Her Efforts Bring L.A.’s Russian Jews Into the Fold

With its super-coach cruiser panting at the curb behind them, the group filing into the Wilshire Boulevard Temple on a Sunday morning is standard tourist issue: mostly married couples on the far side of 40, whom time has weathered and widened nearly identically, and women friends in pairs or trios clutching oversized handbags, their hair a range of the softening autumnal hues. There is a lot of denim, there are pastel warmup jackets, there are baseball and golf hats and many pairs of fastidiously white shoes of the sensible variety, all moving in the shuffling cha-cha of a group out to see some sights. The men hang back, the women push forward. They could be from Milwaukee, they could be from Tennessee.

Then the woman who leads them, Hollywood fair and blue-eyed, smartly put together in a gray pants number, stops before a historical display of the temple’s rabbis and begins to speak. Quickly, clearly and in Russian.

She is Alla Feldman, and she is on stop two of a tour of Jewish Los Angeles.

The 40 or so folks listening to her are members of Valley Beth Shalom’s Russian Club. They had asked Feldman, who works for the Jewish Federation’s Bureau of Education, for a tour, and that is what they are going to get. A five-hour tour that begins in the Valley and ends in Beverly Hills, after making stops throughout the city--downtown, Mulholland, the Venice boardwalk.

After Feldman dispenses with the temple’s leaders past and present, she turns on her heel and moves at an alarming clip into the temple. She does not pause beside other exhibits of religious paraphernalia or the city’s Semitic history.

The woman is clearly on a schedule, and as soon as her group has taken seats, she begins again to speak. Her voice rises and falls in the rich throaty sibilance of her language, her hands moving in time as if pulling ideas, information from the air and dispensing it to her followers like bread.

With its dark carved wood and circular fresco--a history of Judaism in dark jeweled tones and gold leaf--this is the house of a contemplative faith, a patient, reasonable faith. A faith that Feldman, as she explains with her vivid hands and voice the story of this fairly luxurious synagogue, seems eager to share.

It is what she does for a living. As coordinator of emigre programs, she has, for seven years, run an essentially one-woman outreach program to Russian Jews recently arrived in this city. Having left the former Soviet Republic 10 years ago, she recognizes the special need faced by those raised in a society in which it was illegal to practice their faith.

“We are not Orthodox or Conservative or Reform [Judaism],� she says. “We are Russian Jews, and that is something completely different.�

Born and raised in what is now Moldova, Feldman immigrated with her husband and two children to Los Angeles 10 years ago. Although her grandparents had continued to observe Jewish holidays, her parents had come of age under Communism. As a consequence, Feldman had virtually no understanding of her Judaism.

“We knew we were different somehow,� she says, “that we were Jewish and some people didn’t like that. But my parents grew up under Stalin so they didn’t know much and even if they had, they wouldn’t talk about it.�

Giving their children a different spiritual life was one of the reasons Feldman and her husband immigrated, which they were able to do only with the aid of the Jewish Federation. And when they arrived in the United States, first in San Diego, soon after in Los Angeles, the Jewish community embraced them. Feldman’s sons, now 19 and 14, received scholarships to the Jewish schools, a caseworker helped the family find a place to live and jobs for Feldman and her husband.

“I had the privilege of knowing a little English,� she says, “and that helped.�

She Worked Early on as a Translator

Trained in construction engineering, Feldman had worked in the Soviet Union as a bureaucrat in the ministry of construction, “a paper pusher,� she says. After a stint at the Western Dyeworks, she began working in the admissions department of Los Angeles ORT Technical Institute, translating for other newcomers. The benefits went way beyond the paycheck.

“We came here to give the children a better future,� she says, her native accent slipping beneath the words, rolling them forward as if on a dark hilly road. “I did not expect to adjust. I did not expect to like it. Is for the children, but soon I have a good job, I have improved English, I am meeting people from all over Russia. It helped me to build up self-esteem. This self-esteem,� she says, laughing, shaking her head, “this we do not have in Russia. The parents are critical, the schools are critical, the husbands never compliment. Here is different.�

She believed she had to give back to the community that had given her so much, so she began working at the Federation’s Bureau of Education. Patch-working grants from the federation and a few outside sources, she runs a plethora of community programs, including groups for singles, women, teens and young families.

She manages to take these groups on weekend retreats, get the kids to day camp and even take a handful of the more affluent to Israel. All on a budget of about $60,000 a year, which includes her salary. On New Year’s Eve, she and her husband were in the mountains near Big Bear running a three-day celebratory retreat for 70 people.

“Sometimes we go to the Jewish day camps, but they are expensive. Russians, we are not spoiled,� she says, laughing, “so I can take them sometimes where is a bit more primitive.�

“No one does what she does,� says Lois Weinsaft, in planning and allocations for Federation. “Give her a stone and she’ll make stone soup.�

Feldman organizes holiday celebrations, disco mixers, lectures with visiting rabbis, even a singles “Jeopardy!�-style game. She writes and produces a community newsletter, in Russian, and works as a cultural gun-for-hire, taking groups like the one from Valley Beth Shalom on tours or putting together workshops and panel discussions.

“She has so much energy, so many great ideas,� says Rada Konvasher, who has participated in Feldman’s programs for five years. “I came with a friend to a lecture she organized, met Alla and just stayed. People love her. They feel this energy, and she is always trying to solve their problems.�

Konvasher hopes to join Feldman on the Israel trip, scheduled for next year.

“I am a single mother, and traveling there alone would be hard,� she says. “And it is so important to go to Israel. Alla makes things possible.�

Offering Link to Spiritual Roots

For many, Feldman is the first bridge to gaining an understanding of their faith, of their spiritual and cultural roots.

“Many people who come, they have never been to temple, they have never celebrated a holiday,� Feldman says. “I remember the first Shabbat I went to. It was on Mother’s Day. It cost $50, and I wasn’t going to go, but my cousin she said, ‘Go, you must go.’ So I went, even though it was $50, and, oh, it was so beautiful.�

For the members of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple tour, the value was not in the introduction to a synagogue but in having it explained to them.

“Most of them, no one has told them why the Torah is kept where is kept, why certain things are the way they are,� Feldman says. “So now I tell them.�

Feldman understands that for most immigrants, the spiritual quest comes after financial security, so much of her work includes helping people find jobs and housing.

“Here, first you must establish your home, your job and family,� she says, “and that takes time. Then, maybe after five years, you can look for spirituality. Of course, when there is a wedding or a holiday, people remember they are Jewish. And here I am.�

She admits that she wishes she were more observant, but, she says, “Life is so busy, you know? I would like to not drive on Sabbath, but . . . .� She shrugs. “I try to keep kosher, but some of the products are so expensive. Is very expensive to be a good Jew,� she says, laughing, “especially with children, the camps, the classes. We do what we can.�

Next on her can-do agenda is the wooing of a Russian-speaking non-Orthodox rabbi to Los Angeles. According to Feldman, there are only three in this country, and she has her eye on one candidate. Three times she has brought him to speak to L.A.’s Russian community, as recently as last month, and, she says, he is very, very interested.

“I am trying to get other people involved. . . . Oh, yes, I have a plan,� she says, glancing almost imperceptibly at her watch, “well, a plan in process. A process of a plan.