Tag #148624 - Interview #95166 (Semyon Vilenskiy)

My parents, their relatives and friends gave up their parents’ religion and traditions. They were atheists. After the Pale of Settlement was cancelled, Jews began to move to bigger towns and to the capital. They associated their past, when they were not allowed to take part in public life, with Jewish rules, holidays and religion. Jewish young people believed this past to be dull and boring. They rejected all traditions. They already identified themselves with Russian, when all of a sudden they were brutally reminded that they were Jews. Once, when my father was an older man and had health problems, he came to see me and said he was at the synagogue. ‘Are you religious now?’ – I asked him. ‘No, I just went there to take a look at Jews’. He was drawn to Jews, perhaps, this was the call of the blood.