Saturday, June 9, 2007

Ne paruski?


Yesterday, I read an interesting article in the Kleine Zeitung, written by Alexander Widner for his column "Letters from New York". In the article, he talks about his experiences with American Russians.

First of all, Widner describes the residential neighbourhood Sheepshead Bay in southern Brooklyn where the common language is Russian instead of English and the cyrillic alphabet is as common as the latin one. If somebody asks you a question in Russian and you don't understand it people will be astonished. Ne paruski? That's what you're asked if you don't know Russian there.

Sheepshead Bay is a Russian settlement area. The last spate of immigrants arrived in the 90's, predominantly Russian Jews and many many old people. They are no longer dreaming of starting a new life, they don't think about the American Dream. Welfare check, free housing, food from the Kosher Food Network of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. No life in luxury but still they emmigrated? Why?

"It's no life in affluence but it's secure. And it hasn't always been. I wanted, at least once in my life, live unmolested, without all this anti-Semitic crap that is still alive in Russia."

That's what a 70 year old woman said, in very broken English. She lives in the ghetto and can't leave it. Not because she's forced to stay but because she couldn't communicate and cope with the life outside Little Odessa.

A young man joins the conversation of Alexander Widner and the old lady. He says that he had actually planned to stay in Vienna but got abused because of his skullcap after three days. That's when he realised that he had to continue his journey. He says that there's no big distance between being abused and being beaten up and so he went to the USA. His family stayed in Vienna. They now have a big house, a lot of money and an enterprise that works out really well. But that's not what he wanted. He only wanted to live as a Jew, in peace.
He now can live his life in peace with a wife, two children and a job. It is very important to him that English is the first language for his children and Russian only the second one because he wants to make a life outside Little Odessa possible for them.

By the way: Just arround the corner there are two adjacent buildings: A mosque and a Jewish school. "No, there have never been incidents due to the coexistence. Why should there be?" says Esther, a teacher at the Jewish school.

Yes... Why should there be?

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