Russian Jews Begin Anew in Brea Enclave

By DAVID HALDANE

March 24, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

BREA — Visitors strolling the sidewalks of the Tamarack Woods Apartments are likely to encounter a melange of unusual smells.

There is the spicy aroma of kotlely , a delectable dish made of ground meat. Or the sweet-smelling fragrance of pirozhky , a doughy baked concoction filled with meat, apples, cabbage and potatoes.

“It smells like something I’ve never smelled before,” said Pamela Marrocco, manager of the apartment complex.

Explained Irina Zhmodyak, one of the residents whose kitchen is a regular contributor to the aromatic smorgasbord: “We are not experienced in American foods.”

You’ve heard of Little Saigon, Orange County’s own Vietnamese neighborhood in Westminster. Welcome to “Little Minsk,” the beginnings of a new ethnic community of an entirely different sort.

Social workers say there are about 500 Jewish families living in Orange County who emigrated from what was once known as the Soviet Union. Wishing to escape anti-Semitism, they began trickling in during the late 1970s. Later, in about 1988, the trickle became a stream under the liberal emigration policies of then-Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Today, according to Charlene Edwards, director of special services for the county’s Jewish Family Services, her agency helps resettle 90 to 100 individuals--or about 25 families--throughout the county each year. And with more in the pipeline, she said, Orange County’s small immigrant Russian Jewish community is expected to grow.

“We come because we want our children to have an identity,” said Sofia Zukerman, who came to the United States 12 years ago as one of the earliest members of the current wave of immigrants. “We left because of prejudice.”

Zukerman’s sister, a 1989 arrival, was the first of what is now 10 families that have moved into the Tamarack Woods Apartments. Zukerman helped her sister rent an apartment in the complex, which she considered inexpensive and safe. Next came the brother of Zukerman’s husband, then her own brother. And, repeating immigration patterns that have occurred in the United States for generations, relative followed relative and neighbor followed neighbor until today, according to Edwards, the area’s tiny colony represents the county’s largest concentration of Russian Jews.

“Because there aren’t many of them,” she said, “they have to depend on the local Jewish community for help.”

For the Brea residents, much of that community is centered at Temple Beth Tikvah in Fullerton, whose congregation has taken a special interest in their plight.

“We Jewish people have always been responsible for each other,” explained Rabbi Haim Asa, the temple’s spiritual leader. One motivator, he said, is the lingering guilt many American Jews feel over not having done more for their European counterparts during the Holocaust of World War II.

“A Jew who denies the privilege of helping another Jew in distress,” Asa said, “is really denying the most important precept of our faith and tradition.”

Among other things, he said, temple members donate furniture and clothing for the new arrivals, tutor them in English and offer each arriving family a free temple membership, including classes in religious education. So far, he said, about 30 families have taken them up on the offer. The temple also offers how-to classes on religious observances and is planning a Friday night service in Russian.

But religion is not always uppermost in the minds of these new Americans in the days and months following their arrival. While most identify with being Jewish, Asa said, they have very little knowledge of the faith or experience in its practices. That, he said, is because in the Russia they knew, religious observances were discouraged and Jews were the targets of discrimination.

“They come with a great yearning to learn what it is to be a Jew,” Asa said. “Most of them are blank--we have to start from scratch.”

In the early days of their new lives, that usually means dealing with basic survival. They must find housing. They must learn English. And they must find jobs.

That last task, ironically, is often made more difficult by the Russian Jews’ generally high level of expertise and training. This is especially true in Orange County, Edwards said, which, as a mecca for engineers and other professionals in the mid-1970s, began attracting early immigrants with advanced degrees. Today’s immigrants, she said, are often relatives or associates of earlier arrivals and come from similar backgrounds.

“About 85% of the cases we settle are the most elite educationally, such as engineers, physicians and mathematicians,” said Edwards, whose agency spends about $4,000--most of it raised from the local Jewish community--to resettle each immigrant. Among other things, she said, the agency pays an immigrant family’s rent during its first four months in the country to help its members get started. Yet because of language difficulties and competition, she said, “their job skills are not always (immediately) transferable to the American market. We have physicists working at $5-an-hour entry-level jobs.”

In most cases, that doesn’t last long.

Within two years of arriving, Edwards said, the majority of new immigrants have landed adequate jobs. “I think that the community will benefit from their being here,” she said. “This is a very ambitious, industrious group of people. They work hard and are highly educated. They came here so that their children could be Jewish, but they also came here to succeed.”

That seemed evident during a recent visit to an upstairs unit at Tamarack Woods Apartments, where a group of Russians sat around the kitchen table discussing their aspirations over slices of chocolate cake while their children watched a Bart Simpson cartoon on television.

“This is absolutely a different country and a different culture,” said Zina Tsukerman, who arrived two years ago from Minsk with her husband, Eli, and now works as an accounts receivable clerk. Relatives of Sofia Zukerman, she and her husband have retained the original Russian spelling of their last name. “We feel lonely at first,” Tsukerman said. “We left friends, relatives--a big piece of our lives. We started our lives from zero.”

Some report a lingering paranoia from spending most of their lives in a country unaccepting of their heritage. “I still feel a little nervous about being Jewish,” Zhmodyak, a 68-year-old grandmother, said. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

But last summer her grandchildren attended a Jewish camp, an experience she said was gratifying. And most of the immigrants report that, after some initial adjustments, their children are doing well in school. One reason, according to Edwards, is that because of the superior Russian education system, the immigrant children tend to be more advanced academically than their American counterparts.

“There tends to be a gap between their language skills and their academic skills,” Edwards said. Once that is bridged, she said, the children adjust quickly and usually find acceptance.

The process is more difficult for some of their parents.

“We are too shy because of our limited English,” said Eli Tsukerman, Zina’s husband. “Communication is a problem.”

Added Zhmodyak: “It’s hard to find American friends. Nobody talks to me in our apartment building.”

According to Marrocco, the manager of the complex, some of that is because the Russians tend to keep to themselves. “I don’t think some people even know that we have Russians living here,” she said.

Yet the immigrants can be good neighbors. “They are terrific residents,” Marrocco said of her Russian tenants. “They are wonderful people, very helping. They seem very caring.”

Indeed, the Russians said, for the most part they feel accepted by their new neighbors, despite some aspects of American life that continue to confuse and confound them.

A while back, when the PTA asked Bronya Shub to sell wrapping paper as part of a fund drive, she said, her native discomfort with the free-enterprise system made it impossible for her to respond. And when she first arrived in this country, Shub said, she found clerks and salespeople intimidating.

All that is changing.

“Now if I don’t like something in the store,” Shub proudly reported, “I go straight to the manager.”

And free enterprise? One of the hottest topics of conversation among the immigrants these days is the price of California real estate.

“We are changing our lives completely,” explained Zina Tsukerman who, like many other Southern Californians, is scrimping and saving to buy her first home. “We are starting over from scratch.”

Asked about the future, she answered with barely a pause. “We will work very hard,” Tsukerman said. “Like all Americans, we want to be millionaires.”