entrance sign of our bar. When I asked a rabbi about it, he said, ‘Sid, don’t worry, they’ll put it there for you.’”

***

Several nights later, I find myself at the Grand Choral Synagogue—enormous and pink—with dozens of other young Jews. The dinner, hosted by Chabad, is interrupted every few minutes with toasts.

“Have another shot!” my tablemates encourage. This is the closest I’ve come in St. Petersburg an American college fraternity.

The toasts are cheerful and unruly. “To the unity of Jews in Sukkot all around the world!” “To the Jews who are not able to celebrate!” “To the iPhone 4S! S-stands for Sukkot!” “To kasha, which doesn’t make you fat!” “To my shlamaziel of a son-in-law, who doesn’t deserve my daughter but produces such beautiful grandchildren!”

“To this beautiful night!” is the next toast.

Naomi Telushkin is a writer currently living in St. Petersburg, Russia and Kyiv, Ukraine.