By Yakov Nayerman in San Diego
Yom Kippur is coming up soon. And, as always, I remember my first Yom Kippur in America. Its lesson feels especially valuable now, when we see less and less tolerance between people.
Growing up in the Soviet Union, I always knew I was Jewish. It was stamped in my passport, and the reality never allowed me to forget that I am a Jew.
That changed after I started working at Solar Turbines in April 1990. For a long time, I couldn’t convince my coworkers that I was Jewish. My stories about antisemitism in the Soviet Union, the hurdles getting into college, obstacles at every step, the Doctors’ plot—none of it made much of an impression on them. I even brought in a copy of my passport with “Jewish” clearly stamped under nationality.
Yet all my efforts ran into a logical, rock-solid brick wall:
“Are you from Russia?”
“Yes.”
“Do you regularly go to synagogue?”
“No.”
“Do you speak Russian at home?”
“Yes.”
“Do you drink vodka?”
“I can.”
“Then you’re Russian.”
And those debates always ended with the exact same proverb:
“If you walk like a duck, talk like a duck, and look like a duck—then you are a duck.”
I stopped arguing. Since there was no one else from Russia in the shop, I accepted the nickname “Our Pushkin” (they didn’t know any other Russian writers).
More than a year went by like that. And then, my Jewishness received an unexpected and very pleasant surprise, and its final recognition.
On Friday, September 13, 1991, a couple of days before Yom Kippur, it suddenly hit me: next Monday, September 16, was the Day of Atonement. I don’t observe most religious holidays or rules, but on Yom Kippur I don’t eat, I don’t work, and I go to the synagogue for the Yizkor memorial prayer. Even back in the Soviet Union, I was Jewish twice a year: on Passover and Yom Kippur.
On Friday morning, I went up to my manager:
“Jim, can I take Monday off?”
“What’s going on?”
“Monday is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement—the holiest day for Jews. People don’t work or eat on that day.”
“Okay,” he said. “Here’s the form. Fill out a request for a day of vacation and hand it over to HR.”
Later, during the smoke break, I mentioned it to three of my fellow manufacturing engineers who worked on the same line:
“Guys, I won’t be in on Monday. Can you cover my parts?”
“Sure. What happened?”
“Took a day of vacation—Yom Kippur. Day of Atonement.”
“What’s the Day of Atonement?”
I gave them a brief explanation.
“Wait,” said Pat, an Irish Catholic. “You said ‘vacation’?”
“Yeah.”
“And Jim knows why?”
“Yeah, I told him.”
“And he told you to take vacation time?! What an asshole! That’s not right! We Catholics get Good Friday as a paid day off.”
“And I get Vesak, Buddha’s birthday,” added Hai, who was Vietnamese.
“You,” chimed in tall and skinny Bill, “should demand to get paid for it! It’s about fairness. I might be an atheist, but still…”
I was so stunned by their reaction that I couldn’t speak for a few minutes. “This is it—the real America! We didn’t leave for nothing!” I thought to myself. But out loud, I said:
“No, guys, thanks. I haven’t been here long, my English is still pretty shaky—I don’t want to make trouble…”
But one of them must have talked to Jim anyway. Half an hour later, my boss called me in, handed back my application, apologized, and said:
“I didn’t realize the reason for the day off right away. Redo it. Mark it as a Personal Day Off. Paid. And again, my apologies.”
On Tuesday, at the department meeting, Jim brought up the incident as an example of how important it is to correct careless oversights regarding employees’ cultural and religious traditions. Then he suddenly turned to me and asked:
“Yakov, clear this up for us once and for all: are you Russian or Jewish?”
I thought about it for a second and answered:
“A Russian Jew!”
*
Yakov Nayerman is a freelance writer based in San Diego.