I understand that Thursday night’s Purim celebration at Odessa’s Migdal JCC was particularly meaningful to our students. Between the puppet theatre, singing and dancing, and the attention to detail in the hand-made decorations, people were blown away by the mind, heart, and soul that went into the celebration.

On Friday morning, our students had a tour of the new Jewish campus (some would say akin to the Owings Mills JCC) being built in the center of the city. There will be a health center, community center for Hesed and Hillel, and there continue to be negotiations in the community at who gets what space. Students noticed the work of a Baltimore painter hanging there as well.

The group visited Odessa Hesed and played piano, sang and danced with the clients there. They talked about Purim and Shabbat as well. Friday’s Purim celebration was at the circus which was an amalgam of local performers with classic circus acts. Friday afternoon, the group went to visit Warm Houses, a program in which one person opens his or her home to a group for a social event in the Jewish community. They visited an older house on French Boulevard, a well-known part of town on the Black Sea. The owner volunteered to open the house weekly before Shabbat for people in the community. About twenty people gather there every Friday before Shabbat to spent time together, eat together, and sing together. Our students were struck by the variety of backgrounds of people there—tour guides, filmmakers, and doctors among them. The visitors to the Warm House were particularly impressed when David recited some Pushkin by heart for the group.

After returning to the hotel to freshen up, the group went to Café Hillel where they met a smaller group of students from Odessa, got to know each other, and then welcomed Shabbat together. Our students gave a beautiful Chanukah menorah and some other gifts to the students of Odessa Hillel from our lay leadership here in Baltimore. Baltimore students and Odessa students welcomed Shabbat together. Two of our students spoke about the weekly Torah portion for the group.

Students returned to the hotel and hung out with new and old friends alike.

Our students have been getting to know about six students from Odessa Hillel particularly well as they have been spending the whole weekend with our students, so most everything you’re reading here includes both the students from Baltimore as well as their peers in Odessa.

On Shabbat morning three students went to services at a local synagogue while the rest of the group walked around the center of Odessa. They were struck at the contrast between some of the impoverished people they had met the day before and the high prices of clothing and other goods they saw in local stores and malls.

Everyone met back at the Lithuanian synagogue for lunch, at which about 300 people were present, mostly teenagers and many Israelis. They ate a delicious homemade lunch before walking around the city a little more. After resting, they returned to Odessa Hillel where they had a Havdalah ceremony (separating Shabbat from the rest of the week), hang out at the Israeli cultural center, watched a movie, went out for dinner, and headed out to a local disco and danced for a couple of hours before heading back to the hotel.

Somehow after all of that our students managed to wake up before 9 AM this morning, visited and helped clean up the Holocaust memorial, and had a relaxing pizza lunch. This afternoon their plan is to walk around Odessa, do some souvenir shopping, and then head to the Opera to see Verdi’s Rigoletto this evening before they head to a big Purim party at a local nightclub.
Go To Top