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Upstairs, the landing emptied into a hall where another group huddled, men only, in windbreakers and work clothes. Rabbi Pil? One gestured toward the door of the men's room. Shortly thereafter Pil emerged from it at high speed. Of medium build and height, he was dressed in the full Hasidic tzitzis: frock coat, dark suit pants, side curls, dark, wide-brimmed felt hat. His pale skin and slightly watery, bespectacled eyes added to the scholarly, Old World effect. His elders in the hall shuffled out of his path as he hurried to his office with scarcely a greeting. (He eluded a proffered hand without explaining the Hasidic proscription against physical contact between men and women who are unrelated by blood or marriage.)
His office was chilly and small, the furniture cheap and functional: The yellow paint on the walls smelled fresh, and the blue carpeting seemed new. (The Jewish Educational Center had moved in just a few months earlier.) All pretty bare bones, but every work spot had a PC, and the phones looked up-to-date.
And the force impelling these plain offices?
Back when Pil and Mattie arrived in S.F., they had been shocked by the disparity between the bustling Russian neighborhoods of Crown Heights and what they found in the Richmond, he explained. They couldn't even secure a reliable supply of kosher food. The scarcity wasn't just material. "In the whole of Northern California," Pil said, "there were a couple thousand Russian Jews -- and no rabbis speaking the Russian language." Pil added that existing synagogues' tradition of informally tithing members meant that many could not afford to join. "If you don't pay, they treat you as a second-class citizen. These are intelligent people, so they don't like to go."
Even more of an obstacle, though, was history. "For three generations," said Pil, "[the Soviet authorities] have a war against religion, and they're very successful." Only the "crazy" or "very old" believed in God, he explained. "A normal person cannot." He said he now strives to convince his fellow emigres that "to be a religious Jew is to actually enjoy your life and the beauty of religious people and Judaism. It is a very knowledgeable, very educated thing."
The Bay Area desert wasn't quite as empty as Pil would have you believe, however. Langer had formed the city's first chabad in 1980, after several years studying under another rabbi. He has worked with the Lubavitcher hierarchy to encourage chabads in Marin, as well. A chabad is also in Sacramento. But Pil has a valid point in asserting that more could have been done for the Russian emigre community. Even Langer, who sponsors open-house Shabbat celebrations every week at his home in the Richmond, doesn't speak Russian.
And the resistance to Pil was hardly neutral. Some observers, speaking anonymously, acknowledged that native Jews were initially reluctant to embrace their Soviet brethren as "talking funny," in the words of one, and being too different. And the numbers were daunting: More than 2,000 emigres every year in a Jewish community that at the start of the influx numbered roughly 50,000.
That said, by 1983, when Pil arrived, the formal resettlement programs had been under way for five years. Communication between native and nonnative Jews had improved. Today, those same observers say the initial hesitation has vanished. But Pil insists he still sees plenty of anti-Russian bias every day.
"Take any agency getting any money from the [Jewish Community] Federation. If they have Russian Jews, they don't get money. We apply to them so many times. They find different excuses, but they don't give one penny. The Federation supports other camps and schools, but not ours, even though we have more kids. And a lot of times they say to Russian kids, 'If you go to other camps, we give you scholarships.'
"In all cities, they have synagogues for Russian Jews -- New York, Chicago, but none here. Now we have one. It opened two months ago. Logically, the Federation is fund-raising for Russian Jews to help them out; why don't they give a penny?"
The Federation declined to say whether Pil had applied for any grants, though a spokesperson acknowledged that it does not currently support any of his programs. The JCF routinely does not comment on applicants, potential or actual. It also refused to respond to Pil's assertions.
But others say Pil's rejection was due more to the seeming oddities of his business practices than any direct prejudice. And, indeed, contrary to his assertion, Russian emigres and students are being funded through numerous other programs under JCF auspices. Pil also concedes that he could be a victim of his own fund-raising success, with potential contributors assuming he needs no help.
Pil finally did acknowledge that established Jewish charities support emigre programs. But then he shifted his complaint. They're too secular, he said. "They don't do anything to bring them closer to Judaism. They do have some parties, but in their newspaper, they don't write about religion."
Pil spelled out the ultimate reason why he's being snubbed. "Because here is such a large amount of Russian Jews, 25,000 people, but they don't have a leader. Now what's happening? We became leaders. Soon they're going to be a political movement. What some in the Federation wouldn't like it should be. They wouldn't like to see us be a political movement."
Even for as zealous a soul as Pil, however, shaping the Soviet emigres into a coherent political force will be a tough challenge, according to some who have already tried. "They are used to Russian survival tactics. They don't trust anyone. They cheat each other," explained Stan Levchenko, a Russian-born journalist who has lived in the United States for 20 years and is the national correspondent for Panorama, the largest independent Russian-language weekly in the U.S.
