HOW I WAS OFFICIALLY STRIPPED OF MY JEWISHNESS Working on my US citizenship application, I vividly remember my first attempt to legalize myself in this country. Naturally, I came to HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) to apply for political asylum. It was 1991. At the beginning all went well: a nice and caring English-speaking woman explained to me how it works. She called me at home a couple of times asking if I need anything. Once she called me to let me know that I was going to have an appointment in a month or two. And then there was silence for another three months. I called HIAS. Now they all spoke Russian. They told me that I already missed my appointment. I got puzzled. I insisted. They set an appointment just to deny my Jewishness officially. I’m not good with the names, but I cannot forget the name of the representative of that official Hebrew organization, who took the responsibility to proclaim me non-Jewish despite my Jewish maternal lineage: Alla Shagalova. “You’re not Jewish. And you don’t look like one”, she said. I felt disgusted, I must admit (I even cried, I must confess). When I called my grandma in Kiev, who survived the pogroms, a bloody revolution, two wars, Holodomor, and overall anti-Semitic environment, she refused to believe in this: “It must have been a mistake! Go back and tell them! Such nonsense, ah!” My mother managed to send me the original of my birth certificate, which I received two days later (I showed a copy in HIAS, and Mrs. Shagalova expressed suspicion that it was not real). I called HIAS, but they even refused to grant me another appointment. My friends advised me to file a complaint. But I looked around, at this fantastic City, and I said to my friends: “So far HIAS is a worst thing that happened to me in this country. If they have the right to decide my nationality by my look or by the means of some secret knowledge they possess, how are they different from the Soviet Union (which still existed at that time)? How can this purely bureaucratic nonsense be a part of my life here, in glorious New York City? I will let them simmer in their shit without me. They officially proclaimed me non-Jewish, I officially proclaim myself a Native-American who happened to be born in Ukraine. And now I came home. Therefore, I do not need any papers.” My friends laughed and handled me a pipe, and I lived happily ever after. But since then Alla Shagalova became an almost biblical figure for me, someone on the level of Moses or, at least, Solomon. I received the green card in 2002. My grandma passed away in 2000. She was waiting for my return all those years, sitting on the balcony and watching the bus stop on the corner.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 23:32:02 +0000
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