Why They Left Pasadena

by Baila Olidort, lubavitch.com

The young couple’s decision to give up their car, their home, and the comforts of an all-American life, had nothing at all to do with the economy.

In December 2008, Chaim and Kaila Danzinger packed up their belongings, traded in their children’s beach toys for down coats with extra loft, and bade farewell to a community they have come to love in sunny Pasadena, California, for one they felt needed them even more, in frigid Rostov-on-Don, Russia.

“Assimilation here is at around 95 percent,” says Rabbi Danzinger, trying to explain what motivated him and his wife to make the move.

“So you have a narrow window of opportunity to reach Jews—basically between the ages 20-24, before the risk of losing them becomes even greater.”

Danzinger, 28, spent several years as a rabbinical student in Ukraine and Russia. After he married Kaila Estrin from Pittsburgh, the couple was recruited by Rabbi Chaim Hanoka to Pasadena, where they lived for two years and began to build a family.

Chaim was program director at the local Chabad House, led JLI and adult education classes for students at Caltech. Kaila worked as a preschool teacher. And the living was pleasant.

But Chaim hankered for the extreme challenge that he felt could only be had in a place like Russia, where Jewish life had come to a halt for nearly a century.

“He kept talking about shlichus in Russia,” his wife says. Knowing that fewer candidates are drawn to Russia than to California, the need seemed more urgent to Chaim, she explains.

Although Kaila, 26, spent a summer as a counselor in Moscow and Simferopol, she “never imagined living here.” But with her husband coming back to the idea again and again, she finally began to consider it.

Chaim contacted Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar.

Of 400 couples serving as shluchim in the FSU, only about 30 are made up of one American, and fewer still like the Danzingers, where both husband and wife are American, says Lazar.

But Lazar was open to having the Danzingers join the network of Chabad representatives in Russia.

“What’s important to us is not where the shluchim come from, but that they can meet the standards and needs of the community,” Rabbi Lazar told lubavitch.com.

Language, and the ability to understand the culture and mentality of Russian Jewry, he adds, are essential. Chaim’s summer stints served him well on both counts. So Lazar suggested a number of cities, and the Danzingers went on a scouting mission.

What attracted them to Rostov, says Kaila, is the city’s unusually large young population. “We saw a lot of youth, many young people and college age kids.”

The need and opportunity were immediately apparent, and the Danzingers have not been disappointed. The couple hosts some 100 people every Friday night, 40 of them college age students who participate in the prayer services and join the festive Shabbos dinner.

There’s a sense of urgency in Rostov, explains Chaim, that’s decidedly unlike the laid-back pace on America’s west-coast.

“There’s no comparing the lifestyles. In Pasadena, we had beautiful views of the sun and the mountains, we spent time with the kids in local parks, and enjoyed warm weather year round.”

Three year old Mendel Danzinger, and his one year old brother Yakov, are too young to appreciate their parents’ idealism.

But they are among the first children of American Jews who will grow up in Russia, turning the old model (of Russian immigrant parents with American-raised children) on its head.

Indeed, Kaila admits that it took her time to come to terms with the idea that her California-born children “will probably speak with a Russian accent.”

But, she offers, “They’ll grow up with a stronger identity as Jewish role models,” than they would growing up in an LA Jewish day school.

“They’ll also probably be better at mathematics, science and music.”

Read the full article