All posts by rtriless

Connecting Past to Present: Polish Jewry

Interview

I first met Jonny Daniels in the Warsaw airport; I heard a booming, unfamiliar voice with a British accent saying something about the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto and the transformative experience I could only assume I was about to have. I was among a group of jet lagged American students who had just arrived in Poland for a Holocaust education and service trip. The trip was led by the organization From the Depths and focused on not only what had been destroyed in the Holocaust, but what remains today.

Daniels is the founder of From the Depths, which works to preserve memory of the Holocaust. The organization draws its name from Psalms 130, in which a psalmist pleads for mercy, saying “from the depths, I have cried out to you, O Lord.” These “depths” are a metaphor for anguish, and the goal of the organization is to bridge the dark, painful past of the Holocaust to a better future. Since starting From the Depths three years ago in Poland, Daniels has been working to uncover Jewish hiding spots and unmarked graves, commemorate Poles who saved Jews from Nazis, and return Jewish gravestones used for post-war construction back to Jewish cemeteries.

He realized that thousands of Jewish gravestones are to this day used as building material in Polish family homes, roads, and even playgrounds, and no one is working to honor the individuals they represent. Daniels tasked himself with this project and decided to move to Poland from Israel. He was born and raised in London, England, but took a gap year in Israel before college, fell in love with Israel and never moved back. He then served in the Israeli army as a paratrooper and went on to study Political Science at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv. After getting his degree, Daniels worked as an adviser in the Israeli Parliament, so navigating a new political and social scene wasn’t new for him. Poland, however, was a unique challenge, especially for a foreign Jew who wanted to dig in Polish backyards.

The uncovering of what remained of Polish Jewry after the Holocaust is a very recent occurrence in Poland, which has a long history of antisemitism. During Nazi occupation of Poland, some Poles participated in the killing of Jews. After the war, there were several outbreaks of antisemitic violence targeted at Jewish refugees. Under the Soviet-imposed Communist regime which lasted until 1989, the tiny number of Jews left were used as scapegoats by both the regime protesters and the regime itself.

Some disturbing remnants of this history are easy to spot in modern-day Poland and were a source of culture shock for the American students—myself included—who traveled around Poland with Daniels. On a narrow, crowded street of Warsaw, we passed an antique store with the cover of a Torah scroll displayed in the window. Decorating this cover was a Nazi uniform cap. Several blocks away from the store was a souvenir shop with Jewish caricature dolls. The dolls came in all sizes, were dressed in Hasidic black clothes and Jewish prayer shawls, and generally held a large gold coin. I mustered the courage and asked a shop owner, “What are these for?” She responded in broken English, explaining “ehh… people who look like this…in the past,” (she added, probably remembering that there are none left) “have a lot of money and keep it. So if you have one, you will have a lot of money and luck!”

In a place that seems completely devoid of sensitivity—where sacred Jewish texts, swastikas, and Jew dolls are all just souvenirs along with Warsaw fridge magnets—it’s remarkable that Daniels has been able to find so many Poles willing to help with Jewish restoration work.

Volunteers including Polish Strongman Federation members—led by the winner of the Strongman Cup, the strongest man in Poland—have helped move the (physically and emotionally) heavy Jewish gravestones used in construction projects back to Jewish cemeteries. A group of Polish high school students teamed up with the firemen in their tiny rural town to clean the abandoned local Jewish cemetery. Several hours of driving away, residents of Krakow help run the local Jewish Community Center, which is staffed almost exclusively with non-Jewish volunteers. These volunteers play a crucial role in helping the few local Jews, many of whom have only recently discovered Jewish roots, to explore their history and identity.

The trip allowed me to meet both individuals who entirely lack sensitivity and care, and individuals who are willing to help commemorate a history that they have no personal connection to. It has been several months since the trip but I’m still processing these polar opposite realities existing side by side. I’m only beginning to formulate the questions that I didn’t have the time to ask in Poland.

