Excerpt from The Life of a Jewish Stripper

Chapter 1 – The beginning, Russia

First to understand communist Russia in 1970, the year I was born, you have to understand if you have never heard the stories of people standing in lines for toilet paper, the stories were true. I remember actually wiping my ass with newspaper when I was a kid. The Russia you see now with their new wealthy Jews like Abramovich and others they love so much is not very different from Russia in 1970. The “New Russia” is just an illusion. The greatest joke in Russia was the main newspaper was called Pravda (Russian for truth). So, we were literally wiping our asses with truth if there was no toilet paper.

The other long running joke in Russia was if a person was walking by and saw people standing in line for something, they got in line and then asked what was being sold and even if they didn’t need it they would buy it because someone they knew someone who may need it, like shoes and whatever size they were they bought them anyway.

I was born in Leningrad, Russia originally St. Petersburgh and now St. Petersburgh again. We apparently lived in one of the nicest apartment buildings in St. Petersburgh. It was a huge white building standing on several large columns and for this reason nicknamed “the house on chicken legs”, and if you lived there it was assumed you were rich. I wouldn’t say we were rich, but I suppose we were well to do or comfortable.

I would hate to perpetuate the stereotype that all Jews are rich especially about Jews in Russia. I can just tell you all Jews are not rich; I am not rich, and my family is not rich. Some people say Jews control all finance, they control the media and the government, and Jews basically control everything.

This is a stereotype and especially in communist Russia all the Jews were certainly not rich and definitely not in control. I know my grandparents lived through World War II and everything they had they worked their asses off for and scraped and saved to live in that nice building.

I’m not sure if my first memories are my own or ones told to me by my mother and grandmother. I think my first memory must have been right before my grandfather died and him brining me a stuffed toy. I have no actual memory of what my grandfather looked like. All I have of him are pictures and according to my mother he spoke Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew. She says he was a religious man, and she did learn a bit about Judaism, but he did not pass on too much of his knowledge to my mother in large doses. I’m also told he was somewhat of a mathematic genius who could do numbers in his head and also a walking phone book who never wrote down one phone number.

My grandparents on my mother’s side were Boris and Masha. Their actual names were Baruch (meaning blessing or blessed in Hebrew and Malka (meaning queen in Hebrew). Both Russian nicknames were of course to be more assimilated and be more acceptable in a Russia where many people hated Jews. Of course, with the last name Kaplan, it was difficult to hide that they were Jewish as Kaplan is not a common Russian surname in Russia or in most of the world. In fact, I have been told by my mother that a woman with the last name Kaplan attempted to assassinate Lenin.

My grandfather, Boris Kaplan, worked in a toy factory and according to my mother in charge of supplies. and my grandmother, Malka, worked in a button factory and I remember playing with the buttons when I would go to her job with her. I loved the shiny buttons and all the different colors. I also remember my grandmother taking me across the street to get Kvass, a Russian drink made of bread that I love.

The only man living in my home was my grandfather and he died of a heart attack in front of my mother and grandmother while we were on summer vacation at a rented datcha (Russian for a summer home in the country) a few months before he turned sixty-two. I was two and a half years old. I was also always told that I was the apple of his eye. I was raised by my grandmother and my mother who considered my grandfather a saint. He was a very handsome man with dark olive skin, deep brown eyes, dark hair and a widow’s peak which myself, my mother and my grandmother all have as well.

I came to learn later in life that my grandfather and my grandmother were both far from saints because it has been insinuated that my grandmother had an affair with her sister’s husband and my mother, Nina, was the result of that affair. In addition to that result the other result was that my grandmother’s sister Sonya, killed herself. As I understand it there was a note but my aunt to this day claims she doesn’t know what it said, and the note was only read by my grandmother’s oldest sister.

My mother has two sisters from her father’s first marriage to my grandmother’s sister, the oldest Masha, is almost twenty years her senior and the other Rima, almost exactly ten years older. I didn’t know any of this until I was around eighteen and it came up somehow in conversation.

