Almost Evicted During Yomtov

The following was related to COLlive by Dovid Katz and JJ Hecht who spent this past Pesach on Merkos Shlichus in the city of Dimitrovgrad, located on the Bolshoy Cheremshan River in the southeastern part of Russia:

Early morning on the second day of Pesach, we heard a knock on the door of the small apartment the local Jewish community had rented for us on the 5th floor in a crammed building.

When we first entered the apartment, there were no beds or windows. The caretaker calmed us and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll build you beds and windows.” The bedroom turned out to be our operation base for organizing the Pesach activities.

Standing at the door was the landlord herself, notifying us about something that seemed important. Only, that she was saying it in heavy Russian and we didn’t understood a word.

The night before, when we held a public seder for 50 people and our translator didn’t show up, we got away with it by using the little communicated words in Russian and Yiddish that we knew. And it turned out well – with the help of singing popular Jewish songs which everyone knew.

In fact, the seder turned out to be so inspiring that one man came over and said he decided to “keep a 100% kosher Pesach.” He asked if he can stay with us, and we agreed. We spoke about the hagaddah, Jewish customs and sang some more (which didn’t sit well with all the neighbors…)

So we woke him and asked him to translate what the landlord wants from us.

What she was saying was that the 2 day rental has ended and that we need to clear out right away. Oh, and the “marshutka” is waiting for us downstairs to take us back to Ulyanovsk. (Marshutka is a often dilapidated minivan used as public or private transportation).

With help of our friend that stayed with us, we explained that we couldn’t leave because it was still a holiday. The earliest we can leave would be at around 8 PM. After a back a forth with the translator, she left. He told us she compromised on 6 PM and not a minute later and that the driver of the marshutka will be back then as well.

We went about our day davening, eating, learning and doing mivtzoim. As we finished our yomtov meal we got another knock on the door.

This time there were 2 elderly women standing there. They were sent by the landlord to clean up the apartment, help us out and take our keys. They didn’t really wait for us to invite them in and just barged in and started moving things. They wouldn’t hear of the 8 PM idea.

To calm the atmosphere, and with no other options available, we just sat down and started singing some Yiddish and Russian Jewish songs.

And then, out of the blue, we hear one of the ladies singing along with us! Totally surprised, we asked if she was Jewish.

She explained that she doesn’t have documents so she doesn’t know if she is a Jew, but she remembered some of these songs from her youth. She sat down with us and we spoke and sang some more until yomtov was over.

Only then did they evict us, but that didn’t occupy our concern anymore. We merited to light the spark in another Jewish soul and what can be greater than that…