In Search of Happiness and a Sustainable Hillel
Not to be confused with Will Smith’s latest blockbuster The Pursuit of Happyness, the Soviet-Jewish-homeland-chronicling documentary In Search of Happiness differs in subject matter, style, and context from its similarly-titled contemporary analogue. However, it, too, chronicles the journey of a man struggling to survive in a world of unfavorable odds.
Set in Josef Stalin’s Jewish state – the “Jewish Autonomous Region” of Birobidzhan established in 1934 – In Search of Happiness explores Boris Rak’s quest for life’s meaning in the face of his alternative Jewish homeland’s decline.
Regrettably, Boris and his wife, Masha, are the last living descendants of the community’s original settlers. It turns out that Stalin’s plan – moving all the Jews into one corner of Siberia – wasn’t good for the community’s prosperity.
And now the major Jewish communal entity on college campuses, Hillel, is realizing that its own approach to creating defined Jewish spaces in Russia has been similarly ineffective. Hillel held two four-day conferences in Russia to discuss a new strategy for promoting community: “a chain of open-space events,” said newly-appointed Hillel Director for Russia Leia Berlin, declaring that “by next September, we must reshape Hillel from its current closed-club model, where people gather in our premises.”
It’s an interesting contrast: Stalin, not the biggest fan of the Jews, created a closed territory and Judaism didn’t survive there. Hillel, ever working for Jewish growth and renewal, created closed spaces for Jews to gather and is now admitting the approach didn’t work.
Back in Birobidzhan, the elderly Boris reflects upon the disappearance of Jewish religious practices and culture in the erstwhile “alternative Zion.” It’s a warning sign of how bad things can get: His home is decorated with crucifixes, and the couple even keeps a herd of pigs in the backyard. And though he still remembers his Yiddish, he prays to Jesus, because “he was a Jew.” Throughout all of this, the viewer is reminded that Boris and his wife represent the strongest remnants of Birobidzhan’s Jewish community.
To avoid such a grim future for the Jewish community, Hillel is constructing a more-inclusive model that seeks to engender widespread community involvement from both Jews and non-Jews. Hillel thinks it can best promote Jewish growth by not creating groupings that are exclusively Jewish.
In the Ukraine, plans for a public Hillel Cafe are already underway. In Moscow, the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee has awarded Hillel a grant to fund a “Jewish Fashion House” that will foster Russian Jews’ interest in clothing design.
With these seemingly-promising new initiatives, Hillel just may turn things around in the FSU. Of course, they might have reached these conclusions earlier if they had looked to Stalin’s efforts at Jewish community building. The Jewish campus organization was ironically emulating that famous anti-Semite’s model.
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