Written Reflection on Answering the Call

I’d say the only reason why I’m able to study at a yeshiva, express my Judaism on social media,
attend shul, keep various Jewish customs, and, in general, be Jewish, is because my mother and
her family had the courage to escape Soviet Russia in the early 1980s. Before the Union formed
in 1922, when my great and great great grandparents were alive, being publically religious and
observant was not a motive for the czar or his monarchy to have you assassinated (of course,
there were several pogroms, but, for the most part, surviving was a likely possibility). In fact,
many of my ancestors were devout Belarussian Jews and some even rabbis and rebbetzins.
However, once the monarchy was overthrown and communism established, a wave of atheism
forcefully swept over all those within the borders of the Union, and while religion was never
officially dubbed illegal, Stalin was the first state leader to ever seek the elimination of religion
as an ideological objective. Unfortunately, he was very successful. Religious freedom was so
suppressed that even privately, surreptitiously going over to each other’s houses to read Torah
was a life-threatening activity. If a government official were to discover such a gathering,
everyone involved and their families would be severely punished if not put to death. Even on
Passover, the signature holiday of Judaism, matzah was baked underground during the day, and
at night, when it was dark and thus safer, it would be brought above ground to Jewish families
and homes in bedsheets. Obviously, in such an environment, it’s understandable that my
grandmother and grandfather’s parents avoided exhibiting their own Judaism any longer or
passing it down to their children. After all, their faith could have been the death of them.
Eventually, however, my Babushka Liza and Dedushka Jo had had enough, from dedushka’s
childhood experience in Ukraine witnessing his best friend being beaten blue and purple in the
courtyard to my babushka’s college experience being denied the Gold Scholar’s Medal despite
the fact that she was the most outstanding student. There’s also the more brutal fact that nearly
my entire mother’s side of the family, besides my grandparents, were slaughtered in the
Holocaust. When their children, my mother and uncle, started being spat on and called “kikes”
while on their way to school, it was time to pull the plug. Having undergone all this trauma,
agony, and dehumanization, it was time for a well-deserved brighter, anti-Semitism-free future.
Thus, they immigrated from Minsk to Warsaw to Vienna to Rome to New York City and finally
to Omaha, Nebraska. It’s easy to overlook or underestimate the bravery this called for and all
they sacrificed in the name of religious freedom. They abandoned the place they had called home
for generations upon generations, their careers as engineers, and the few friends and family they
had remaining. They arrived at a hustling and bustling country where the “American Dream”
was promised, and yet the ingredients of this dream they knew not of. They had no idea what
was in store for them. Imagine that—willingly deserting comfort and familiarity to travel across
the globe directly into the eye of uncertainty. Where were they going to live? How were they
going to support themselves? How would they get on without knowing any English? For me, my
family and its history define what acting in service of your faith means, what being courageous
for the purpose of freedom of expression and religion translates to. And while life in America
was not ever flawless, especially at first when they were acquainting themselves with a vastly
different lifestyle, learning a foreign language, and dealing with the micro anti-Semitism that
lingered here, they persevered, and by the time my mother attended university, she was involved
in Chabad and Hillel, kept Shabbat, and ate kosher. Now, in my all family’s honor, I strive to be
as expressive and proud of my Jewish identity as I can be, since truly, that’s what they yearned
for from the “American Dream” when they first heard of the land flowing with milk and
honey—a magical place where you could happily be who you wanted to be as well as who you
immutably were.