A strength cultivated from being persecuted

When I was in primary school at my Chabad primary school in the early 2000s, I grew up on a steady diet of stories about brave Chassidim. The Chabad movement began in Russia, in the small town of Lubavitch, and our teachers spoke about Russian Jews with a particular reverence.

The pattern of these stories was familiar. The Russian authorities would crack down on organised Jewish life. Jewish schools would be shut, and synagogues would be raided. Rabbis would disappear and be jailed. And then there would be the Chossid, the observant Jew, who no matter the pressure, refused to stop being a Jew. He would take Jewish life underground and would teach Torah in secret. His wife would light Shabbat candles behind blacked out windows, and his family would keep kosher even when food was scarce and starvation was real.

In some stories, the punishment came quickly. Prison, or exile, or beatings and even sometimes death. In others, the resistance was quieter but no less radical. A mikveh carved into frozen earth in the middle of a Siberian winter. A choice to make decisions, time and time again, that survival without Judaism was not survival at all.

As a child, I listened to these stories but did not fully understand. I am Australian-born. Blessedly, I have never had to fight to practise my religion. I have never feared imprisonment for lighting candles or saying a prayer. Judaism, for me, has always been something I could practise openly. With my background, I did not grasp what it meant to be forced into defiance just to remain who you are.

Russian Jews, by contrast, have lived with this pressure for centuries. Not only under the Tsars, but under Stalin, under communism, under regimes that saw Judaism itself as a threat. For Russian authorities, Jewishness was never seen as neutral. It was something to be erased or controlled. And yet, despite the hardships, Judaism in Russia endured.