On my first day in Sofia, Bulgaria, I met several of the leaders of the local Jewish community. I couldn’t help noticing that they all seemed to be very young - the educational director, the JDC director, and even the president of the Jewish community. Just one generation ago, Jewish life, and any kind of religious life, in Bulgaria and throughout much of Europe and the former Soviet Union had been nearly silenced by decades of Communism and the preceding war years. A true Jewish renewal has been taking place since than, and naturally this generation that grew up into this new era has taken the lead. 

 

I only started to understand the implications it might hold on a Jewish family when I started meeting people and learning about their own personal story. Hearing Julia’s story, the JDC director in Bulgaria, left a huge impression on me. She told me about her childhood, growing up under a communist regime, and what changes it brought with it. “When I was 13, I didn't know what a mezuza means. When my son turned 13, he celebrated a Bar Mitzvah in the Synagogue. This emphasises the change that occurred” (read Julia’s full story here). Because people didn’t use to practice Judaism at home, they often didn’t know they were Jewish, or what does it mean. They didn’t celebrate the Jewish holidays and Shabbat. How Ina encouraged her father to light the Hanukah candles, just this year, demonstrates it in the best possible way (for Ina's story see here). 

 

Once the communist regime was over, it allowed space to community organisations to take place, and JDC started acting as a catalyst for community building and Jewish renewal in Bulgaria. Today, the Jewish community centre “Shalom” stand in the centre of Jewish life. It offers activities for children, youth, adults and elderly. Different programs and events take place every week for young families, Bar and Bat Mitzvah course, and Jewish summer camps in Bulgaria and in Szarvas. New madrichim are trained in the Hadracha college, and Limmud festival is happening every year. In addition, the Moishe House in Sofia plays an important role for young adults who would like to have a space where they can hang out with people like them, celebrate Shabbat and other Jewish holidays together.

 

After generations in which assimilation, intermarriage and concealing any shred of Jewish identity were the reality, the new generation in Bulgaria had to re-found their Jewish roots. Naturally, they are Jewish either from their mother’s or father’s side. While the Jewish community recognise them as Jewish (according to Israel’s Law of Return), the rabbi a lot of the times doesn’t. According to Jewish law, or halakha, in order to be Jewish one must have either been born to a Jewish mother or to have converted to Judaism. The fact that many of the people are Jewish only from their father’s side, brings a lot of difficulty. In the last 20 years the community didn’t have a rabbi that was living among them for more than 1-2 years. They used to have a rabbi for 16 years that lived in Israel and only came to Sofia 2-3 times a year. In the last 5 years they had four different rabbis. All of them were young and foreigners to Bulgaria. The experience people had in this matter wasn't simple. One of the members of the community told me that several times the rabbi asked him for things he needed a “goy” for, because he “isn’t Jewish” (he isn’t halachically Jewish), and than after invited him to a community event. Another member told me that because she isn't halachically Jewish she started a Giyur process three times, every time the process stopped because the rabbi left.  

 

The Eastern European story creates a huge challenge of how you define who is a Jew and is the community capable of accepting them. When you discover you’re Jewish and you have come to terms with your identity only to find yourself talking to a rabbi who says that you’re not Jewish for him and have to convert, then it’s an act of inauthenticity. The way you judge Judaism and Jewish life in Bulgaria, and the rest of Eastern Europe, must be very different from the way you do in the rest of the Jewish world. These stories must be told, to empower Jews from all over Europe not to be discouraged, and to try and find our own meaning of what does it mean to be Jewish in Europe today.