From Russia to America

         I often find myself stunned at the realization that I have so much and take so much for granted. A particular question, "What if you woke up tomorrow with what you thanked God for yesterday?" has always made me question my faith: what if I didn't have my family? What if I woke up without freedom? What if I didn't know of the glory and majesty of Christ? What if I had nothing but the clothes on my back? What if I had to move to a foreign land? Would I be able to handle this? Would I stay strong? For refugees, much of this is a stark reality.
         The photo I choose to talk about today is one of a Russian Jewish family hugging goodbye for what may be the last time. It is not easy to get out of Russia as a migrant, one must prove that they feel obliged to leave and cannot remain where they currently live. They must be refugees by definition: someone who has fled (or is hoping to flee) to another country because of a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, or membership of a particular social group or political opinion. When a Jew was not granted approval from the Soviet Union to migrate to the United States or Israel, they were termed refuseniks and ultimately fired from their job. It often took several years for them to gain permission to leave and so it was necessary for them to take whatever jobs were available so that they could feed their family and not risk being arrested as "parasites" (a Soviet classification for any able-bodied person unemployed for two months). Benjamin Bogomolny actually made the Guinness Book of World Records as "most patient" refusenik having waited twenty and a half years to make the journey. Thanks to the Lautenberg Amendment passed by the U.S. Congress in 1989 all Soviet Jews and certain other religious communities were classified as persecuted groups, automatically qualifying them for refugee status and passage to freedom. A wave of immigrants began to flood the American shores and continued until the early 2000s some years bringing as many as 25,000 new émigrés to New York. Now, the number of Russian-speaking Jews living in the United States is estimated to be about 700,000.
          A Russian Jewish refugee named Katherine tells her story of immigrating to the U.S. with her husband, also a Russian Jew. She expresses her joy at hearing her son speak out "I am Jewish!" When she starts to cry, her daughter asks her why she is crying and the loving mother responds, "Because this is the reason that Papa and I moved to America, so you can announce proudly and freely—I am Jewish!"
         This photo stuck out to me because I cannot imagine the anguish one must feel leaving their family members behind in a country that is unsafe and prejudice against them. Likewise, I cannot imagine seeing someone of my family leave me to escape to another country where we don't know what to expect. Especially in a time when communication was a lot slower, this to me would be unbearable. As a first semester freshman in college, it is hard enough to not see my family for months even though they're only a simple phone call, text, email, or facebook chat away. It's hard enough to start out on your own in a new state and new school. I cannot fathom the fear I would feel at having to survive alone in a foreign country where I didn't know the language, the culture, or the every day customs necessary to get by. This is my aim for this semester: to learn to better understand people and their individual struggles, to help my readers understand the people that I write about, and to do my best to provide any relief that I can to those that struggle in whatever way.

Works Cited

http://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/927393/jewish/Freedom-to-be-a-Jew.htm

http://www.ajcrussian.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=chLMK3PKLsF&b=7718799&ct=11713359

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Human_Rights/refuseniks.html