Ellis Island was the main transit point for immigrants upon arrival in New York City. It is located about a kilometer from Manhattan, next door to Liberty Island, where the Statue of Liberty is located. That is how I got to the United States. There I underwent a medical examination and obtained the necessary documents. I was held up longer than usual on the island because I was a single girl who had not been met by relatives or a fiancé.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Americans witnessed a mass exodus of Jews from the Russian Empire. This migration flow was an essential component of the immigration wave that rushed to the shores of America from Eastern and Southern Europe and was called the new immigration (Abramitzky & Boustan, 2019). It differed from the previous migration movement in its mass character, national composition, difficulties of language adaptation, social orientation, and low level of professional qualification. In addition, a large part of the immigrants arrived for a certain time intending to improve their financial situation and, hoping to go back to their homeland, did not seek assimilation (Bokser Liwerant, 2022). All of these characteristics fit me, as I was a Jew from the Russian Empire who arrived hoping to earn money and return home.
The influx of new immigrants has impacted the demographic, ethnic, and social processes in the United States. This mass relocation of people has exacerbated the problem of national identity, raising the question for American society of what it means to be and to become an American (Rabin, 2019). A couple of years after my arrival, I began to feel an abiding desire to become part of this society. I made new friends whom I asked to tell me about American culture and history. However, this assimilation did not go smoothly; I felt that my psyche refused to give up easily and painlessly what constituted my identity. The recognition of the dual nature of my own identity is a mental problem with which I have unfortunately been confronted.
Jews from Eastern Europe and, above all, the Russian Empire created the largest Jewish ghetto in the world in New York City. The Lower East Side apartment buildings were the terminus of a long journey for most Russian immigrants who had left their homes within the settlement area. Once one entered the east side of Manhattan, one could tell by the street slang, the signs on store doors, the kosher restaurants, the abundance of synagogues, and the vast market of Yiddish literature that Jews lived in this neighborhood. The first-generation low-income immigrants seldom managed to escape the ghetto into the other American world. Unfortunately, despite the fact that I came to improve my life, I could not do so. Because of the discriminatory attitudes that existed in society, I was not able to find a high-paying job. Social prejudice prevented most Jews from fulfilling their dreams, which of course was a shame.
The climate in the United States was quite different from what I was used to living in the Russian Empire. Consequently, I had several severe illnesses and was on the brink of life and death. In addition, the money I earned was not enough to provide me with good nutrition – I became thin, and my health deteriorated. Those were the physical challenges I had to face in the form of sickness and starvation. However, as the years passed, the situation stabilized – I met my future husband, and we began to live more prosperously. We were able to get out of the ghetto and fully assimilate into the States.
References
Abramitzky, R., & Boustan, L. (2017). Immigration in American economic history.Journal of economic literature, 55(4), 1311–1345. Web.
Bokser Liwerant, J. (2022). Globalization, diasporas, and transnationalism: Jews in the Americas. Contemporary Jewry. Web.
Rabin, S. (2019). American Jews before 1880: Mobile, entrepreneurial, unconventional. Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. Web.