RT: How did you get into the business of Holocaust education?

JD: I started working in Holocaust education when my daughter was born. We named her after my ex-wife’s grandmother, who was a survivor of Auschwitz and unfortunately passed just before my daughter was born. And I realized that there would be nobody around to speak and to tell the stories to my children. No survivors would be left. And it was on our generation to do something about it.

I flew to the States and I met with Professor Elie Wiesel and asked him, “Professor, how can I be involved? Who am I? You know, I’m not a Holocaust historian, I’m not an educator, I’ve got no PhD. How dare I discuss such a thing?” He said to me, “Jonny, your generation needs to stand and must stand and become witnesses of the witnesses.” He said to me, “Jonny, you’re my witness.” So really what spurred me in terms of Holocaust education was the thought process that our generation is the last connection to those survivors and we have to stand and do something. If we don’t, absolutely nobody else will. And that’s when I really decided to start my organization, dealing with the issue of Holocaust memory.

RT: Why was Poland your focus?

JD: My great-grandfather himself survived the Holocaust. He was born in Poland. I was born and raised in the United Kingdom and Holocaust survivors were a very important part of my upbringing.

Poland, you know, was the main focus, the center place of the Holocaust. This is where the majority of killings were. This is the site where most of my Jewish brethren lost their lives. So in terms of dealing with that, I found that Poland would be the most interesting place to work. Over the last few years Poland turned from a very difficult communistic regime which they had up to about 25 years ago, into a country where there were people who had interest in discussing their past, were interested in building for a future. So in terms of the work that we do, really, there wasn’t anywhere better for us to do that than Poland itself.

RT: On the student trip, we met several people who had just discovered that they were Jewish. I was wondering why is it that it has taken so long? Why is it that people have held on to that secret for decades after the Holocaust?

JD: Well after the Holocaust Poland was taken over by the Soviets. It was a communist regime where any kind of religion was looked down upon, and especially Judaism. Poland was also remarkably antisemitic. In 1968 there was a purge where the Jews, the few of them who had remained and were public about it were sort of, you know, held responsible for the evil communism in this country, which, needless to say is untrue. And so to be Jewish under communist rule wasn’t something, necessarily, that you’d want to speak about. So those that did keep their Jewish roots, or knew of them, would hide them. And there was obviously the epidemic of hidden children, where children were hidden during the Holocaust who then later found out that their parents weren’t actually their parents and that they were saved from the train going to Auschwitz or hidden in a monastery and no one came to collect them. So the last 25 years you get this openness in Poland, this democracy. There’s been a real want and interest to understand that past.

RT: How do you think antisemitism in Poland is different from Western Europe and North America? I think this is particularly interesting because everyone in our group of Americans had culture shock over the fact that there were antisemitic caricature Jewish dolls sold in souvenir stores. It’s really something that people almost don’t believe exists, but it does, clearly.

JD: In Poland, Poles don’t view them as antisemitic. In Poland, Poles view them as good luck charms. They don’t see it as something that’s anti semitic or wrong and it’s a question of sensitivity whether we view them as wrong. Needless to say, it’s not nice to portray or caricature anybody. However, on the other hand, they’re not doing it to necessarily be evil. In fact Poles have them in their houses as good luck charms. We know it’s nonsense and pathetic. However, they feel that it’s something sort of meaningful and important to them.

And it differs from Western antisemitism especially that we’ve seen a rise in. Because antisemitism in the other parts of Europe isn’t the same antisemitism that it was seventy years ago. Seventy years ago we were seeing antisemitism by Christians, we were seeing antisemitism by locals. Killing of the Jews was done by Germans and Poles and Ukrainians. What we’re seeing now in Europe is that antisemitism is unfortunately happening by radical Islamists. And they don’t have those in Poland. Poland is a very Polish country, with very few immigrants. So we don’t really see that kind of antisemitism.

RT: Has antisemitism been in the way of your work? Have you experienced it? Has it hindered anything you’ve tried to do?

