My great grandfather arrived in America in the late 19th century. Likely as he took a sigh of escape from Polish pogroms, he started to hear explosions. He ran to the train ticket office, put all his money on the counter, and told the clerk in broken English to send him on the next train he could afford.
It was the Fourth of July, the explosions were celebratory fireworks, and he had arrived on Boston Harbor. The clerk gave him a ticket to Worcester, MA, where he was taken in by the local rabbi and met my great grandmother. Then came my grandfather, my mother, and then me. All of us experienced what it means to be Jewish and American.
My great grandfather became a baker and started a chain with his newfound freedom: Liberty Bakeries. My mom’s earliest memory is watching her grandfather braid challah for his American business, swiftly and deftly. Both of my maternal great grandfathers served in the American Army in World War I and my grandfather would grow up and serve in the American Navy in World War II, subsequently attending three American universities on the GI Bill then taking over the family business. He and my grandmother raised their family of six in a beautiful home in Springfield, MA, not far from Worcester. They returned to religious observance as their children came home with crafts and practices from their Jewish day school. Their lives were filled with Jewish discovery and nurturing communities.
When all of my grandparents’ children had moved out of Springfield, my grandfather announced that he wanted their next home to be in Israel. Plans changed, and with a vague hope that the grandchildren would move to Israel eventually, they moved to a warm Jewish community in Maryland instead. Recently, my grandfather’s health began to decline and the kids began whispering about the burial plots that my grandparents had bought in Springfield. My grandmother spoke up. He should be buried in Israel, she said. They both should. He always wanted his home to be in Israel, and now it will be. My grandfather is buried in Beit Shemesh, Israel, and has been visited many times by his two grandsons who have moved as he hoped.
My siblings, my cousins, and I grew up in a country of independence, with a remarkable, long lasting freedom as Jews to live meaningful and full Jewish lives. My great grandfather started his career in this country thinking he still needed to run away. Further generations’ America, though complicated and often rife with contradictions, gave us the option to stay. If we go, we go willingly. If we stay, we may join our country’s institutions, businesses, and culture without compromising our religious identities.
I don’t think I fully grasped how lucky I am to be a Jew in America right now until last year.
My friends and I were on vacation and I was chatting with the owner of our B & B right outside Venice. Hearing that I was from America, he excitedly asked me where my family immigrated from. I told him a blend of Poland and Russia, and his eyes widened as he asked me if I spoke Russian or Polish. No, I smiled, just a bit of Yiddish. A mix of German and Hebrew, I tried to explain.
What he really couldn’t grasp, the owner told me in fairly good English, was how my family moved around so much. His family had been in this same town in Italy for as far back as he could record, generation after generation. He couldn’t imagine anyone picking up and immigrating after so much Italian tradition.
We didn’t choose to leave these countries, I didn’t say to him. Jews don’t get to choose to leave or stay. We move where we are pushed or we stay in our ghettos.
Of course, I didn’t say that. I just smiled and said, yes, that sounds different.
Yet here I am, celebrating my last Day of Independence as an American resident, a month and a half away from moving my home address to my homeland. I’ve spent my life in America engaging with its freedoms and cultures, never appreciative enough of the opportunities I was given as a student in schools which challenged me to shape an enriched religious identity, or as a Jewish, female graduate of an American Ivy League university. I’m not smuggling myself out, escaping pogroms or DP camps like my father’s parents, nor desperately leaving all my money on the counter of a ticket clerk.
I have the privilege of watching the fireworks this year with more gratitude to be an American than my great grandfather once grasped. I am grateful for the ability to choose to board a plane next month to Israel, smiling (probably through some tears) and standing upright. I am grateful as an American Jew for the choice, freedom, and bravery to fly home.