My mother and the sister Rima, who is ten years older are very close now, but were not close with the oldest sister Masha because she made things difficult for Rima’s family when they wanted to leave Russia for Israel because her husband (my uncle) was a professor at a technical university, and she feared that if her sister went to Israel it would jeopardize her husband’s job. Nice Jewish family huh?

And apparently when my mother was young the sister Rima, the one she is closest with now said some very cruel things her. My grandmother sewed many of my mother’s clothes and she had made for her a dress out of some material that belonged to my grandmother’s sister, Sonya who had killed herself. I think the story goes that Rima told my mother she shouldn’t be wearing something made of material that belonged to her mother.

So, I wasn’t the only one in the family whose life began with turmoil while still in the womb. I had found out my cousin and I had the same grandfather and that my grandmother had married her sister’s husband. Whew! Did any of that make sense to you?

My brain was trying to wrap itself around all of this family drama. My cousin Yosef and I turned out to be cousins on two fronts through our grandmothers and our grandfather. Was this some sort of incest I wondered. Well, no, not exactly, but it seemed incestuous none the less. As my mother has explained to me, it is common in Jewish families to marry more than once in the same family.

I only know that my father, Mikhail (Russian for Michael) left us when I was about a month old, and he had slapped my mom more than once, even when she was six months pregnant. My mother has told me that my father never did anything around the house or helped her after I was born. She said my father would come home late at night and go to sleep after everything that needed to be done around the house was already done and he never helped or got up if when I would wake up in the middle of the night crying.

My father didn’t provide any child support after they separated, yet he demanded to see me and did all kinds of nasty things just to be vindictive and vengeful such as calling the police or fire department to our house in the middle of the night or putting a match in our doorbell so that it wouldn’t stop ringing. He also called our house constantly and yelled obscenities. Also, when my mother decided to leave Russia, she had to get permission from the other parent and my father demanded two thousand rubbles in order to give his permission.

I know almost nothing about my father’s parents or any of his family. I only know my father’s father was Abraham or Abram in Russian. I don’t remember spending any significant time with my father or his parents. Nice Jewish boy eh! It is my understanding that the Russian police (militia) couldn’t do much, so my mother decided to get away as far as possible.

I had no understanding or concept of what Jews are and why they were so hated in Russia and the rest of the world in general. I can remember that my mother always laughs at a story when my cousin Yosef told me I was a Jewish child and told me to go and tell my mother and her sister who were talking in the kitchen. So, I walked in and announced that I am a Jewish child as if I discovered something new and they laughed hysterically. I must have been three or four at the time and I’m certain I was probably confused at their reaction.

My mother said she was afraid to teach me anything about Judaism or what being Jewish meant. She didn’t know that much about Judaism herself and wouldn’t even dare take me to the only synagogue in Leningrad for fear of the Russian militia always standing guard at the synagogue taking note of who was coming and going. Being religious in Russia was very dangerous during communist rule, but more so for Jews than any other group.

Russian Jews have a million anecdotes about being a Jew in Russia or post World War II Europe for that matter. It seems in Russia there was not much differentiation between Jews, Armenians, Gypsies, Gruzins (Georgians) and anyone in general with dark hair, dark eyes and olive skin. And if you were a Jew who had blonde hair and blue or light eyes (like my oldest aunt) you were an anomaly and lucky because anyone with dark skin, dark hair and dark eyes, the Russians called chernozhopiyi or to translate “black assed”.

So, I won’t compare myself to other ethnic groups which have been the targets of bigotry since Jews are considered Caucasian, but I do understand the stereotyping of different groups in America and around the world.

People have asked me many times “What race are you?” or just wanted to know my ethnic background because of my dark looks.

This is a loaded question. I don’t know how to answer most times because most Jews are “white” or considered Caucasian as are many Semitic people such as people of Arabic or any Semitic descent.

