A Khata Divided

As visitors approach, men and women are guided into segregated areas – women to the right and men to the left.  But before being allowed to come into direct contact with the Wall, men need to walk past a small guardhouse where yarmulkes are provided to those with uncovered heads. 
 
Approaching the guardhouse, the yarmulke man before me had an imposing presence and the angular face of an ancient prophet.  Piercing grey eyes sized me up and, handing me a yarmulke, he asked (in English) where I was from.  Without pausing to consider my answer, I replied ‘Moscow’ just as I would have said to a customs official.  The prophet’s eyes registered more interest than surprise.  ‘Are you Russian?’ he asked.  Catching myself this time, I answered ‘Yes, ethnically.  By heritage.’  Feeling somehow as though I had wiggled out of a trap, I was giving him the ‘Thanks & good-bye’ nod when I heard the prophet pronounce: ‘Your background is partly Jewish.’  This was not a question.  There was no hint of guesswork.  Somewhat unnerved by his intuition – or, rather, his obvious reliance on his intuition – I replied: ‘Yes, that’s right.’  Prophet or no, with or without extra-sensory perception, I was determined to end this unexpected and, to some degree, unwelcome intrusion into my family history.   Walking purposefully away from the yarmulke prophet, I heard the same voice from behind me: ‘Welcome home.’
 
When I clear customs upon arrival at JFK Airport, the passport control officer, seeing a blue passport, usually greets me with: ‘Welcome home.’ When I return to Moscow from an (almost always) foreign business trip, my wife greets me with the Russian equivalent of ‘Welcome home.’  And now, the yarmulke prophet welcomes me home. 
 
‘Home’ in its most elevated sense is a psychological construct.  In English, we have ‘hearth & home,’ ‘homeland’ and similar endearing and/or inspiring expressions.  The Germans also cherish their Heimat; but it would be difficult to identify a more evocative word for everything dearest to the Russian soul than Rodina. 
 
‘Home’ is a construct built on several pillars, the two most significant of which are geography and collective sentiment – nostalgia, a shared history and vision for a common future.  But long before modern science’s acceptance that an object could exist in more than one place simultaneously – now an orthodoxy of quantum physics – there have been places perceived as ‘home’ by two or more distinct and often conflicting human societies.
 
Consider what an ethnic, historically and culturally aware Greek sees in the metropolis known as Istanbul; or the modern Palestinian perception and understanding of what most of the world knows as the Jewish state of Israel.  Shall we continue?  Northern Ireland, Northern Cyprus, The Falklands / Malvinas Islands... 
 
Even uninhabited piles of rock rising just barely out of the water in the South China Sea – roughly equidistant from China, Japan and The Philippines – are subject to multiple, conflicting claims of allegiance.  The world and human history are filled with instances of mutually contradictory, self-cancelling visions of the same geographic space known – with a tear welling up and a lump in the throat – as ‘Home’ to both (or more) sides.
 
And now … the Ukrainian question.  By sheer coincidence, I spent most of the last two weeks of November in Kiev, participating in a series of three theme-focused business conferences – two designed to enhance the professional qualifications of (primarily) bankers and lawyers – and the third being the Ukrainian Investment Forum.  It would be safe to say that I had an opportunity to meet and chat with a fairly random sampling of the Kievan (and beyond, in some cases) professional elite. (OK, I didn’t bump into any doctors or engineers, but still it was a fair cross-section of Kiev’s upper income crowd.)
 
To my pleasant surprise, their opinions were not only evenly split (more or less), but held largely for practical, non-emotional, non-ethnic-affiliated reasons. One young lawyer, not from Kiev, gave me her heartfelt but carefully balanced opinion:  she considers herself a Russian; she grew up in a Russian-speaking home and had to learn Ukrainian in order to earn her law degree and license to practice. That notwithstanding, she sees accession to the EU as the only path forward toward breaking the stranglehold of crony capitalism and corruption among this generation of the Ukrainian elite – including, she added, the ethnically Ukrainian elite now in opposition to President Yanukovich.
 
But looking at the big picture here and now – not gazing into the future – the situation is in equal portions sad and banal.  All the major elements are playing their assigned roles like type-cast actors:  Russia is the ominous, snarling, threatening bear; Western Europe is the haughty, condescending overlord, issuing orders to everyone else and acting surprised and miffed if anyone should dare not comply.  And the Ukrainians are forging ahead with their opera buffa of two separate nations trapped within a common geography and border.
 
To be bluntly honest, the Russian and Ukrainian languages are almost mutually comprehensible, depending on who’s doing the talking, their word choice, etc.  I’ve had no prior experience with the Ukrainian language, but in my short time – not quite two weeks – in Kiev, I was picking up Ukrainian words and expressions purely by osmosis. So what is this tempest in a teapot all about?
 
The Swiss have three major and distinct linguistic-cultural regional communities working together like, well, a Swiss watch. By comparison, the Ukrainians should have no major problems sorting through their differences. But a relatively narrow scope of political and cultural differences is inflated by raw emotion on both sides.  This is very sad … and wasteful.
 
Personally, I have no dog in this fight and I hope that Ukrainians can all find a way forward built on mutual respect and consensus. Given the high calibre of young professionals that I met during my two weeks in Kiev, I can offer assurances that not all is lost.
 
Between Jews and Christians throughout most of the modern world, differences in belief and culture are transformed into strength and richness of diversity based on mutual respect – and even love – for each other.  The entire Ukrainian nation needs to stop looking for guidance and answers in the Russian East or European West, but rather within and among themselves as a single, united people.  Only then will they be able to build a common Home.