Apr 11 2012
By Alina Adams at 4:17 pm
Do I need to ditch my ex-Soviet roots?
The JCC of the Upper West Side (in New York City) held an art exhibition last month. It was called “Migrants Nation” and, according to curator Vitaly Umansky, “Artists represented in this exhibition underwent assimilation either into an Israeli or American reality; they all have personal stories; they are all individuals. However, they all share one history. Regardless of the environment to which they had to assimilate to, they all have different levels of nostalgia, analysis, and assimilation.”
All of the artists in the exhibition were born in the former Soviet Union, and all emigrated as children in either the 1970s or 1980s. Exactly like me. Read the rest of this entry →
Jan 19 2012
By Erika K. Davis at 9:49 am
We don't all look like this.
I’m not a mother, yet, but I hope to be one day. I enjoy reading Kveller for a variety of reasons, one of them being my 90s obsession with Mayim Bialik, and others have to do with my obsession with motherhood. I’m a 32-year-old black, lesbian Jewish woman madly in love with an Ashkenazi Jewish woman from Texas. While we’re definitely not in the place where we’re making plans for children, it’s on our radar. Read the rest of this entry →
Dec 22 2011
By Alina Adams at 5:25 pm
“Cause we neeeeeed a little Christmas!” my second grader goes around singing at the top of his lungs, prompting his 4-year-old sister to join in a chorus of: “Roll out the hollyyyy….”
So far, he’s committed the above show tune from Mame, along with The Night Before Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and A Child’s Christmas in Wales, to memory. He’s also being fitted for a pair of antlers.
Yes, it’s that time of year again. The time when little Jewish children are recruited into class plays. That all seem to circle around a certain theme.
This isn’t my first (or last) time at this particular, seasonal rodeo. I have a 12-year-old in seventh grade, and another one heading to Kindergarten next year (God willing, see earlier blog post).
In the beginning, the mandatory, school-sanctioned December revelry used to bother me. (And no, I was not appeased by the fact that, one winter crafts period, they also glued together some Jewish stars out of Popsicle sticks. The sticks were bright yellow, and when the boys came out of school wearing yellow, Jewish stars pinned to their navy blue blazers, well… you can imagine.) Read the rest of this entry →