JD: I think it’s very interesting that in Poland itself, I don’t feel or see much antisemitism. The antisemitism that is here is definitely not institutional. It’s not antisemitism that comes from the government or from any main institutions. It’s more from people and that purely comes out as a result of ignorance as opposed to anything else. By ignorance, I mean people who have heard something about the Jews but have never met one before. For example, I was with the right-hand man of the Polish Minister of Culture and he turned to me and said “oh, we all know that Jews treat women the same way that Arabs treat them. Women aren’t allowed this, they aren’t allowed that… When they divorce their husbands, their children get taken away.” You know, a very strange understanding. But more than anything it’s all ignorance and from the fact that there are no Jews really living there for them to ask, that they have these opinions. So antisemitism hasn’t really affected me at all. In fact the philosemitism, the strong connection towards Judaism that a lot of Poles feel has actually helped.

RT: On the trip you mentioned that in some social circles Jewish things were seen as cool – Jewish cuisine, Jewish names among a completely Polish populations.

JD: Right so 10% of the Polish population pre-1938 were jews and Jews had a large impact on the Polish culture. Some of the most famous writers and singers and chefs and cuisine, were Jewish. And there’s been sort of a nostalgia to that past that’s presented itself over the last few years. In Poland last year there were something like 28 Jewish culture festivals where Jewish music was played, Jewish food was eaten, and people feel very strongly connected to that. A lot of people will tell you that they know they have Jewish roots or they can feel that they have Jewish roots. So it’s seen as something very cool.

RT: Could you talk about the Polish volunteers that restore graveyards and report mass grave sites. In a culture that’s historically been antisemitic, what is their motivation?

JD: We have to remember that Poland was the country that Jews lived in for close to a thousand years when no one else would take us in. There wasn’t one country that wasn’t antisemitic. You know, the United States was grotesquely antisemitic until a couple of years ago. So times change and people change and I think we’re seeing a lot of that on one hand. And on the other hand, like we spoke about before there is an interest amongst the young generation to look at their past and a certain nostalgia. And so I think it’s that more than anything else.

RT: Is the Polish Jewish community growing or shrinking?

JD: It’s definitely shrinking. There’s the issue that the older Jews are dying. It’s also not the easiest place to be a Jew. Kosher meat isn’t readily available so a lot of people will move and head off to other places, go to different countries, for example, Israel, the United States. So it’s definitely not a sustainable community. There’s no sort of real Jewish life to be had.

RT: Does that mean it’s going to get harder to commemorate Jewish life?

JD: Of course. But I mean it’s a trend. Like we’ll see synagogues in certain states and cities in America where there once were Jews and there no longer are. And again it doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad. So this is just a trend that we see a lot and it’s nothing specific about Poland per say. It’s just Jews are a traveling people.

 

Parents, Pay for College

Letter to the editor

Re “Should You Pay for Your Child’s College Education?” (NBC News, April 3, 2016):

You make the point that it’s okay for parents to decide not to pay for their kids’ college when they don’t have the means. This is certainly true, but such parents are not addressed in the article. Your suggestion that parents make their financial support conditional on their children’s grades and have them take a gap year to work—at most likely a minimum-wage job—is not financially useful for parents who truly don’t have the means to pay. Parents who really can’t pay could decide not to send their child to college at all, but nowhere does the article suggest that this is an option. The parents the article actually addresses are those who don’t want to pay but still expect their children to find a way to go to college.

In case these parents feel a twinge of guilt about forcing their kids to take on massive debt to pay for college, the article soothes their concerns: “Not all high school seniors are academically or emotionally ready for college.” A year in the working world “gives them a sense of accountability,” says the article, so making your children work to pay for college is actually good for them. To judge from its title, the article is about the parents’ finances. However, a child’s emotional readiness has little to do with finances, except that it excuses parents’ unwillingness to pay.

Some parents have good reasons not to pay for college. Those addressed in the article do not. Parents who have the means to pay for college and expect their children to go to college should pay for their children’s college education.

