A teenage girl showed up in the office of Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetzky, the Rebbe's emissary and Chief Rabbi of Dnepropetrovsk. Her great-grandmother was requesting that he visit her in the village of Pridnipropsk, nearly two-hours away. "Is your grandmother Jewish?" the rabbi asked. "No." "Is anyone in your family Jewish?" continued the rabbi. "No," answered the teen once again.
Rabbi Kaminetzky looked at his overcrowded calendar and said that he would visit in two weeks. A week later the girl returned to Rabbi Kaminetzky. "Grandma is too frail to travel. She needs to speak with you right away." Rabbi Kaminetzky accompanied the girl back to her tiny village.
As soon as Irina saw the rabbi, she began to cry. When she calmed down, she started to speak in broken Yiddish. "I grew up in a religious Jewish home. During a pogrom in my hometown of Yekatrinislav (now called Dnepropetrovsk) in 1911, I saw my parents killed before my eyes."
Irina switched to Russian and her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren listened as she recounted how gentile neighbors had taken her in and cared for her. They had made only one condition: that she never tell anyone that she was Jewish as they feared it might endanger her life.
Irina told the rabbi that she had always hoped that the day would come when she would be able to reveal her secret. But, at the very least, she wanted to receive a Jewish burial. Rabbi Kaminetzky spent a number of hours with Irina. Before leaving he explained to her descendants that they, too, are Jewish. The rabbi told the family that he or some of his colleagues would be in touch with them, to introduce them to their Jewish roots.
The next day, the great-granddaughter returned to the rabbi's office. "Grandma died soon after you left. We need you to give her a Jewish burial."
It was after the funeral that one of Irina's daughters told Rabbi Kaminetzky, "Now I understand why my mother fasted for an entire day each autumn and did not eat bread for a whole week each spring."
Today, all of Irina's children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren know what it means to live as a Jew, thanks to the Rebbe's emissaries in the former Soviet Union.
