The synagogue is filled with the sound of weeping as elderly women, their heads covered with scarves, sing and pray in voices swelling with emotion. They press their hands to their faces and weep unembarrassedly while Boris sits hunched over a Hebrew prayer book, gasping and shuddering in religious ecstasy. The fervor in the room rises with each lurch of the man's body, until the scene resembles an old-fashioned tent revival.
"Jesus said 'I am the
way, the truth, and the life,'" declares one of the
women, reading aloud from a small, well-worn book. And Boris shudders again, a
hint of a smile on his lips.
"We basically follow Jewish rituals," says Boris, "but we also read from the New Testament."
"Perhaps it bothers some people that we worship Jesus here; I don't know. I've never asked them. But it's not as though we took over the synagogue from Jews who wanted to hold services. The generation of older Jews who used to come gradually died out, and no one came in to fill the void."
"This is why we need to have a rabbi in this city," says Oleg. "Why don't we have one here, in the capital of the Jewish Autonomous Republic? Because the Jews themselves don't want it. No one wants to invest any money in this city, because they don't want two homelands. Jews in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev all receive money. But the only money we get is to help the Jews who are here to leave."