Part 2: Rabbi Chaim & Kaila Danzinger: The Radical Move from Pasadena to Rostov-on-don

00:00 Speaker 1 This lady by the name of Miriam, she's a Holocaust survivor, no family, no relatives, 91 years old

00:06 Speaker 2 That's Rabbi Chaim Danzinger, Chabad emissary to Rostov, Russia.

00:11 Speaker 1 And I'd come to her house with my children. She became like one of our adopted bubbes. We'd bring food, we'd bring medicine, we talked to her. One day she calls me, and she tells me, "Chaim, I need to see you urgently." I said, "Okay, I'm coming." She said, "No, I'm coming to you." She walks into our synagogue, she climbs up the steps to the second floor where my office is. She comes in, and she opens her purse, and she hands me $200. And I'm looking at this. This is a woman whose pension is maybe $150 a month, and here she is handing me 200 crispy dollar bills. What's going on? She says, "I just received restitution money from the German government, $2,000, and I've waited all my life to be able to fulfill the commandment of tzedakah, of charity. Please use it for anyone you deem fit, for anyone that needs this in the community." And I'm looking at Miriam, and I'm thinking, "She needs it more than anyone else." But no, she wants to give to someone else because she wants to fulfill a commandment she learned in the Torah, what it means to give charity to help another person in need.

01:17 Speaker 2 Rabbi Danzinger and his wife Kayla have learned one of the special things about Miriam, and the other 15,000 or so Jews of Rostov, is their generosity. That, and enthusiasm for authentic Judaism.

01:30 Speaker 1 She says, "The biggest joy of my life is to be able to attend synagogue every single week. The biggest happiness I get is from sitting here in my second home, praying just as my grandparents prayed, and continuing the legacy of my great-grandparents of living a Jewish life."

01:49 Speaker 2 Miriam came to Jewish observance at around age 80.

01:53 Speaker 1 But it's never too late to begin the journey of returning home. It's never too late to begin the journey of learning what it means to be a Jew.

02:00 Speaker 2 Chaim and Kayla Danzinger have met thousands of Jews in Rostov, old and young, who have done that despite family histories intertwined with the horrors of the Holocaust, brutal communist rule, pogroms, and the challenges of post-communist Russia. But the Danzingers' success story in Rostov would not have happened if the Danzingers hadn't pushed themselves out of their comfort zone. I'm Gary Wolk, and this is Lamplighters, stories from Chabad emissaries on the Jewish frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances, and the community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. Here's a great opportunity for you. You rely on the Lamplighters podcast to bring you inspiring stories of Chabad emissaries all over the world. Now you can help keep our series going strong. To dedicate an episode, please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com to explore dedication opportunities. That's podcast@lubavitch.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. In 2008, Rabbi Chaim and Rebbetzin Kayla Danzinger left their apartment with mountain views and sold most of their belongings.

03:55 Speaker 1 So we gave up the surfing boards, we gave up the bikes and a lot of the, uh, nice outdoor sport equipment, and we switched them for ice skates.

04:04 Speaker 2 The Danzingers had served as Chabad emissaries in Pasadena, California for two years. They loved it there, but their earlier experiences as young camp counselors in Russia and Ukraine had left deep impressions on them. Chaim couldn't stand the idea that a 14-year-old named Dima, who insisted on getting a bris and a Hebrew name while still in camp, had to go back to his hometown where there was no rabbi. Kayla remembered one little girl in Ukraine named Violetta, the daughter of a Jewish woman and a non-Jewish man. Violetta came to Jewish camp wearing a necklace with a crucifix.

04:46 Speaker 3 And when Violetta first showed up in camp, uh, I remember seeing her being very hesitant to be part of davening. She loved everything else, all the, you know, the swimming and the and the jumping around and everything fun, she was really into it, but when it came to davening, you could see she was very hesitant. And then a few days later, we noticed that she had first tucked in her cross into her shirt, and then eventually she took off her cross, and she asked her counselor for a siddur, and if she could be part of davening, and she started davening with the rest of them.

05:20 Speaker 2 On the last night of camp, Violetta had a question for her counselor.

05:24 Speaker 3 Can you write down the words of Shema on a really small paper? Because that way I could take out this little paper without my father noticing and be able to say Shema before I go to sleep. This really pushed her on her new journey of finding her Jewish soul.

