Russian Orthodox Church has community sale outside.
Russian youth are a driving force for American assimilation. They mature and adapt to their new homes quickly. They grow up in an American landscape. Oftentimes, language is lost, as well as, ideas and traditions. On occasion, youth translate for their elders in order to ease the stress of assimilation. Although done without ill-will, the focus of youth on adapting to an American lifestyle can cause ethnicity to be forgotten.
It has been more difficult for older immigrants to assimilate and adapt to the culture of their new land. Help can always be found with people such as with Yelizaveta Yefimov, who runs a settlement program in Bensonhurst. She describes American holidays (Washington’s Birthday, Halloween, Martin Luther King Jr. Day), and teaches the Star Spangled Banner to new immigrants. She explains that in America, police are your friends. She teaches new immigrants the concept of a sale, as those didn’t exist in the Soviet Union. Thanks to her, many immigrants learned to shop smart, use banks, and take public transportation.
Inside the Jewish Community House, 78th St, Bay Parkway.
Sometimes, old traditions are revived, especially those dealing with religion. In the Soviet Union, religion was banned so its people could not practice or had to do so in secret. In the United States, this is not necessary as religious freedom is a constitutional right. Yet, religious observance is still not very strong in this immigrant community. Many Russian immigrants who consider themselves as Russian Orthodox rarely attend church and only express their religion in pockets, “some of those at Saturday’s memorial said that they go to church only to celebrate religious holidays, like Christmas and Easter.” The same is seen with Russian Jews. They celebrate religious holidays such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, or a Bar Mitzvah. But adherence to their faith is not particularly strong due to the years of repression in the Soviet Union.
