Mina Yuditskaya Berliner, a retired teacher of German, could be forgiven for feeling surprised when one of her former students invited her for tea after almost half a century. Berliner, now 94, hadn’t seen him since she made aliyah to Israel from the USSR in 1973. But in 2005, the former student came to Israel to visit—an official visit, no less, the first ever made by a Soviet or Russian leader.
Vladimir Putin had progressed from a 15-year-old schoolboy who played hooky to go to wrestling practice to become president of his country. But he had not forgotten his Jewish teacher from High School #281 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). During the visit, Berliner, a widow, mentioned that she lived in a run-down apartment in Tel Aviv’s Florentine district. By the time Putin departed Israel, she was in possession of a new apartment in the heart of pricey downtown Tel Aviv, courtesy of her former student.
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