05:43 Speaker 2 After years of Jewish outreach as single people, the Danzingers were married in 2015. They moved to Pasadena the next year to work in the Jewish community. Kayla was happy there and wasn't keen on moving, but Rabbi Danzinger felt they were needed elsewhere. After months of soul-searching and debate, they decided to consider other outreach opportunities. They went on a fact-finding mission in 2018 to meet the Jews of Rostov. They were blown away by the people they met there, and their thirst for Yiddishkeit. By the time the Danzingers returned to California, they'd realized that Rostov really needed them, so-

06:23 Speaker 1 We drove cross-country, sold my car on the East Coast, and, uh, we boarded a flight, a one-way ticket from JFK to Moscow and on to Rostov, and we've been here ever since

06:39 Speaker 2 The city to which the Danzingers relocated in early 2009 was home to about 15,000 Jews. Rostov had once been an epicenter of Jewish life and thought, because Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, the fifth Chabad Rebbe, also known as the Rebbe Rashab, lived there from 1915 to 1920.

07:01 Speaker 1 The house, the original house of the Rebbe Rashab is still standing. So it's a very emotional, very spiritual experience to enter this home, this home that has the very first Chabad mikvah in the world. They found it after 80 years of it being covered with dirt and with stones and rocks. They uncovered it, and, uh, and it's in use. We're able to use this mikvah that was built by the Rebbe Rashab. We're able to stand in the Rebbe Rashab's study. We're able to pray there. We're able to learn Torah there. It's something really special.

07:32 Speaker 3 Rostov has the Rebbe Rashab's Ohel, so we had the big zechus to be davening at the Rebbe Rashab's Ohel, to visit the Rebbe Rashab's house.

07:39 Speaker 2 But when the Danzingers arrived, there hadn't been a rabbi in Rostov for decades. So they were something of a novelty there.

07:49 Speaker 3 I didn't speak the language, so there was a lot of, like, hand motions and just, you know, hugging and trying to, like, break my teeth over Russian, and them breaking their teeth over English.

08:00 Speaker 1 The language is a very difficult language to learn. It requires real hard work to get the language.

08:07 Speaker 2 There were also challenges with finding kosher food. Their kids had gotten used to two staples of American cuisine: pizza and pasta. But finding kosher mozzarella in Russia was nearly impossible, so the Danzingers would bring back as much of it as they could when they visited the States.

08:26 Speaker 1 And we prayed that it makes it with the stopovers, and sometimes... You know, there's actually a time that, uh, we missed the stopover somewhere. The suitcase didn't come, and they lost a suitcase. A week later, they found it, but when you get a call from the airline a week later that they found the suitcase of mozzarella in August, you don't wanna come claim it. You don't wanna get close to it. You don't wanna smell it, 'cause you can imagine what the mozzarella was like at that point.

08:48 Speaker 2 But beyond those sorts of challenges, there was something much more serious. After centuries of czarist rule, decades of brutal communism, Nazi occupation and genocide, and the economic uncertainty of post-communist Russia, Jewish life had dwindled and receded into the shadows.

09:08 Speaker 1 We think about the hardships the Jews had in 1915, the revolution in 1918, and the Nazis in 1942, when they occupied Rostov for the second time. They killed all the Jews. The worst massacre of Jews by the Nazis in Russia proper took place in Rostov. The Nazis killed 27,000 Jews in a place known as Snake's Valley, Zmeyovskaya Balka.

09:34 Speaker 2 Considering Rostov's history, the Danzingers knew a challenging task lay before them: to build a Jewish community that had been decimated. They began by meeting and befriending the Jews of Rostov in their homes, and in the newly renovated synagogue that had been built 150 years ago by Cantonists, Jewish soldiers who had returned from their 25-year mandatory conscription into the czar's army. They were stunned by that experience.

10:01 Speaker 3 There was just s- like, a warmth and a unity, and there was something that was very special, like a bond that I felt immediately when I came there.

10:10 Speaker 2 As the Danzingers adapted to the language and other cultural differences, the Rostov community quickly embraced them. The Danzingers began with the Sabbath.

10:19 Speaker 3 I remember inviting girls over to my house, and we would start it off with cooking. We would make challah together. Challah is just something that, you know, unites people. So I did a lot of projects with girls. Shabbos, we would have a lot of guests for a Shabbos meal.

10:35 Speaker 2 Including Miriam, the pensioner who wanted to give 10% of her restitution check to charity.

10:41 Speaker 1 This is what the Russian Jews have that's special. They might have very little, but they're willing to share the little they have with everyone. And she's so proud of our shul. She would come to shul every single Shabbos.

10:53 Speaker 2 That enthusiasm was also shared by the Jewish youth of Rostov, like Dovid Feinberg.

11:00 Speaker 4 I was born in 1989 in the holy city of Rostov in Russia.

11:08 Speaker 2 Feinberg and his family were what you might call minimally observant.

