I have lived most of my life in English. My thoughts are in English. All of my writing – personal, creative, and academic – is in English. My childhood, adolescence, and now adulthood were lived through, understood, and reflected upon in a language that I only started to learn after my family immigrated to Canada.

I was three years old when we made the journey from Haifa to Toronto. My recollection of the life we lived in Israel is hazy. My memories come from old photographs and fragments of stories my parents and grandmother sprinkle into conversation. The life I can’t remember has given me the gift of language: Russian, my mother tongue, and Hebrew. But the moment we set foot on Canadian soil, my culture took a back seat as I was encouraged to learn the language I needed to function, grow up in, and assimilate to, this new land.

With language at the heart of my identity, I can see all too clearly when it slips away. When I visit my father’s side of the family in Israel, I am surrounded by Hebrew. It is familiar and comforting, yet ultimately foreign. When my cousins trade jokes and observations in rapid Hebrew, I feel emptiness in the space understanding should have filled. There are so many words between us that go unspoken. There is so much that I wish I could say.

Earlier this year, I found myself in a book. More accurately, I saw my culture represented. Reading Natasha, a collection of short stories by David Bezmozgis, was the first and only time I found aspects of my experience as a Jewish-Russian Canadian reflected in a work of literature. Although Bezmozgis writes of an immigrant experience quite different from my own, it is one I recognized. It was powerful to read about a protagonist who lives near Finch and Steeles in North York, a neighborhood where new immigrants, many of whom were Jewish and moving from the Soviet Union, first settled. It was also a neighborhood I grew up near. It was exciting to see Russian words I understood staring back at me from the page as the narrator mourns the loss of his babushka (grandmother), listens to his cousin recount stories from her summers at the dacha (cottage), and mentions communal trips to the banya (steam bath). I felt the familiar discomfort that came from not fitting in: the inherited shame of being Russian, and the guilt of not being Jewish enough. My parents made the brave, and incredibly difficult, decision to leave their respective families and homeland behind in order to ensure a better future for my brother and me. It was overwhelming to see Bezmozgis put this sentiment into the short story form in ways that I have not quite been able to yet.

To me, modernity invites the use of language to craft and navigate one’s identity. One day, I hope to use my voice as a Jewish-Russian Canadian to expand the representation of the vibrant culture I am proud to call my own.

Originally published in White Wall Review 42: Special Issue (2019)