—Seraphim, please
tell us about yourself, and how you came to the Orthodox
faith.
—I was born and raised in
[the country of] Georgia. I am a Kurd by nationality, and my
roots are in Turkish Kurdistan. After the genocide of our
people at the beginning of the twentieth century, part of
the Kurds moved to Armenia, and from there to Georgia,
Russia, and other countries. My forebears were part of this
diaspora. A large portion of the Kurds confesses Islam,
while the smaller portion practices the syncretistic cult
called Yazidism. I was a Yazid. As all Yazidi, I went as a
child with my relatives to the Orthodox church; we had icons
at home, before which we placed candles on Sundays and feast
days—that is, it was considered normal to worship the sun
and go to church at the same time. But I was very drawn to
Christ. When I heard about Him on television, or when
someone would tell me about Him, I would always listen with
great curiosity. In 2002, my family and I moved to Moscow.
Here, someone gave me a copy of the New Testament. That is
where it all began…
I read the Gospels for four
or five hours a day; at times I would read it throughout the
whole night. I read it and could not get enough of reading
it, and learned many passages by heart, even before I was
baptized. I was amazed at how the world around me would
change after I had read about Christ. This was my first
meeting with the Lord; He turned my whole life upside down,
and I simply fell in love with Him. Yazidism does not give
that; there is no meeting with God in it, no living
communion between God and man. There is no contact with the
Creator at all. The Yazid god is very far from man. But in
Christianity, the most important thing I found is a living
communion with the Lord. This cannot be imparted in
words—when you are with God… it is hard to explain it to a
person who has never experienced communion with God, as the
Prophet David said, Taste
and see that the Lord is good! (Ps.
33:9). You have to taste it yourself.
So, I decided to be baptized.
When I went to Church as I had done many times, the service
was going on, and I was only able to stand through about two
minutes of it—I suddenly felt very heavy. Later, a priest
explained to me that an evil spirit nests in a person who is
not baptized, and it tries to prevent that person from
coming to the Lord. I went to Nizhny Novgorod and met there
a priest who gave several hours of his time per day in order
to prepare me properly. I prepared myself for Baptism very
seriously, and consider this to be the most important thing
I have done in my life.
My baptism took place on the
feast of Pentecost, 2007. When I woke up that morning, I
felt fear and heaviness in my heart. I came to the church,
and the priest asked me with a smile, ”Do you want to run
away?” Then the rite of the catechumen began, and when the
priest read the first prayers and placed his hand on my
head, I fainted. When I opened my eyes, I was sitting in a
chair, and the priest was sprinkling me with holy water.
After the Baptism we held lit candles—a sign of eternal
union with Christ—and walked three times around the
baptismal font. I sensed how my heart had been transformed,
and I felt an unspeakable joy. I did not feel my feet; it
seemed to me that I was floating, and everything around me
had changed. I became a new person. There are no words to
express what the Lord revealed to me in the depths of my
heart. I felt the hand of God. From an early age, I used to
have inexplicable attacks of fear; I would wake up in the
middle of the night in horror and walk around the house,
afraid of something—I didn’t know what it was, or what was
happening to me. But after my baptism, this all went away,
completely went away. I began to see the world with
different eyes, and people around me also noticed the change
that the Lord had wrought in me through baptism. At my
spiritual birth I received the name Seraphim, and from that
moment on, Christ became the meaning of my life, and my goal
has become following Him.
—How do your
relatives view your baptism?
—My family has always for the
most part related favorably to Orthodoxy, just as
practically all Yazidi do. As I said, they can go to church,
have icons at home, but consider baptism unnecessary, and do
not even understand the significance of this sacrament. That
was the opinion of my parents also. When I said that I
wanted to be baptized, my parents were against it, and in
their persuasion I could hear, ”Alright, get baptized, but
not now—some time later.” Finally, I told them resolutely
that I am going to be baptized no matter what. My relatives
were indignant at my choice. Then by God’s mercy nearly all
of them were baptized, one-by-one, and may God grant that
the rest also be baptized. I am very glad that I was able to
be of use in introducing my relatives and some other Kurds
to Orthodoxy.
—Are there many
Christians in general amongst the Kurds? How far back does
the history of Kurdish Christianity go?
—We know that the ancestors
of modern Kurds, the Medes and the Parthians, received
Christianity during its first centuries. There were even
separate Kurdish principalities that confessed Christianity.
There were many Orthodox Kurds in eastern Anatolia, and some
of them are parishioners of the Constantinople Church to
this day. With the rise of Islam, everything changed. Kurds
found themselves surrounded by Moslems, and Christianity was
gradually uprooted from the Kurds. Now, in Georgia, Kurds
are becoming Orthodox en masse. It is notable that this
movement is coming from the people themselves—no one is
missionizing; they are going to church on their own
initiative. Of course, if there were an dedicated mission to
them, there would be more fruit. The success of various
Protestant missionary groups among the Kurds is an
indication of this. The exact number of Christian Kurds is
unknown, and there has been no research into this, but it is
estimated that there are tens of thousands, and the number
is growing. In Russia, there are many Orthodox Kurds. If the
Lord blesses, and I hope, there will be a Kurdish Orthodox
community in Moscow.