11:12 Speaker 4 Only Pesach, and maybe some of, uh, you know, gefilte fish my grandmother used to do. That's it. We didn't have, uh, any Shabbos. We didn't have any other Jewish experience at home.

11:23 Speaker 2 But when Feinberg was a teenager, he attended a Chabad camp. That piqued his interest in Judaism. After high school, Feinberg went to Vienna to attend the Lauder Business School, where there were Jewish studies alongside the secular curriculum, and kosher food. Feinberg graduated in 2006 with a master's degree in international marketing and management. While in Vienna, he met Yehudis, the woman he would marry. But Dovid's Jewish flame wasn't fully kindled until he left Vienna for his hometown of Rostov and met the Danzingers, who had just arrived there in 2009.

12:00 Speaker 4 Yeah, I would say that Rabbi Chaim and Kayla are examples of the nice, warm, loving family. This was, for me, like, wow. Because it's a pure love. We felt the love. Their home was always open. The Shabbos dinners were full, and, uh, Kayla was, uh, cooking amazing, amazing stuff. Honestly, I would say that I feel being part of Danzinger's family.

12:31 Speaker 2 Their friendship flourished, in no small part because Fainberg spoke very good English, which he had learned in college.

12:38 Speaker 3 And I noticed right away how outgoing he was, and how he had so many friends around him. Just the fact that he was in shul made more, you know, f- of his friends come. That was my first impression, that he just was very charismatic, had a lot of friends, and easy to talk to, and fun to be around.

12:55 Speaker 2 The Danzingers realized right away what Fainberg could bring to the community.

13:00 Speaker 1 Shortly after we came here, we realized a big portion of our efforts have to be aimed at the youth, students, because assimilation rates here are very high, 90%. And if we wanna have any Jewish future here, to give the Jewish youth some type of an opportunity to have a Jewish experience, we have to give them really meaningful programming, experience, learning. So to do that, I needed to have a youth leader.

13:24 Speaker 4 And one of the time when we spoke with Rabbi Chaim, we were thinking about, like, what's, what's the future of the Jewish life? What's the future of any Jewish community? And we came to the conclusion that the only real future is to have proper education for young professionals, for teenagers.

13:46 Speaker 1 He was charismatic. He seemed to be interested in Judaism. So I reached out to him and I told him, "Would you consider dropping your job and coming to work with us to be our youth leader?"

13:58 Speaker 4 I was busy with other work, but, uh, somehow Rabbi Chaim convinced me that, uh, the community needs me more. And, uh, basically, we opened the first young professional club in Russia. We called it Rostov, which is a combination of rosh, right? The head, and tov is good. It's, uh, sounds similar to Rostov with an extra letter. So it's Rostov.

14:24 Speaker 1 And it just gained momentum. We got more and more students involved. They'd come to classes. They showed interest. It was outstanding, the successes. We went on trips with them, where they were getting brised, and they were sent into yeshivas. It was incredible.

14:36 Speaker 4 And, uh, we started to have every week, Friday night, Shabbos dinner for young professionals. And Baruch Hashem, this was one of our biggest projects, where we had 100 people every Shabbos meal.

14:48 Speaker 2 As Fainberg introduced Rostov's young Jews to Judaism, he took on more of his own observance. But Rabbi Danzinger had confidence that he could do even more.

14:58 Speaker 1 We're sitting in my house, Rosh Hashanah, and I told him, "David, it's time to take a new, uh, resolution." I told him, "Would you consider keeping kosher?"

15:11 Speaker 4 'Cause for me, one of the best food I like is a cold cuts. I like very much.

15:16 Speaker 2 But there were no kosher cold cuts in Rostov.

15:19 Speaker 4 I said, "Chaim, I love you, but not this time. Let's think about anything else, but not the cold cuts." He says, "No, no, no, think about this. I promise you that every time I go to America, I will bring each of you a case of kosher meat. The best cold cut, whatever you want, don't worry, I will take care of it. Just, let's make a decision, you're taking this."

15:39 Speaker 1 "David, it's a new year. We have to make the step. Let's do it." He agreed.

15:43 Speaker 2 As did his girlfriend, Yehudis.

15:46 Speaker 4 And that was one of the biggest steps in our process.

15:51 Speaker 2 You know, kosher meat and flying kosher meat from New York to Russia, it's got to be very expensive. I mean, that shows an incredible amount of commitment on the part of the Danzingers, doesn't it?

16:02 Speaker 4 Of course, and it did happen a few times that Rabbi Chaim brought us, uh, cold cuts, but, uh, it happened only a few times, so we, we didn't take advantage of it too much. From then on, we started to grow. We did small step one after another. It was, uh, meat, then it was, I think, uh, tzitzits, and then Shabbos. And, uh, it wasn't easy, but, uh, Baruch Hashem, it worked out. So, uh, the program that we established back then for the beginners was mostly for me.

