From the Snow to the Sand

From the Snow to the Sand

“Get up, it’s time to go!” The words startled Marina awake. It was the middle of a blistering cold and windy Moscow winter night, and it was to be the last one they ever spent there as a family. The options were bleak for Russian Jews in the 1970’s; anti-Semitism was institutionalized under Soviet rule and that made any economic or academic advancement impossible. At 19 years old, Marina knew that to live her life meant leaving this place, but that also meant that she would have to leave everything that she had ever known. It was November 19, 1978, after a year's worth of meticulous visa paperwork and permits orchestrated by her mother, Tina, they were finally leaving the Soviet Union. People would say “They may as well have been going to Mars,” because they knew that anyone who left was never, ever coming back. Far from the snowy and cold, it was as close to another planet as you could get, the sunny and sandy Middle East. Not far from the house where Marina’s uncle lived and would send them gifts and postcards with pictures from within their Promised Land, Israel.

As a teenager, Marina made friends with other Russian-Jewish youths. Secretly meeting near the only synagogue in Moscow, they would teach each other how to read, write, and speak Hebrew, which was prohibited by the government. “Some of my friends who taught us Hebrew were sent to jail, others were caught and were threatened to be sent to the army.” she remembers. They would all gather and talk about escaping the Soviet Union and the joining the growing Zionist movement in Israel. It wasn’t long until she noticed her community thinning out and fewer people were showing up to meetings. “One night” Marina remembers, “I was sitting with my (ex)boyfriend at the metro. A very drunk, alcoholic man is standing in front of us. He reeks of alcohol, looks at us and says ‘I can’t believe this f*****g Jew is going out with this pretty Russian girl.” Shocked and surprised, they both jumped up. “My boyfriend was very against anti-Semitism, being Jewish. And I was angry that this man thought that I was Russian and not Jewish.” It was at that moment Marina knew “that’s enough.” She had to get out.