World Union Community Ties
Help Reunite Ukrainian Family

WUPJ Newsletter, July 10, 2008

Grisha and Slava Maslovich had been waiting more than five years for permission to leave Kiev and emigrate to Germany, where they planned to join cousins Aron and Emma Kaplan. Aron is a board member and Shammes of the Progressive congregation in Hameln.

During that time, the Union of Progressive Jews of Germany had been in regular contact with the Office for Migration and Immigration, and Rachel Dohme, president of the Hameln congregation, e-mailed back and forth with Slava regularly. “I shared our congregational life with her as much as possible [and she] loved reading our monthly newsletter, which we publish in German, Russian and English.

	Slava Maslovich emerges from the Dneiper River, fulfilling her conversion requirements.

“Although it would not have affected [her] ability to immigrate,” said Dohme, “I thought it would make things easier if Slava, a patrilineal Jew, participated in a giyur (conversion) class with the World Union's Kiev congregation and could enter Germany as a halachic Jew, like her husband.”

Dohme contacted Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny, the World Union’s senior Progressive rabbi in Ukraine and spiritual leader of Kiev’s Congregation Hatikva, who embraced the idea. Dukhovny met with Slava, encouraged her to attend services, and began teaching her about Judaism.

“Slava often wrote how she enjoyed attending services and lessons with Rabbi Dukhovny,” says Dohme.

In May, Slava appeared before Ukraine’s Progressive beit din and successfully displayed her knowledge of, and affinity for, the Jewish religion. Afterwards, she completed her conversion with a ritual mikveh dip—into the cold Dneiper River. To make the ending even happier, the Maslovyches recently received word from the German consulate that their papers were in order, and they will be able to go to Germany before the end of the year.