16:35 Speaker 2 David and Yehudis Fainberg were married in Rostov in 2015.

16:40 Speaker 1 We held their chuppah, the first beautiful Jewish chuppah in so many years. It was phenomenal, seeing a Jewish simcha, everything the way it's meant to be.

16:49 Speaker 3 And two of their kids were born in Rostov, and they went to our preschool.

16:53 Speaker 2 The Fainbergs had by that time fully embraced Jewish observance. They began to host Shabbos guests in their own home, and in just four years, the Fainbergs had touched the lives of hundreds of young Jewish professionals, and had inspired other Russian cities to start similar programs. But by 2019...

17:13 Speaker 1 A friend of mine from Toronto leads a Russian-speaking Jewish community, told me he's looking to hire someone to take care of the Russian community there.

17:24 Speaker 4 Rabbi Mendel Zaltzman, who is the CEO of the Jewish Russian Community Centre, went to Rabbi Chaim, and, uh, he asked him, "You know this couple, what do you think?" And the, the first reaction, Rabbi Chaim's reaction, was, "No. I'm not ready to let them go because they are working hard. David is the youth leader, and many things are involved, so we can't let him go."

17:47 Speaker 2 But ultimately, Danzinger realized that he shouldn't stand in their way.

17:51 Speaker 1 He achieved everything he could achieve here, and he has to always grow.

17:56 Speaker 2 In 2019, David and Yehudis Fainberg moved to Toronto, where they live with their now four children. He earned rabbinic ordination in 2022, and serves as program director at the Jewish Russian Community Centre of Ontario. Their last Hanukkah family event drew over 1,300 people. They usually get more than 3,000 for Lag BaOmer.

18:20 Speaker 3 It's absolutely beautiful to see We were there this past summer, and something that was so beautiful for us was that we were able to sit at their house for a Shabbos meal and eat at their house. 100% kosher house, everything to the strictest degree, and we'd be able to sit and be guests by them after all those Shabbatos where they were by us, and you know, it came full circle.

18:47 Speaker 2 Back in Rostov, the Danzingers and their four children are still working ceaselessly to bring the Jewish community together. They deliver medicine and kosher food to hundreds of Rostov's elderly Jewish citizens. But mostly, they offer companionship and conversation. Last year, Rabbi Danzinger became close with a 92-year-old man named Lev.

19:14 Speaker 1 He lived alone. He had a very difficult life. His father was killed for being an enemy of the state in 1936. His mother was arrested for being the wife of an enemy of state, so basically he grew up an orphan. He was put in an orphanage. His uncles were killed by the Nazis. Some of his aunts were killed in pogroms. So just a tragic story that despite all he's been through, he was positive, he was optimistic, he was upbeat. Just an exceptional personality.

19:43 Speaker 2 For decades, Lev's only connection to Jewish culture was through his set of books containing the complete Sholem Aleichem stories, which Lev said he had read 13 times. But with the guidance of Rabbi Danzinger, Lev embraced Jewish religious practice, including daily prayer. One day, Lev urged Danzinger to visit him right away because he had an important question.

20:07 Speaker 1 So I come to his house, and I ask him, "What do you need?" He says, "This is an important question." And what does he tell me? He says, "In the prayers there's Amida prayer that's supposed to be recited while standing up." He told me, "My feet physically can't carry me for the amount of time it takes to recite this prayer." So he looks at me in the eyes and he tells me, "Do you think for God it would be acceptable if I recite the first several paragraphs, and then I sit down to rest a little? And then I stand up again to recite the next few paragraphs, and then I sit down to rest, and then I stand up again to complete it. Do you think God would accept this prayer from me, or must I stand holding onto the railings the entire time?" I look at this man, a man who had such a difficult upbringing, had such a difficult life. He has no family. He's lonely. He's really suffering on so many levels. His health isn't well. And what's he worried about? He's worried whether or not his prayer is gonna be heeded by God. I look at this man, and I started crying. After, you know, I calmed down, he said, "So tell me the answer." I told him, "Lev, your prayer sitting down is better and holier than any prayer I could ever recite standing up. The prayer from your heart, the sincere prayer is better than any prayer any rabbi

21:35 Speaker 1 could recite anywhere in the world."

