Rabbi Michael Kovson, a SIJS graduate, travels a painful road back to the Yarkon Cemetary, where a year ago, two young girls, Yulia and Yelena Nelimov, who were murdered in the Dolphinarium disco suicide, were buried. One year later, Rabbi Kovson returned to conduct a memorial service for the victims' family and friends. The story that follows, which highlights Michael's work with the bereaved family, was written by Jessica Steinberg and published in JTA on May 27, 2002.

Russian-born rabbi forges bonds with family of Dolphinarium victims

JERUSALEM, May 27 (JTA) - Nearly a year after a suicide bomber killed 21 teen-agers at the Dolphinarium disco in Tel Aviv, Ella Nelimov stares at the matching black marble headstones etched with the faces of her two daughters.

Yelena, 18, and Yulia, 16, were killed in the blast.

The families and friends of the victims, most of whom were Russian immigrants, have been gathering all morning at the Yarkon Cemetery, a sea of recently-dug graves off a busy Tel Aviv-bound highway. The mourners stand in clusters around grave lots, listening quietly to the rabbis who are memorializing their loved ones.

At one grave site May 15, a few relatives released metallic pink "It's a Girl!" balloons into the blue sky.

It is odd to see balloons at a cemetery, but in a sense, no gesture - not the stuffed teddy bear propped near Yelena Nelimov's headstone, nor the silk flowers resting between two sisters' graves - is improper. These are people mourning youngsters whose lives were cut short.

A few of the Nelimovs' friends are pouring water over the gravestones to wipe off the dust and grime, moving piles of flowers from one grave to the other as they sweep their wet hands down the smooth marble.

Ella Nelimov, a short woman with hair hennaed red, is dressed simply in a black blouse and pants. She stands away from the graves, her hands clasped together, talking quietly with friends and family.

"I can see in my mind what they looked like just before they went out that night," she reminisced. "I can see it like it was yesterday."

By her side is Rabbi Michael Kovson, also a Russian immigrant. Kovson is a Conservative rabbi who has been Nelimov's rabbi, confidante and friend since that terrible day last June.

It was during Shabbat morning services at his small synagogue in Kiryat Yovel, a Jerusalem neighborhood, that Kovson heard the details of the Friday night attack at the Dolphinarium.

A congregant told him that all the victims were teen-agers, and almost all were Russian speakers.

"I told myself that there aren't a lot of Russian-speaking rabbis," Kovson said.

He went home after services, broke Shabbat and turned on the television to learn about the bombing. When he understood the scope of the situation, he called his synagogue president, asked for a ride downtown, caught a cab to Tel Aviv and then made his way to city hall.

Kovson didn't know any of the victims or their families, but he told the municipal social workers to send him to a family, thinking he might be able to help.

They told him they were sending him to the family hit the hardest - the Nelimovs, who had lost two girls. As it turned out, Ella Nelimov was the only one who had asked for a rabbi.

"Michael came in and he spoke Russian," Ella remembered, smiling. "It was such a surprise."

At the time, besides dealing with the shock of losing her two daughters, Ella wanted guidance about Jewish mourning. She wanted to know how to act, what to do, what to say.

"We are here in Israel, we're Jews, and I wanted to do what they do here," she said.

Since then, Nelimov, a secular Russian immigrant, and Kovson, a secular Jew turned Conservative rabbi, have grown close.

They talk regularly, sometimes about "the daily stuff," Kovson said, other times about more personal matters, including the process of mourning for Yelena and Yulia.

Kovson jokes with Sasha, Nelimov's 15-year-old son, and has gotten to know all their friends and family.

At the time of the bombing, the Nelimovs were living in a small apartment in the Hatikva neighborhood of Tel Aviv. Ella and Sasha Nelimov since have moved to Rishon le-Zion - a small city south of Tel Aviv that has been the site of two recent bombings - and Ella is working in a better-paying, government job.

The move helped, as did the people who have supported Nelimov through this difficult time.

When Kovson first arrived in Israel from Kiev in 1991, it was the realization of a dream he'd had since the end of the 1970s. He knew some Hebrew at the time, but very little about Judaism.

"The last Jew in my family was my father's grandmother," Kovson said. "She lit Shabbat candles. If I hadn't returned to Judaism, that would be it for my family."

Instead, through a series of coincidences and circumstances, Kovson ended up learning about Judaism, first at a yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut. He then was invited to take part in a learning project at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and from there made his way to the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, the Conservative movement's seminary in Israel.

Two years later, he began training for the rabbinate, and was officially ordained as a Conservative rabbi last spring.

It was Kovson's position as a rabbi that first brought him to Nelimov, but since then their relationship has deepened.

"She thinks of me as family and as her rabbi," Kovson said. "She asks questions that you ask a rabbi, but formally, I'm not her rabbi. She became a relative to me."