UCSJ proudly inaugurates the latest feature of FSUMonitor.com, entitled 'FSU Jewish Culture Page,' with Raisa K., a 60+ year old Jewish political asylum applicant from Kharkiv, currently in deportation proceedings in New York, expressing some of her innermost feelings about the situation in which she currently finds herself.
(Submitted by UCSJ Board Member, Richard Geduldig, Esq.)

Instead of G-d

At school's threshold,
In my tender age,
Like many others,
I was deprived of G-d.

What was given instead? The portraits
Of party leaders,
Glorious couplets,
And the motto: "Be ready!"

Be ready to endure contempt,
Lies, words without ideas,
Silence and patience:
You are Jewish after all.

Don't forget, remember always
Your destiny!
You were a slave in Egypt,
So be a slave now!

I am ready to endure beatings,
To hail scoundrels,
Ready to be a scapegoat,
When sages are being persecuted.

I am ready... But I don't want
To dance to their tune!
I am Jewish! No one
Can trample down my pride!

In response to every beating
I write poems,
Only my friends read them,
Sure, not the enemies.

For now I only fight
With rhyme defending my pride.
Who will show me another way?
Who will bless me?

----------------------------------

To Richard Geduldig

In the street I see the faces
Of anti-Semites of my past,
As if I see New York in dreams,
Being embraced by my past misfortunes.

They wear the Stars of David on their breasts
(Having hidden away their icons),
While I recollect the graves
And the town devastated
By their grim grandfathers,
Fathers, brothers, and sisters,

The town was looted and desecrated
Both in peaceful time and in war time.
When I am recollecting the Soviets
With their wild hatred towards us,
I am afraid that their couplets
Will wake us up in the morning again:
They'll tell us how wide the country is,
How a person is breathing freely*,
And how we all shall go to cold distant lands**
To outlive our lives there.

When I see those faces
Prospering at the expense of Jews,
I do not only see Babi Yar in my dreams,
But I'm scared for my people.
Now they are Jews, while I am without kin,
Though I was circumcised by my granddad,
They are prospering and fat.

I sweat for my every penny,
And have to prove to the whole world
That I am a hundred percent Jewish,
Who left all of my possessions
Not to gain mire, but to save kids,
That having fled, I left
My house, my car, my goods,
And a "boss" at the customs
Forced me to leave documents and wine,
Dollars and jewelry were taken away forever.

The law of their wise rule
Is to rip Jews off to their skin.
They took everything, everything was lost,
But the taste of Freedom is sweet!
I began my life from scratch,
And I am not afraid of being Jewish.
I have one sorrow though:
To become a slave of my enemies,
Of those impostors from Russia,
Who hate us.
I have not left everything, though,
In order to serve them again:
I have endured a lot, it's enough
To be a slave of anti-Semites,
I'm fed up by their lies,
It's time they were cast away:
If they are part of Jewry,
Then I am not Jewish!

New York, 08/04/98

________________________________________________________________

Every day in the former Soviet Union started with a song "Wide is My Native Land," including the GULAG, where the lines:

"I do not know another country

Where a human being breathes so freely,"

sounded especially humiliating. [Author's note.]

** According to Stalin's decision, all Jews of the USSR should have been arrested and sent to the camps of Siberia on March 18, 1953. G-d the Almighty saved His children, having taken the life of the worst criminal of the century on March 5, 1953. [Author's note.]

WHY?

They called us rats,
But who is a bigger (more of a) rat:
He with his greedy Raisa*
Or a Jew downtrodden by life?

We haven't betrayed anybody,
We haven't abandoned our ships,
We've lost instantly
Everything we've earned so hard.

We were not treated as natives,
And were rarely promoted
To leading positions,
He was the boss, we were his serves.

Most of the time we were rank and file,
Fulfilling various duties.
They considered us pirates,
And shook us as their enemies.

They called us louses,
Sucking blood from their people,
A Jew was pierced by the word a "kike,"
As if by a brooch.

We couldn't lie in our lives,
And worked till we were worn out,
We taught our sons to be firm
In heat and chill for their motherland.

Don't lie, work without further ado,
The country should be strong:
This is your house and your power!
All the rest doesn't matter.

We were hostages. What for?
For fighting for the country or
Because we did not steal?
And every day was our war.

Because all Jews went to fight
In the years of bloody slaughter?
Because your granddad broke his back,
Working as if he were in hell?
Because your grandma was killed
By a Ukrainian Cossack in a pogrom,
And granddad in his daily toil
Could hardly feed his seven kids?

Because your mother worked like a slave
For many years of her life?
Because your uncle was sent under guard
By the will of a Stalin's satrap?

For all our men who did not return
From the bloody battles of the world war?
For your father who was killed
Defending Moscow in that war?

For all the boys of our family
Who were killed in many countries?
Because we are all covered with scars?
Because we were not loved by our native land?

Because we were the best chess players
And had famous doctors among us?
Because we lived modestly
And taught our kids to love culture?

Because we did not squander our money on drinks,
Did not beat our wives, did not curse our mothers,
Because we learned to grasp art
And tried to unweave

The mystery of words, the meaning of a painting,
The hidden layer and forgotten light?
For their parades and lies
Of long bloody years?

For all our genius Einsteins?
For diligence and fear?
For the fact that a flag with a sickle
Is flapping over the world again?

Because we do not want to live as before,
To work for them and fear for our lives?
Because the way to hope is long
To the country which became our mother?

* The author hints at Mr. Gorbachev and his wife Raisa. [Translator's note.]

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