21:38 Speaker 2 One day last year, Rabbi Danzinger visited Lev, who insisted on giving him his complete set of Sholem Aleichem stories. Danzinger reluctantly accepted. Lev passed away in June of 2022 at the age of 93. Danzinger says that set of books is one of his most cherished possessions. In just 15 years, the Danzingers have transformed the Jewish community of Rostov into a thriving hub of Yiddishkeit. They run special needs programs, a Jewish day school, overnight camps, youth Shabbatons, Holocaust survivor support, Meals on Wheels, a weekly soup kitchen, and much more. They've helped rescue hundreds of Ukrainian refugees from Mariupol just across the border. And just this past January, Rabbi Danzinger and many of the members of Rostov's Jewish community marked International Holocaust Memorial Day in an especially meaningful way.

22:41 Speaker 1 In 1942, the Nazis occupied Rostov, and they put up signs all over town. The signs said that Jews must gather at six gathering points so that they could be evacuated to safety. The sign said, and I saw this sign, it said that we can no longer guarantee your safety in your homes because the local population is acting aggressively towards you. So on August 11th, 1942, every single Jew living in this city, and who were the Jews here? The men were out fighting the war against the Nazis, so it was women, it was children, and it was elderly. They came, they were to bring their valuables, the keys to their apartments, and they gathered at these six gathering points from where they were taken to the outskirts of town to a place known as Zmeevskaya Balka, Snake's Valley, and they were shot dead.

23:29 Speaker 2 An estimated 27,000 Jews were murdered there.

23:33 Speaker 1 Sadly, this Holocaust tragedy, massacre, for some reason is unknown around the world. So this year for Holocaust Memorial Day, we did something special. For the very first time, we decided that we were gonna go visit all six gathering points so that we could recite Tehillim and pray there. We walked with pride with our kippahs. And in each one of these gathering points, we recited Sh'ma Yisrael, Hear O Israel. We recited in each one, Am Yisrael Chai, and we recited verses from Tehillim. After this was done, we went to the memorial site, and we prayed and we cried, and we said never again. The Nazis left town. When they left after this massacre, they thought that's it. The city of Rostov is cleared of Jews. There's no one left. Yet today, thank God, our synagogue is welcoming young people, elderly people. Holidays are packed. There's, uh, outdoor celebrations of Hanukkah. So a lot has changed.

24:32 Speaker 2 From an outsider's perspective, that would seem to be largely because of the efforts of Chaim and Kayla Danzinger. I asked Kayla if she and her husband ever find themselves wondering, "How have we accomplished all of this?"

24:47 Speaker 3 I think the rabbi taught us to do the opposite, to look at our numbers and look at the effect and say, "What more can we do? How can we make it better?" There's always room to grow, to push ourselves and say, "What more could we do, and how can we affect people on a deeper level?"

25:01 Speaker 2 To that end, the Danzingers are masters of social media, harnessing the power of a too often destructive medium to spread positive messages and inspirational stories about the Jews of Rostov.

25:14 Speaker 1 If Lev,who passed away, may his soul rest in peace, if Lev would've known that at 93 years old, he would've impacted over 100,000 people that saw his story, that heard about the story, if he would've known what an impact he's having on Jews all over the world, on the way they prayed to God, he would've been so happy. So I feel our mission, our shlichus, is to share their stories so that, uh, others outside of Russia, outside of Rostov, should also be inspired by them.

25:41 Speaker 2 But, says Kayla, there are other plans in the works.

25:45 Speaker 3 We also bought a piece of land, and we're hoping to build a big center for kids and for preschool, and maybe a café. That would be the best thing in the world, if we could actually... If I can go to a café, sit down, and order whatever I want that's kosher, and not have to think about it myself, not have to make it myself, that would be a dream.

26:08 Speaker 2 The Danzingers say there's a lesson to their story that applies to everybody.

26:13 Speaker 3 I think the bottom line is that we have to push ourselves out of our comfort zones.

26:18 Speaker 1 My inner voice was always telling me, "Chaim, there are Jews in a neighborhood, in a city, that have no other opportunities. There are no rabbis. There's one synagogue out of the 15 synagogues that once existed, and this one synagogue does not have a rabbi." And this city has 15,000 Jews, and I looked myself in the mirror and I said, "How can I justify being a shliach in California when I know there's so many people there that are waiting and are thirsty for Yiddishkeit? What would the Rebbe want us to do?" Don't ignore the voice that's within you. If something is telling you to do something, do it. It's gonna be meaningful. You're gonna go where you're meant to be. There's Hashgacha Protis, nothing is by chance. Divine Providence shows us where we're meant to be, what we're meant to do. And when we do it, we feel like we're in the right place at the right time.

27:26 Speaker 2 I'm Gary Wollek. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com. And if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast at L-U-B-A-V-I-T-C-H.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. This is a Lubavitch International podcast.