Maksim’s Migration Story

The Avrakh family came to America when I was only four months old. We lived in Riga, which is the capital city of Latvia. The country of Latvia had a great amount of anti-semitism that my Jewish family had to endure. We had to go through a lot of religious persecution so we decided to move to the land of many freedoms. When my father was applying for university, the headmaster of his designated school said he would only accept a Jew into his university over his dead body. Once my dad was accepted, he never heard of this headmaster again. We had to go through religious persecutions as well as living in a communist state. There was not much room to succeed in Latvia and my parents knew something had to be done. My parents didn’t want me to go through the same struggles, so they decided that once I was born, we would move the entire family to New York. Why did they choose New York? New York had the largest job market in America, and if you decide to move to this wonderful country, you might as well move to its greatest city.

My father orchestrated our arrival to the states. My family consisted of two sets of grandparents, my great-grandparents, my parents and myself. We all depended on my father to make the best choices, to get the entire family settled down as fast as possible, and he did all this with a minimal amount of money. When we arrived on July 2, 1993 he went out to get a job at a computer start up company. He was the only one putting food on the table because my grandparents and great-grandparents couldn’t speak the language. My mother started at Hunter College so she could pursue her dream of becoming a nurse, while my dad had to pay for the schooling. My grandparents would receive government benefits and they eventually moved to Brighton Beach because that was the Russian community in Brooklyn and they would finally be able to communicate with people in their native language. I was taken care of mostly by my grandparents and was taught the Russian language so that I could communicate with them. Eventually as I got older, I became their translator; going to doctors with them, translating their aches and pains to the doctor while translating back to Russian what the doctor’s diagnosis was.

As I started my schooling at the age of 6, my parents moved to the Sheepshead Bay area in Brooklyn because they had some of the best public elementary schools in the borough. My entire family continues to live in Brooklyn because we have come accustomed to taking that same train to work and going to the same Stop and Shop to get our groceries; we are just used to the neighborhood and don’t want to change anything. This mentality really changed when the rent became “too damn high.” Living in Brooklyn is not cheap, and my parents wanted to move into a house once my little brother was born a few years ago. Houses are extremely expensive in the Sheepshead Bay area; therefore my parents started looking at homes in New Jersey because home prices are cheaper. I never wanted to move to New Jersey because it’s too much of a quiet area in comparison to Brooklyn and there just doesn’t seem like there is much to do there. Luckily for me, my parents have stopped looking New Jersey because my brother likes his school here in Brooklyn anpd my parents don’t want to move too far from my grandparents. I don’t know what the future holds for my family, but so far I love living in Brooklyn and couldn’t imagine myself living in any other place.