David Slavnyi knew he was Jewish — he’d checked that box in his exchange student application — but knew nothing about his Judaism until a school year in Montgomery County.
The 16-year-old attended High Holidays at a synagogue, celebrated Chanukah with homemade potato latkes and learned what it means to be Jewish thanks to his Chevy Chase host family.
‘Nobody Is Really Religious’
Slavnyi, who turned 17 in November, was born in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, where he spent the first four years of his life. He then moved to Sicily with his mom and an older sister. His mother, Anna Tymchuk, came of age in the Soviet Union. Though religion was illegal at the time, Tymchuk’s family covertly observed Jewish customs.
“Those who openly believed often paid too high a price: prisons, labor camps, fear, forced silence,” Tymchuk wrote in a personal narrative shared with Washington Jewish Week. “So faith became something people hid — not because they didn’t value it, but because they wanted to preserve it.”
In 1991, the Soviet Union fell, and Tymchuk’s family explained to her the meaning behind observing Shabbat. Suddenly, it made sense how her grandmother swept through the house on Friday nights, quickly cooking and cleaning before the first star emerged in the sky, and how the household seemed to “pause” after sundown.
Tymchuk began keeping kosher, attending a Hasidic synagogue, studying religious texts and learned Jewish beliefs, living what she called a “regular Jewish life.” She sent her oldest daughter to a Jewish day school in Ukraine, where she raised her three children.
Her youngest, David, was 4 1/2 when Tymchuk, David’s sister, Sofia, and David fled to Sicily in 2013 after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine. Italy was nothing like what Tymchuk was used to.
“I knew that there were Jews in Sicily, … but these Jews … didn’t follow any religion,” said Tymchuk*, who lives in the eastern Sicilian city of Catania. “Nobody is really religious.”
“There are a lot of Jewish people who don’t know it,” she added, referring to the many Jewish Italians who had been forced to convert to Christianity or leave under the Spanish Empire.
Tymchuk continued to search for fellow observant Jews in the region, with little luck. Then she stumbled upon a Sephardic American rabbi in Syracuse, in southern Sicily, whose goal was to bring Jewish belief back to the area. Tymchuk got his contact information and said she would come to the rabbi’s home for Jewish holidays, where Jews gathered.
“I told them to call me when they did something, but they never called me,” she recalled. “Nothing ever happened.”
Tymchuk was saddened by this lack of organized Jewish life. “It was really hard, and I couldn’t even transmit [the tradition] to [my younger two children],” she said.
“In the beginning, I tried to do a Rosh Hashanah celebration, but David was so young,” Tymchuk said. “It’s sad because I saw all the neighbors who had their traditions, their holidays, their parties. And we couldn’t really do anything.”
It was her hope that her kids lived in an area where there’s a synagogue and thriving Jewish life for this reason. “It’s really hard to live somewhere you don’t have any roots,” Tymchuk said.
‘A Box Checked Jewish’
A high-achieving student, Slavnyi knew he wanted to spend his junior year of high school abroad, specifically the United States, where both of his older sisters live.
Slavnyi was assigned to Chevy Chase, a “really cool place” in his words due to its proximity to the nation’s capital. The teen, who is wrapping up his junior year at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, was pleasantly surprised to see such a “huge Jewish community” with synagogues dotting the map.
Host parents Barbara Sacks Singer and her husband, Steven, had long been interested in hosting an exchange student. They hosted a Japanese exchange student last spring in their Chevy Chase home for six weeks.
The Singers saw Slavnyi’s application and the fact that he’d checked “Jewish” for his ethnicity.
“If we could get a foreign exchange student and he’s Jewish, we just thought that enriched the experience that we thought we’d have by hosting someone,” Sacks Singer said. “We loved that little aspect of it, and we loved that he was from Italy.”
She added that Slavnyi didn’t know “anything” about his Judaism.
“When he came, that’s all it was — a box checked ‘Jewish,’” she said. “So we took that on ourselves to introduce him a little bit.”
‘Discovering a Part of Me’
Because Slavnyi arrived at the Singers’ home in August, the High Holidays were right around the corner. The family — Barbara, Steven and 15-year-old son, Dylan — wanted to bring Slavnyi with them to Adas Israel Congregation, where they belong, but first, Sacks Singer checked with Tymchuk.
“I wanted to make sure it was OK to bring him into this religious part of our life,” Sacks Singer said. “So I texted her, and that’s where it all came flowing out that she had not been able to raise her kids Jewish, but when they were in Ukraine, they were able to be more Jewish. She knew so much and David knew nothing.”
Slavnyi wasn’t familiar with Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. He’d also never stepped foot in a synagogue.
“[The] first time, I was kind of out of place because I’ve never been really religious,” Slavnyi said of visiting Adas Israel for the High Holidays. “So it was kind of odd. But as time went on, you get used to it, and you have fun and you embrace your culture.”
Slavnyi said he felt welcomed by the Jewish community. The Singers introduced him to the traditional foods, such as challah on Shabbat, “and then we just kept it going all year,” Sacks Singer said.
For Chanukah, Slavnyi enjoyed matzo ball soup and Steven Singer’s homemade potato latkes and took part in the family tradition of unraveling a Saran wrap ball layered with gifts and treats.
“I think it’s a really interesting thing, especially seeing [the holiday] through someone who’s Jewish, but never really practiced that before,” said Dylan Singer, who appreciates the brotherly bond that he’s formed with Slavnyi.
The family hosted Passover with 25 relatives at their home, then attended a Seder with extended family in Florida. Slavnyi said he enjoyed learning the “call and response” of the traditional Four Questions.
“Introducing David to Judaism has been fun for us to see,” Steven Singer said. “It’s different than introducing it to kids when they’re little … He’s coming at it a little more questioning sometimes, always very accepting, and he’s a very curious kid about that.”
“It’s interesting, I get to discover a part of me,” Slavnyi said. “When you’re born a Jew, it’s your culture … It’s a part of me.”
These experiences have opened up conversations with Tymchuk. “As David would tell her about his experiences living with us, her memories started flooding back and she began relating to us her wisdom and knowledge of Judaism,” Sacks Singer wrote in a statement to Washington Jewish Week.
“My mom knows a whole lot of stuff about everything. She knows every [Jewish] holiday, every small one. She’s really into it,” Slavnyi said.
Jewish holidays and culture had seldom come up in conversation prior to his year abroad.
“Maybe if we had a synagogue and went there, it would have been way different, but we didn’t have opportunities to do that,” Slavnyi said.
Tymchuk expressed her gratitude to the Singers for helping her son connect to his roots.
“I’m really thankful that they treat David like their own son,” she said. “I’m also really grateful that they introduced David to his identity and extracted [his Jewish identity] through all of this. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do.”
It’s also something Tymchuk promised her father she would do.
Slavnyi is set to return home at the end of June.
“When I come back, not a lot is going to change, because I have no idea where there’s any Jews in Sicily. There’s not a synagogue,” he said. “But definitely with my mom, we will do small things like holidays to get some traditions going, to keep them and pass them down to other generations.”
Shortly after, he’ll show the Singers around Sicily when they visit, in a true cultural exchange.
*This interview was conducted with the help of David Slavnyi, who translated between English and Russian.