What you have to understand here which I will give as short history lesson, is that Caucasian (which comes from the word Caucasus and refers to people of the Caucasus mountains which used to be part of Russia) covers a large area not far from the middle East and many ethnic groups of what used to be parts of Russia such as Armenia and Georgia (Gruzia in Russian) and it includes many people that by today’s definition around the world, don’t look “white”. I am fully aware that when people look at me, where I live in America, they don’t see me as “white”. Jews were not considered “white” in Russia or Europe.

In America, as in the rest of the world, these days “white” mostly refers to people of German, Irish, English and European descent. There are black Jews, mostly Ethiopian Jews who consider themselves the lost tribe, or obviously a black person who converted to Judaism.

But if you so choose to learn what Caucasian really means in the old definitions on Wikipedia the word Caucasian (which notice has the word Asian it it) actually refers to many people of different ethnic groups which scientists had deduced as people with certain features, not color, and included groups of most Middle-Eastern people, also people from parts of Europe such as Italy, Greece and many people with not so “white” skin but olive-skinned, Mediterranean people, and also parts of Asia, even some Indian people.

So, if we say we’re a race we’re differentiating ourselves. People tell us Judaism is a religion not a race and that we’re clearly separating ourselves from the world. I have no answers to these philosophical questions. I am only certain that my family never owned any slaves nor were any of my family involved in the slave trade and I only know as I have been taught since I came to America that Jews came from Judea and Hebron hence the names Jews and Hebrews and that we are Jews because originally we were the indigenous people from Judea long before we created Judaism and we had to defend ourselves from almost everyone in the middle East and beyond.

I am not an expert on Jews, Judaism, religion, or race. I only know that according to the Bible, the Torah, the Koran or whatever you call it that we were slaves in Egypt. I can only say that I am just human same as anyone and have my own prejudices and anyone who tells you they have never been prejudiced or racist in some form is full of shit. As far as I know all of us bleed red with possibly the exception of the British blue blood family who may bleed and shit blue, but I’m pretty sure even they bleed red.

I have been discriminated against by white people, black people, Latino people, Asian and everything in between. Everyone stereotypes each other at some point. That is just a fact of life and I strongly believe that some people feel the need to put people into a compartment. I have known black, gay, white, Latino and Jewish people who stereotype and that is just the way the world is. I only know that you can’t force someone not to be a racist. There will always be people who teach their children not to trust and to hate a certain group of people and these racist people can be white, black, Latino, Asian, Jewish, Arabic or any other group. This one thing I’ve learned for sure.

I recently got a DNA test which showed on my mother’s side that I am two percent black. According to the test we started out in Kenya. It was no surprise to me, as I always suspected that my family may have started out in Africa. How we ended up in Russia is not just my story, it is the story of all Jewish people. When I look at pictures of my family and myself, I don’t see a white person or white people, I see people of color.

That may piss some people off because according to some we have white privilege in America just like Greeks, Italians, Persians, and many other groups who are not considered to be people of color. I have never felt privileged as a Jew since the time I started to understand what being Jewish really meant. Post-World War II Jews are only two percent of the world population. Think about that for a moment, only two percent of the entire world.

I worked with a man at a real estate company who said out loud after a conversation with our boss that the man just “niggered” him. What?! The entire office stood still. That word was in the air and the person who said it felt they had the right to use it because he is black. I personally hate the word. It is not an art form in my opinion. I think it is degrading and a slap in the face to the thousands of people who died trying to eradicate it from our vocabulary.

I went up to the man, my coworker, and said to him, “You know almost every ethnic group in the world has been enslaved at one point or another either by their own people or another group”. He was silent.

I actually very often feel the opposite of being privileged when people say things like “Oh, you’re Jewish”. It’s as if they’ve placed a label on me that I don’t belong here, that I’m different. Because if I don’t follow the Christian teachings there must be something wrong with me or I’m not the same as they are in a way. Like when someone says to me “Oh, I know a wonderful Jewish person”. It’s as if they’re surprised that a Jewish person can be a good person, basically to me it’s a backhanded compliment. And I really enjoy hearing those kinds of things from people of Italian, Greek, Irish, German and all other origins because they were discriminated against in America as much as any other ethnic group.

