The Avatamsaka Sutra has this teaching:
The one contains the all
Today Anna Khodorovich and Zhenya Safina enthusiastically shared
Their Russian culture in our Intercultural Studies class
They gave us a fascinating overview of a world about which (I guessed)
People knew very little beyond stereotypes of snow and vodka
Thich Nhat Hanh reminds me:
I and Russia inter-are
My great-grandparents left czarist Russia
They came like hundreds of thousands of Jews to the US
They spoke Yiddish (did they know Russian, too)
Did they see Lady Liberty outside of NYC?
I can look at my hand and see generations
Of Goldbergs and Salzmans stretching back through misty time
My poet and painter friend would tell me from time to time
“You’re so Jewish”
She herself left Russia with her family when she was 7
Arrived in Israel in 1979
Her Russian name was Yulia
Her Hebrew name– a necessity– is Yael
Anna and Zhenya talked about the primacy of Pushkin
Reminding me of an Israeli (originally from Eastern Europe)
He visited Emmanuel Levinas and saw Pushkin’s complete works on the bookshelves
He told Levinas, “One can see right away that one is in a Jewish house!”
Our home as I was growing up was different:
A cheap encyclopedia set and Reader’s Digest
John, Cab, and I are gradually coming to the end
Of our long immersion in The Brothers Karamazov
How we will miss Alyosha, Fyodor, Ivan, Zosima, Grushenka,
Grygor, Mitya, Markel, Liza, Katerina, and, yes, Smerdyakov!
The Russian students reminded me of something I’d forgotten
My father rarely talked about his Russian Jewish mother and her homeland
What one generation wants to forget
Another generation wants to retrieve
–Improv Wisdom Writing class, spring 2014
