JRCA celebrates Purim and looks forward to May get-together

from Federation Star - May 2025

Updates from Naples and Fort Myers BBYO

By Marina Berkovich

Jewish Russian Cultural Alliance (JRCA) celebrated Purim on March 16 at Jewish Federation of Greater Naples with a community kosher-style lunch. The event was filled with food, drink and merriment as about 50 of us gathered, bringing homemade food, challahs and hamantaschen to enjoy. Our kosher-style meals and warmth have brought over 350 Russian speaking Jewish community members to our tables in the past few years and JRCA members look forward to attending our gatherings, welcoming new arrivals, rehashing old friendships and cherishing our traditions together.

Over the 10 years that has elapsed since the creation of our very unique group, we have met many incredible individuals and their families who remain bound by the ex-U.S.S.R. unity as well as what we refer to as baggage or grief. We may visibly or unnoticeably differ from our American-born Jewish neighbors, not always strictly because we speak with their grandparents’ accents, but we are always happy to celebrate our Jewish unity and Purim is always one of our best attended events.

Marina Berkovich, Alexander Goldstein and Nataly Goldshteyn

Because of our inseparable “baggage,” we combine Purim celebrations with the 8th of March, aka International Women’s Day, our formerly most favorite spring holiday. In addition to masks, crowns and drinking, every female attendee received long-stem roses. Although March 8 started in the U.S.S.R. as a Socialist holiday, it was and frequently still is, the only interlude of gratitude that most women get for providing a caring home whilst occupying full-time jobs, raising kids and carrying a load of other obligations. In short, women are the real queens of that day!

Next gathering

We will meet next to celebrate Victory in Europe/Israel Independence Day. Everyone in our group had family in the battlefields, ghettos or deportation/ extermination camps during WWII or in evacuation into the depth of Urals, Uzbekistan or other remote U.S.S.R. locations. Residents set aside some of their traditional prejudices to house Jewish evacuees and we are forever grateful to those who sacrificed their meager wartime resources to save our families.

We all grew up on WWII films. Our childhoods did not shelter us from gruesome memories or facts; rather, we were thrown into them, leaving an imprint that we carry forward to our children and share with whomever wants to learn.

Victory in Europe/Israel Independence Day is our most important annual commemoration. Had it not been for Israel, and more specifically, its lack of diplomatic relations with the late Brezhnev-era U.S.S.R., you would not be reading this column as I would not be writing it. My JRCA clan and I give daily gratitude for the end of the Soviet Union and its socialist tyranny — and what better day to celebrate than Israel’s Independence Day? Israel was our best chance to end our personal oppression back then and remains an everlasting symbol of hope for Jewish people everywhere.

VE Day is May 8, 1945 for Europe, May 9, 1945 for the U.S.S.R.. Yom Ha'atzmaut is Israel's national day to commemorate the Israeli Declaration of Independence of May 14, 1948.

We will celebrate both with a May 11 kosher-style community lunch. Word of caution – we revert to speaking Russian in this group, even if the predominant majority have spoken English for decades.

To sign up or receive additional information, please email JRCA@jewish naples.org. RSVP is requested by May 7. No acknowledgements will be emailed until then. Please note that by joining us you consent to being photographed and photos may be used for social media posts and local Jewish Federations press.