Ida: Simple Complexity

Film review

Brushing and scraping sounds heard over white noise bring us into the opening scene of Ida, a black-and-white film that follows a novice nun’s journey of self-discovery in 1960s Poland.

The shuffling of feet and crunching of soil accompany colorless shots of dusty countryside roads in Poland under the communist dictatorship, nearly twenty years after Nazi occupation. Sheets billow in the wind on clotheslines and chickens cluck in the yard.

Though this kind of simplicity in Ida has been criticized as vague, the sparse dialogue, silent glimpses into Ida’s thoughts, and visual symbols provide ample information to give the viewer insight into her character transformation. The grey complexity of human nature is revealed through the simplicity of the black-and-white views, commonplace sounds and terse dialogue. In a sensorily underwhelming reality, Ida’s story fully comes to life in the viewer’s imagination.

The movie begins by following Anna, a teenage girl raised in a post-World War II Polish convent and about to take her vows to become a nun. Before Anna takes her vows, the mother superior sends her to meet her aunt Wanda, who tells Anna that she is Jewish and her birth name is Ida Lebenstein. Wanda is a cynical judge who condemns those deemed trivially anti-Communist to terrible punishments. Her work has brought her wealth, including her own apartment and car—rare in poor post-war Poland—but not, it seems, satisfaction. She smokes, brings home strange men from bars, and drinks heavily and frequently.

Ida asks Wanda to see her parents’ graves. Since many of those killed in the Holocaust have unmarked graves or no graves at all, Ida and Wanda search for the fate of Ida’s parents, and as we later learn, also the fate of Wanda’s young son. They discover that a Pole who was hiding the Lebensteins from the Nazis killed the whole family but spared baby Ida and left her in a convent. After Ida and Wanda rebury their family, Wanda commits suicide by jumping out of a window and Ida returns to the convent.

When the aunt and niece embark on a journey to find what remains of their family, Anna desperately clings to what she knows—her prayers, her nun’s habit, and the Bible. While Wanda does all the talking, questioning, arguing, and even threatening in attempts to get information about the graves, Anna stands outside silently and doesn’t even admit to being related to her parents. It’s difficult to tell if Anna feels or thinks anything at all. She refuses to partake in worldly pleasures like drinking, smoking, dancing, and eating doughnuts, so her actions don’t disclose any internal changes. She perfectly maintains her humble, saintly demeanor. Too perfectly. She is trusted and revered by everyone she meets—police who arrest her aunt for drunk-driving, Polish villagers, and even her parents’ murderer: “God be with you, sister,” “bless my baby, sister,” “I know I can trust you, sister.”

Just as one might start to imagine a smug self-righteousness under that blank stare, her stone-cold expressionless exterior starts to crack. For the first time in the film, she discloses something about herself in a conversation. While talking to Lis, a young saxophonist who hitchhikes in Wanda’s car, she says “I was raised in a convent. And now I’m Jewish too.” Because she doesn’t talk much, this short conversation stands out and is the first explicit hint for the viewer that Ida is not perfectly emotionless and that she has been accepting her newfound identity, albeit slowly. The next day she finally introduces herself as her parents’ daughter and comforts her distraught aunt as they learn the details of the murder of the family.

After Ida and Wanda rebury the bones in their family graveyard, Ida returns to the convent. With her usual blank expression she makes garlands to take her vows. But then, in stark contrast to the expressionless faces of nuns and the sounds of tapping spoons against bowls, she giggles during a convent meal. It’s the kind of uncontrollable giggle that slips out at the most inappropriate moments. She later stares as novice nuns bathe. Maybe she’s remembering Wanda’s one-night stands. Maybe she is thinking about her own sexuality. Either way, these brief moments clearly show that she has changed and sees routine convent life with fresh eyes.

