Assimilate
Contributed by Lela Ryterski
Why can’t they be like us? Why don’t they want to be like us? Why do they have to be like us?
Hasidic Jews in New York, for instance, have their own schools and synagogues and neighborhoods where there’s Jewish writing on the store fronts. They walk around with beards and sideburns and big hats and a certain dress code.
The Russians moved into Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Now there’s Russian writing on the store fronts and restaurants. They have their own clubs.
There are Chinese restaurants and Chinese neighborhoods—China Town in some cities.
People assimilate as much as they can.
The Muslim kids should be allowed to leave the classroom and go to the gym or somewhere two or three times a day to pray, and miss a part of the lesson, which they’d have to make up, until they come up with their own schools.
My parents were immigrants, and it took them almost twenty years before they were really comfortable in American society. Before that, they socialized only with their own kind —easy to talk their own language — easy to understand each other, what they’ve been through. When my parents’ family and friends were being killed by the Nazis in Poland, they fled to Russia. Did they wait to get in legally? Apply to the proper government agencies and hang out in Poland for two years for bureaucracy to give them legal status? I don’t think so. They would be dead. Russia was close and was against the Nazis.
After the war, my parents went to a Displaced Persons camp in Germany where they tried to find any living relatives. From there they applied to come to the U.S. and had to wait a year. Poland wouldn’t take them back. They were hostile to the Jews. They had occupied their homes and taken their possessions.
Is America big enough to hold these other cultures? Do we have big enough hearts? Can we respect other people’s way of doing things? Do we have compassion? Can we be friendly?