A Slice of Life
Why would a young, observant Jewish couple move to a city where there was no shul, no Jewish day school, no mikva, and where obtaining kosher food is a struggle? A city where the language spoken and written is totally different from any language they had ever heard or seen?
I was raised in South Africa, where my parents are emissaries (shluchim) of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Soon after I married Rabbi Shimon Freundlich, we moved to Hong Kong. I had worked in the Chabad House in Hong Kong before I was married so the Chinese culture was not so foreign to me. We spent five years in Hong Kong after which we moved to Beijing, China, to open our own Chabad House.
People living in democratic countries have a hard time understanding the repression in China. The army is everywhere. Visas are hardly ever given to rabbis. Our home and phone are most certainly bugged. Meat, dairy and wine are illegal to import, mail is opened and appliances are heavily taxed. The closest mikva is a 4-hour flight.
There is a Chinese joke that says that the Chinese will eat everything with four legs except the table, and everything that flies except a plane! Living in China, I saw this first hand at the market.
In a country where the average person buys one small bunch of greens and a few small mushrooms, a person wanting anything more than two potatoes is looked upon as strange. So you can imagine the attention I get when I ask for 25 cucumbers, 10 heads of lettuce, 65 potatoes, 12 onions, and 40 carrots. I've become a regular sight at the market (they refer to me as "fang la" i.e. crazy), but I have made some friends as well. After all, I may be fang la but I'm also a good, paying customer!
From the start, one of my biggest challenges was the language, so I signed up for Chinese lessons. I discovered that one word can mean many things depending on the tone used. For example: "Ma" is "mother," "linen," "horse," "scold." It all depends on the tone in which you say "Ma."
I can now hold a basic conversation in Chinese, do my shopping without too much frustration, and am learning to read and write. As part of my children's home schooling, a Chinese-language teacher teaches them twice a week.
The Beijing Jewish Community has approximately 700 Jews. Two hundred are Israeli, 250 are American/European and 250 are Russian; every event has to be in at least three languages.
We arrived in Beijing right before the High Holidays, so our first Rosh Hashana was small. But, thank G‑d, things picked up quickly.
I decided to start a monthly women's Rosh Chodesh group. When twelve women attended, I was flying. But then, in the middle of the event, an even more amazing thing happened.
We went around the room to introduce ourselves. Eventually it was Roberta's turn. "You all know me so I will tell you something about me that you do not know. This past year was the worst year of my life. When I heard that Chabad was coming, I was devastated. You are all happy that Shimon and Dini are here but I am the happiest of all! I only regret wasting a year of my life in dreading their coming," she concluded. Roberta has become one of our staunchest allies and a dear friend.
With the High Holidays over and our first Rosh Chodesh group a success, we started planning Chanuka. We prepared for 30-50 people.
At four o'clock in the afternoon, the bell rang and we never closed the door after that. Before we knew it there were over 150 people. Everyone kept saying, "Only Chabad could bring the whole community together."
For Purim, we organized a great party, highlighted by the reading of the Megila (Scroll of Esther) and food, of course. This time we were prepared for the nearly 200 people who came. One woman thanked my husband, saying that she had grown up in Israel and had always celebrated Purim with parties and merriment, but had never heard the Megila read. She did not know that listen to the Megila is an integral part of the holiday.
A few days before Passover, we arranged the first-ever Bar Mitzva on the Great Wall of China. It was an emotional, beautiful Bar Mitzva, and the locals really enjoyed the show. As all the men were wrapped in tallit and tefilin, a group of El Al flight attendants walked onto the wall. They were shocked to find a Bar Mitzva going on. Of course they all joined us, and partook of the bagels and cream cheese afterward.
Next came Passover. We decided to use the beautiful, elegant hotel nearby for our seder. We rented one of their rooms to prepare in, and we transformed the room into a full scale kitchen/factory. The hotel staff was horrified. In contrast, the people at the market could not believe their luck. In one day, they made the money they usually make in two years. We had 150 people at our first seder, so we had the last laugh.
After Sunday school one week I was getting into a separate taxi from the rest of my family. Roberta looked at me and my little suitcase and asked if I was running away from home. On a whim, I confided to her that I was going to the closest mikva, in Hong Kong, seven hours door-to-door. She was shocked that I had to travel so far and told me she was sure we could do something locally. True to her word, she set up a meeting with the head of our apartment complex. They owed her U.S. $10,000 and a favor and she was going to use them both to get a mikva built in Beijing.
My husband and Roberta went to a meeting with the owners of our complex. We had plans drawn up by Rabbi Meir Posen and, with G‑d's help, we will soon finalize the details and start to build the first mikva on mainland China.
Oh, and in answer to that question that I asked at the beginning. There can be only one answer: A passion and burning desire to reach out to one's fellow Jew as an emissary (shaliach) of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.