Parashat Devarim and a Soviet Memory

My father told me this story when I was young. In 2018, I wrote it down for the first time. But I wasn’t yet a rabbi. I hadn’t studied Torah or Talmud deeply enough to truly understand it.

Now I see it differently.

Parashat Devarim, the first portion in the Book of Deuteronomy, is not just Moses remembering the journey of our people. It’s more than history. It’s a mirror. A message. It speaks to every generation standing on the edge of something new.

And suddenly, my father’s memory — simple, strange, even a little funny — became a midrash in my eyes. A Jewish teaching. About the last days of Egypt, before the Exodus. About the Soviet Union before it fell. And about us — still walking. Because we, the Jews of the diaspora, haven’t finished our journey yet. We are not all home. Our prophets taught that in the time of Moshiach, all Jews — even the lost tribes — will return to the Land of Israel. So we’re still in the wilderness. Still listening for the Voice that says: Come home.

Back in the 1960s, my father studied at the Odesa Polytechnic Institute — now called Odesa Polytechnic University. It was one of the best places in Ukraine for math, physics, engineering, and computers. Even in those days, there were Jewish professors in the sciences. And today, many of the school’s graduates work in Silicon Valley. Some became millionaires. It says something — both about the school, and about what can happen in a country where the money says “In God We Trust.” God saw that — and He blessed America.

In the Soviet Union, it wasn’t easy to get into top universities if you were Jewish. There were silent barriers. But my father finished high school with a gold medal, so he got in.

After graduation, the Soviet government sent young engineers wherever they were needed. My father was sent to Kharkiv — once the capital of Soviet Ukraine. A city with great universities, theaters, a proud Jewish past… and a massive city square — one of the biggest in Europe.

That’s where he met her.

Not in a class. In the student dormitory, where he had a bed. There was a woman on the floor, older than the students, who clearly had mental health struggles. Her name was Dusa. She had once had her own apartment. But someone in power — maybe a policeman, maybe a KGB officer — stole it. Only someone in uniform could do that in those years. Corruption wore badges. They moved her into the dorm. People called her “crazy.” But my father never forgot her name.

One day, he put a kettle of water on the stove in the shared kitchen and went back to his room. A minute later, he came back and saw Dusa pouring the water out.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“It already boiled,” she said.

“But I just put it on…” he started to protest.

Then he stopped.

You don’t argue with someone like that. It’s not about logic. It’s about something deeper. He realized: she wasn’t just a woman. She was the country.

In the bathroom, there wasn’t even a toilet — just a hole in the floor. It was like that all across the USSR. Schools. Hospitals. Train stations. Even universities. The government said they would “catch up to the West.” The official newspaper Pravda (“Truth”) shouted: “We will surpass the West!”

But in daily life, it was filth and poverty. And hate.

They hated America. They hated Israel. They hated the Jews. Why? Because they were jealous. It was Cain and Abel all over again — on a national scale.

And Dusa? She absorbed that hate like a sponge. Even in her madness, she understood the politics of the country.

One day, the dorm manager said, “Haven’t heard a sound from Dusa in a few days.” They knocked on her door. No answer. They knocked on the window. Still nothing.

They called the local policeman. He brought a locksmith. They broke open the door.

There she was. Sitting at the table in silence.

“Why didn’t you answer?” they yelled.

She replied, calmly: “Day and night… you Zionist Freemasons never let me rest.”

My father said nothing. He just stood there. He didn’t know the source of the saying, “To those who curse me, let my soul remain silent.” But maybe his soul knew it. His grandmother — a deeply religious woman — had raised him. She used to go to underground synagogues in Odesa. She spoke Yiddish better than Russian. She had already passed away by then. But maybe her silence lived on in him.

And then came the fall.

One after another, the leaders died: Brezhnev. Andropov. Chernenko. Then came Gorbachev. And then — the gates opened.

The Jews began to leave.

My grandfather would stay up late, tuning the radio to Kol Yisrael, the Voice of Israel. “Brothers and sisters,” the announcer would say, “Come home. Return to your Land.”

Dusa was not the source of evil. She was its echo. The last sound in a long, dark hallway.

When a country is led by people like her — full of hate, empty of hope — that country has no future. In Kabbalah it’s written: What you send out — comes back to you. The Soviet Union sent out hatred. And it came back like a boomerang.

It wasn’t Israel that collapsed. It wasn’t America. It was the empire itself. The snake that slithered into the Garden… was never chased out. It just ate its own tree.

I share this story not just to remember, but because it still speaks to us. It’s not only about our Jewish past — it’s about now. About us.

Jews today still walk through deserts — of fear, confusion, exile. But we’re not alone.

This week’s Torah portion reminds us: Moses spoke to the generation that left Egypt, but didn’t yet enter the Land. He gave them words. Memory. Hope.

I see that now. And I see how my father’s story fits right inside it. We, too, are on the edge of something. And we are still being called home.