When Wanda commits suicide Ida once again leaves the convent to attend the funeral. She spends the night in her aunt’s empty apartment, trying on heels and a night dress, smoking her first cigarette and drinking vodka from the bottle. The next morning, Ida comes to the funeral without her habit.

At the funeral, she sees Lis again. Afterwards, Ida listens to his band, he teaches her how to dance and they have sex. Lis invites her to travel to the seaside with his band and Ida asks “what then?” He suggests they can “get a dog, get married, have kids.” He offers her everything he can—music, love, and family, but he can’t tell her what will come then. He can’t promise her fulfillment and salvation.

In the morning, while Lis is asleep, Ida sits up in bed and silently looks around the room. She goes over the conversation with Lis in her mind. She puts on her nun’s habit and leaves.

Ida starts out as a rather predictable character—Anna. Becoming a nun is a natural choice for Anna, given that she has never experienced life outside of the convent. But over the course of her journey, with Ida becoming a central part of her identity, she sacrifices this uninformed peace of mind. The transformed Ida has choices to make. At the beginning of the film, Wanda insisted that Ida’s vows are meaningless if Ida has never experienced what she vows to give up. Now Ida knows what she’s giving up. In the last moments of the film, as Ida walks down a country dirt road the director comes to the viewer’s aid. Music plays in the background– Bach’s “I Call To You, Lord Jesus Christ.” Finally, the viewer has no doubt that Ida has chosen to take her vows.

The music confirms what the viewer is already prepared for. Ida’s path is shown even earlier. On the night before Wanda’s funeral, Ida puts on Wanda’s heels and drunkenly wobbles to the same window from which Wanda recently jumped. But she doesn’t open it. Instead Ida twirls, engulfed in the lace curtain—either a veil or a cocoon. She twirls slowly and then faster and faster until she falls and disappears from the screen, like Wanda. But she doesn’t fall to her death. Instead Ida is reborn and, like a butterfly, emerges out of her cocoon with a past, roots, and life experience. If the curtain is a veil and Ida is the bride, she is the bride of Jesus Christ. This ordinary curtain encapsulates Ida’s slow acceptance of her past, her transformation, her rebirth, and her final destination. No complex details are needed to capture Ida’s journey.

The Green Dog at the Cat Circus

Feature article

I was looking forward to spending the afternoon with my cousin Oleg, whom I hadn’t seen in years. He was waiting on the snowy steps outside my dormitory. “We’re going to the circus.” Ada, his girlfriend, had gotten last-minute tickets to take her little sister to a show called “A Winter’s Tale” and on the spur of the moment, I couldn’t come up with a better plan. A trip to the circus was really not on my to-do list for two weeks in Moscow. In fact, surrounded by world-class theaters, museums, and food, listening to shrieking children and watching actors run around in clown noses and wigs was probably the last activity that I would have chosen. But I had no way out. At least I’d see bears trained to take vodka shots, I thought, or maybe a Russian-roaring tiger.

We were greeted in the lobby by a clown wearing felt boots under his galoshes, quilted pants, and a blue polka dot button-up, in all ways a stark contrast to the circus-goers. The dressing room next door was packed with little boys in slacks and girls in fancy dresses. The boys tied their ties while the girls changed from their bulky winter boots into glittery heels under the strict gaze of their parents and grandparents. “Do you remember how to untie your laces, Anya?” an elderly lady asked a smiling blonde girl in a purple velvet dress, while parting a boy’s hair with a wooden comb. “I do!” the boy responded. “How many times must I tell you not to raise your voice indoors?!” chided the grandmother. “You’re in a theater, for goodness’ sake!” Oleg told me how his parents bought him a new pair of slacks to go to the circus and took him to the circus cafe to make sure he could properly sip a Russian fruit drink called компот in public. For the grown-ups, any show is a welcome chance to teach their children manners.