—You mentioned that
you used to be a Yazid. Could you tell us a little about
this faith?
—The center of Yazidism is in
Iraq. Yazidism in its current form arose in the twelfth to
thirteenth centuries. The founder of this religion was the
Sufi theologian, Sheik Adi, an Arab, who seriously changed
the both the dogmas and rites that were in practice formerly
amongst the Kurds. He introduced into Yazidism many elements
of Islam, Nestorianism, Manichaeism, and Judaism. But the
Yazidi also preserved certain old beliefs resembling
Zoroastrianism, which is based upon the worship of fire, the
sun, and the forces of nature. The Yazidi later deified
Sheik Adi.
Melek Taus, the peacock
angel
They also have a special
veneration of angels, amongst which they also include an
evil spirit, whom they call Malak Tavus. Malak Tavus speaks
of himself in Yazid sacred writings thus: ”There is no place
where I am not present; I participate in all events that
people of other religions call evil because these events do
not correspond to their wishes” (Jilva 1:3). The Yazidi also
consider him a divinity that created the material world,
using the dismembered parts of the primordial cosmic egg.
Pushkin even wrote about the Yazidi relationship to this
spirit when he traveled in Arzrum. ”I tried to learn from a
Yazid the truth about their religion. At my questions, he
answered that the rumors that the Yazidi worship satan are
empty fables, that they believe in one god, and that the
devil is cursed according to their law; true, this is
considered indecent and ignoble, for he is now unhappy, but
in time he can be forgiven, as one must not place a limit on
Allah’s mercy.” They consider that god will forgive him
soon, but they do not say whether he himself wants this
forgiveness.
In general, there is much in
Yazidism that is not entirely clear. The two Yazidi sacred
books, the ”Jilva” (the ”Book of Revelations”) compiled in
the twelfth century, and ”Maskhafe Rash” (”Black book”),
compiled in the seventeenth century, often contradict each
other. You can find in them a severely distorted Biblical
history, and tales of angels in which the personal histories
of specific Sufis can be discerned. It is described how a
certain god creates other gods to be his helpers in the
creation of the world. The Yazidi believe that they were
created separately from all other people; that is, that the
forefathers of all Yazidi came about as the result of the
union of two powers—the heavenly (the seed of the angel) and
the earthly (the seed of Adam). Their idea of Christ is
basically the same as that expressed in the Koran. But it is
also said that ”until the appearance of Christ in this world,
there was one religion called ‘idolatry’” (Maskhafe Rash,
25). Yazidi have taken certain things from Christianity—they
color eggs, for example. The Iraqi Yazidi have a rite that
copies baptism—a triple immersion in water with a cutting of
hair on the head, and much else. There is a particular place
set aside in Yazidism for sun-worship. When a Yazid wakes up,
the first thing he does is to direct his gaze to the sun and
say, ”O sun, you are our master.” It is considered that a
Yazidi can only be born—there is no rite of accepting
Yazidism. Their understanding of sin is extremely vague.
—What can you say
about the prospects of an Orthodox mission to the Kurds?
—I think that the prospects
are very great, inasmuch as many Kurds are well-disposed to
Christianity. This even applies to the Moslems; I have seen
this during missionary trips to Kurdish villages, where I
was met with a hearty welcome, and saw how they listened to
us and eagerly took our Orthodox literature. But this
applies even more to Yazidi Kurds. They have long been
accustomed to viewing Christians as their allies, and it is
no accident that when the genocide was being conducted in
the Ottoman Empire, the Yazidi fled specifically to
Christian countries. When I was in one of the dioceses of
our Church last summer, I heard that in one city where there
is a large community of Yazidi Kurds, that community had
almost entirely restored an Orthodox church using their own
money. When a local Chechen diaspora wanted to build a
mosque in that city and were collecting signatures, the
Yazidi did not support the building of a mosque, and it in
fact was never built.
Of course, here, just as in
any mission, it is important to have the Holy Scripture and
prayers in their native language. With regard to the former,
the Institute of Bible Translations in Moscow has already
translated and published the New Testament and Pentateuch
into the Kurdish language (Kurmanji). As for the latter, so
far we have only translated a few of the main Orthodox
prayers, and there is much more work yet to do. It is
important that more missionaries would come from amongst the
Orthodox Kurds themselves, and extremely important that
there be Orthodox priests who are Kurds; but I believe that
the Lord will bring this to pass when it be pleasing to Him.
The sincere fatherly attention that Patriarch Kirill has
given to the needs of Orthodox Kurds when the Lord
vouchsafed me to meet with His Holiness is very dear to me
personally. It is also very meaningful to me that I was able,
if only briefly, to learn from a remarkable missionary, Fr.
Daniel Sisoev, who was my spiritual instructor, and who, as
you know, was murdered in his own church—he accepted death
for the name of Christ. I believe that the time will come
when the light of Christ will shine over Kurdistan.