The heritage autobiography, assigned at the beginning of the quarter, gave us the opportunity to discuss our cultural background and also include thoughts about our family's heritage language(s). Because we were just starting to build our ideas about what constitutes a "heritage language" or "heritage language speaker", reflecting on personal background to see how we may fit into the term helped contextualize the definition quite a bit! 

 

 

       I consider myself a second generation Russian-American Jewish woman. I grew up speaking Russian and English, studied just enough Hebrew to scrape through my Bat Mitzvah, and the extent of my conversational Yiddish is limited to “Oy vey!” (which, I admit, I use quite a lot). My whole family is from Kiev, Ukraine; my immediate family, including my parents, grandparents, and older sister Izabella, moved to the United States in 1990, first coming to New York, then Seattle-ing down in Bothell, Washington.

         My family’s language is Russian, but I believe it is important to include how closely intertwined my Russian and Jewish cultures are. I do not think I would have been emotionally resilient enough to experience what my parents did growing up in Kiev. My parents and grandparents endured very strong anti-Semitism before coming to the US. My grandmother fled to Siberia as a five-year-old during World War II. My parents experienced discrimination throughout their school and professional lives, from students and teachers alike; my mother was the top student in her school in Kiev, but was rejected from all Ukrainian engineering and technical universities, and needed to travel upwards of seven hours to be able to attend a school in Russia that would be less discriminatory. In Ukrainian passports, under “Nationality”, Jewish citizens were labeled “Jew”. This feature allowed schools, companies, and individuals to openly practice discrimination. It was mostly up to my family members to defend themselves, their work, and their rights as citizens in Ukraine.

           My family was not afraid to practice Judaism. My parents’ grandparents spoke Yiddish and led kosher kitchens. Though my parents lived in more secular homes, they were proud of their culture, which continued to be expressed in the Russian/Jewish food they ate, the Russian-Jewish folk songs and jokes they shared, and the important holidays they acknowledged (such as Yom Kippur and Passover). It was very important to my parents that I attend Sunday school and study to have a real Bat Mitzvah – the ceremony during which I would be recognized as a Jewish adult. I so resented the early Sundays at the time, but I since realized the magnitude of my right to practice my religion without fear of discrimination; my parents could not have imagined this as young adults.

       Speaking Russian in my house has always been valued highly, and has been encouraged in my communication with my family; my family speaks to me in Russian, and I tend to respond in English (once I started Kindergarten, my conversational Russian adopted a great many English terms instead). When my family first came to Seattle, they were introduced to Russian families, some Jewish, some not; they remain some of our closest friends. The celebrations and parties we share with them tend to reinforce Russian customs of social bonding, including (hours and hours of) food, drink and conversation.

       In popular culture, the Russian language is often assumed to be an “angry” language, or the language spoken by the movie villains. I often hear burly attempts at a Russian accent, always spoken in the lowest register possible. But I believe Russian is a beautiful and poetic language, a language of love. I have wanted to explore the lasting cultural implications of the historical relationship between the US and Russia, and see what assumptions continue to be reinforced today. I would enjoy being an ambassador for the Russian language as one that is artistically rich, and fun to know and learn.