Finally, the crowd of well-trained children and their trainers moved to take their seats. A wave of shushes swept through the room as the first chords sounded. The show plot was quite simple, as the recommended age for viewers was 0+. On a snowy winter day, a hunter comes to a forest. His repeated attempts at shooting are foiled by forest animals and their beautiful snow queen. He tries to shoot a bunny, played by a stocky man in a onesie, but the rifle flies out of the hunter’s hands and onto a little sled – a sled pulled by a bushy white cat running on its hind paws. Not a human in a costume, but an actual feline cat. As the hunter chases the sled, another cat jumps in the way and he trips.

A cat circus. For the love of God, I’m watching a cat circus in what little free time I have here in Moscow.

The audience boisterously laughs. The cat with the sled with the rifle disappears behind the curtains. After several failed attempts at hunting, the hunter sees the error of his ways and befriends the animals of the forest. And the cats.

The cats’ job was to help the snow queen save the forest animals, but even when their services were not required, they were present on stage for no apparent reason. While the hunter argued with the snow queen in the middle of the forest, there was a completely irrelevant cat just sitting on a shelf in the background. I mentioned it to Oleg during intermission. “That,” he said, “is an excellent example of the ‘green dog method.’” “It’s a tactic rumored to have been used by a clever Soviet theater painter to avoid any criticism of the content or import of his art.” The Soviet government exercised control over any form of expression and regularly sent inspectors to determine whether a work was pro-Soviet enough to be shown to the public. The painter would add a little green dog to all of his pieces so the art inspectors’ committee would get caught up “convincing” him to paint over the misplaced green dog. The painter would thus avoid any serious critique.

Not even a children’s circus show could avoid a review by the committee, so the “green dog method” was transformed into the “cat method.” If one dog served as a distraction, dozens of cats would be more than enough. When inspecting the cat circus, the committee could argue whether there were too many cats on stage, whether it’s acceptable to use the American Shorthair breed, and whether Murka was a name patriotic enough for the star cat. The cats were enough work for inspectors to get so lost in fluff that they would miss a detail or two of potentially less-than-patriotic humor. Working with cats thus provided not only an artistic niche, but also some freedom from scrutiny.

Our discussion was interrupted by bells signaling the end of intermission. The music slowly drowned out whispered conversations and the already-familiar cats began to jump between the trees and the hunter’s head, climb through obstacle courses with his encouragement, and even paw their way across parallel bars. Both children and adults ooh’d and ah’d watching as cats surrounded the hunter, dancing in a frenzy on their hind paws and creating a flurry of motion over the stage. Even the parents seemed too captivated to shush their children and pull them back to the seats. Glancing at Ada, I saw that her smile was just as wide as that of her little sister, who was so entranced that she had forgotten to squirm and squeal. But as soon as the show ended and the human actors with cats weaving between their feet took their bows, the adults were back on duty, nagging and scolding.

I left wondering what it was that made the cat circus so wildly successful with audiences of all ages. By allowing viewers to reimagine unremarkable animals, maybe it has always served as relief from grey, banal life. Ada told me afterwards that, as a child she left the show convinced that her house cat was actually a bewitched prince charming.

Certainly the method of misplaced cats provided both an outlet for the imagination and protection from the art inspectors. Today, there are no government art inspectors and the law backs freedom of expression. Yet the circus website still describes its children’s shows as promoting not only respect for elders but also “love and respect for the Fatherland, its people and culture.” Performance arts in Russia are largely government funded, so such a disclaimer can only benefit the circus. I didn’t notice any pro-”Fatherland” lessons incorporated into the show, so maybe the “cat method” is just as useful in the circus today as it was decades ago.

Those who came to the circus as kids grew up yearning to experience a sense of freedom and return as adults with kids of their own. For brief moments, protected by the green dog— or, as in this case, cats— government-trained adults with their parent-trained children can find release from their manners, constraints and responsibilities in the whirling blur of the trained cats.

I can’t believe I hadn’t wanted to see the cat circus.

