For many of us Jewish-Russian emigres the word sojourner defined us. We lived among people of Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Belorussia, Uzbekistan, Khasakstan but were not of the people. We ate their food, drank their vodka and read their books. We celebrated their holidays and tried as best we could to model our lives after theirs. But in the end in one way or another we were always reminded that we were but strangers among them.

Our last names shouted our difference. We were not Ivanovs but Rabinovitches and Israelovs, we were not Kuznetzovs but Schvartmans and Malamuds. Our identities were stamped on our passports as if we needed to be reminded of our difference. We clung to our ways, tied by the Russified yiddish spoken by our grandmothers, by the gefilte fish sitting next to pork dishes on our tables. Most of us never felt the pain of the pogroms our great grand parents endured, but virtually non of us escaped the being called a Zhyd. Our identities were never Russian ( or what ever republic you were from) we were Jews. Sojourners among the vastness of communisms. The chosen people, chosen to be second class citizens.

On the other side of the ocean “our people” through organizations such as HIAS and NAYANA campaigned for the freedom of Soviet Jews. They petitioned and protested, they organized and fought for their brothers and sisters behind the iron curtain. And while we all must be thankful for the efforts they made, when they finally got the Russians Jews to come to the US they found us to be less Jewish than they wanted us to be and more Russian than they knew what to do with. We ate pork and partied like the Russians. We were educated and were criminals. We became their taxi drivers who used to be engineers and handymen with medical degrees, their nurses and their Russian Mob. We moved into enclaves where the connection to our Judaism was overshadowed by our resourcefulness and love of capitalism. We made conspicuous consumption into an art. And by this nature we were once again sojourners among the very Jews who fought so hard to give us freedom.

How many of us had to explain to our American saviors that there was indeed sunshine in the Soviet Union, that our lives were filled with the same joys and terrors of those in the US. That our judaism was more about sticking together than worshiping in a temple. We came to the US not to become become better Jews… but be free Russians. Some called us Commies. Some called us welfare cheats. But very few called us fellow equal Jews.

And so we went into the broader world but we clung to our ways. A hodgepodge of Judaism, capitalism and Russian(ism). We had our own restaurants which did not resemble what the Americans knew to be restaurants, we had our own shops with food most Americans would run from, we closed ourselves off in our sea side ghetto. We tried to be American but were always reminded that we were not. Maybe we spent too much time reminding ourselves of being different.

The Cold War was still raging in the 80’s and we, newly minted Americans , struggled to know if we should root for the Wolverines or the Russians in Red Dawn. Not all of us were happy with Olympic hockey results of the “miracle on ice.” We spoke a strange dialect of Russified English….we laughed at the stupid Amerikantzi… and we often said “it was different in MY country” as if the USSR had ever truly been our country.

And 40 years later, our children have to be taught about the USSR. Russia is a political punch line to them. We kept our names, but not all of us. Some of us pass for Americans, but we never truly share their world view because we LOVE this country more than any native person can. We cannot take it for granted because we know it is the only place where we could have reinvented ourselves, where our religion is not stamped on our passports and where what we can accomplish is not governed by our ancestry but by your desire.

We educated ourselves, we started companies, we created a culture which impacted the broader American narrative. We gave them Mila Kunis and Sergey Brin. We gave them Yakov Smirnoff and a love of good vodka. We assimilated and we carved out enclaves of Russian Emigre culture which endures.

Those of us who came here as children are still sojourners in many ways, despite our best efforts to become American…

I was a Jew in Russia, I was a Russian in the America, I am still a Jew… A Russian Jew. A breed of its own. And I am the better person for it.