Russia in the Winter Season

Blog Post

Tatyana (Russian through and through,
Herself not certain of the reason)
Loved that cold perfection too,
Loved Russia in the winter season

I messed up reciting, in Russian, the second line of this excerpt from Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin in sixth grade. My tutor looked at me sternly through her wire-rimmed glasses and said, “In Russia, every truck driver can recite it!” My only excuse for such obvious incompetence is that I left Russia when I was seven.

Since immigrating to the US, I’ve often been asked, “Oh, you’re Russian? Do you miss home?” I’ve never known what to answer. Mostly because I am not quite “Russian through and through.” Yes, I was born in Russia and I have the birth certificate to prove it. But if you look closely, the ethnicity section of my birth certificate says “Jewish,” not Russian. Jews in Russia have always been considered foreigners, so my family’s relationship with Russia has always been somewhat complicated.

Strangely, an utter lack of identification with Russia didn’t prevent my parents from hiring a Russian tutor and making me read Eugene Onegin when I was twelve, attending an average American public middle school. As a result, when I imagined a visit to Russia, I pictured beautiful women in ball gowns, with suitors dueling for their honor. More recently, while packing for Russia, drunk armed soldiers eating piroshki and Putin riding on a bear also came to mind.

What I wanted most out of my trip was to see Russia outside of literature and the American press. I was curious to see whether I could fit in. Naturally, my family was not pleased when I decided to visit the country they had made such a great effort to leave.

“Don’t smile on the street! Don’t laugh! Don’t take your phone out! Don’t leave your passport in the hotel! Don’t talk to strangers! If you get arrested…”

“I won’t get arrested!”

“If you get arrested, deny all charges!”

“Ok… I get the p…”

“We’ll miss you! … And don’t keep money in your outer pockets!”

Thus did my parents prepare me for a three-week college course in Moscow. With money and documents stashed in several different suitcases and with only fear in my outer pockets, I set off on my journey.

I spent my free time after classes trying to blend in with the crowds. What my parents told me about not smiling in public turned out to be useful advice. In Russia, a perfect “resting bitch face” must be worn at all times. This does not, however, mean that people are cold and unfeeling. They are simply more honest in expressing their emotions. If a Russian smiles or asks, “How are you?”, they genuinely do want to hear all about how you almost got frostbite on the way to the metro and how your mother has started spring cleaning two months early. Even though I’ve been back in the US for a week, I’m still having a hard time forming a perfect mandatory half smile when I pass people in the dining hall.

Though Russians can seem cold and unfeeling, it’s a facade. What is truly cold and unfeeling is the Russian winter, a source of great national pride. It has been a decisive factor in several military victories, such as the defeat of Napoleon when his troops almost froze to death and were forced to retreat. In frigid weather, Americans tend to stay at home. In Russia everyone is out ice skating, going to the theater, taking walks, and eating ice cream.

On one frigid, windy day, I attempted to go to one of Moscow’s many art museums. As I discovered later, the line outside made the news that day, because those eager art connoisseurs who didn’t pass out from the cold and leave in ambulances managed to break the museum doors in, and many rushed to warm their toes in hot water in the bathroom. I gave up after half an hour in this line, while the group of elderly women around me persevered. Clearly, I was not Russian enough.

Instead, feeling a little defeated, with three pairs of socks on my feet and two sweaters under my coat, I went to an outdoor flea market. I meandered dejectedly through rows of painted Putin matreshkas, Soviet propaganda posters, and fur coats. In a far corner of the market, several rows past the tourists, I spotted the perfect set of hand-painted wooden figures and started to bargain down the price. In my frustration with my inability to fit in, I hadn’t realized that I’d spent most of the day outside, in the coldest weather I’d ever experienced, and navigated my way around the metro without a map. Without really noticing it, I had somehow adopted a flawlessly Russian demeanor, a clashing mix of indifference and fervor: Russian through and through.

On my next trip to Russia, and I’m sure there will be one, I will not be so worried about my identity. I will bring my nicest boots, put on a dispassionate face, and may even be willing to give up my toes for art.

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Braving the cold