I realized on my trip to Israel in 2005 how diverse the Jewish people really look. I was surprised to see we didn’t all look the same. Some had red hair and freckles, others blonde with blue eyes. Seeing that diversity made me realize what we have been through. That we have been all over the world and over time just like people of any diaspora, whatever the original was, has been diluted with other genes and it is beautiful, a beautiful rainbow if I may say. In my own family we have light hair, dark hair and dark eyes and light eyes.

I’m certainly not an expert on history, I just read about things that interest me and I’ve always been interested in origins of ethnic groups from around the world and religions. According to some scientists, in the beginning all people were black and later their pigmentation changed due to various migrations and weather conditions where they migrated to, at least that’s what I read somewhere.

My mother tells a story of when we were stopped at a beach resort in Russia by a drunk man who asked if we were Gypsies or Jids (a Polish word for Jews which translates to Kike in Russian). He probably asked this because my mother and I got a deep dark, bronze and almost chocolate tan and my mother was very striking with long, black hair down to her ass. My grandmother called us “little chocolates” when we got our tans.

My mother was an English teacher in Russia at an all-male technical college and got summers off. I don’t think the person posing the question really cared what we were. As far as he was concerned what we weren’t was “true” Russians because we didn’t have light skin and blonde hair and blue eyes. And even though my grandfather lost his brother in World War II and all of my grandmother’s brothers fought and died in the war while serving in the Russian army, we weren’t “true Russians”. But my family served their country just like “true” Russians.

I don’t remember being an unhappy kid in Russia. I think I was a pretty happy, go lucky kid. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother because my mother had me when she was just nineteen years old. Yup, knocked up on her first time with my father. She was a young mom who worked and spent a lot of time out of the house, but when she wasn’t working, I seem to recall she dragged me everywhere with her. I was always either with my mom or my grandmother.

I never experienced a lot of anti-Semitism while I lived in Russia since we left when I was only nine when we came to the U.S. Since I didn’t really grow up in Russia, I didn’t have the opportunity to experience and understand first-hand the antiSemitism as a teenager or an adult. But my mother, her sisters, her friends and my grandmother all have stories of anti-Semitism in pre- and post-World War II Russia. Russian Jews were often refused to attend universities or denied jobs just for being Jewish. According to my mom, Russians often said that Hitler did the right thing by burning Jews in the crematoriums and should have finished the job.

Most of my memories of Russia are good and fun. My mom took me to a resort on the Black or Caspian Sea what seems like every summer since she was a teacher. People stopped my mom sometimes and said I looked like a doll when I was a baby and a little girl. At least that’s what my mother will say. I remember going to Belarus where we had cousins, (or as we called it Belorussia) with my grandmother when I was may be six or seven years old. My grandparents were from there before coming to Leningrad. I remember playing with my cousins who mostly told me dirty jokes some of which I still know. I learned when I was older that my grandmother’s parents were killed by the Nazis in their hometown of Petrikov. I believe my grandmother said that her mother was drowned in a lake by the Nazis, they tied a rock to her, and her father was shot. Before moving to big cities like Moscow or Leningrad, Jews lived in small villages called Shtetls. So, at some point my family was very religious before coming to the big city.

Apparently, I was an incredibly beautiful child with curly dark hair and big brown eyes. People said I looked like a doll. Perhaps that’s why I got so much attention and I loved it.

I remember the beach on the Black Sea and the most wonderful smell of meat cooking on the grill right on the beach and a truck full of watermelons pulling up. The watermelon was cut right in front of us, and it was so red and so sweet. I also remember having a birthday party when I turned six or seven and the first time when I had a Pepsi loving the fizz on my face when it was poured for me. Those were my happy memories.

Then came the other memories. My grandmother’s sister’s husband used to babysit me, and I recall one incident when he took me to the park across the street from where we lived, and I have a very vivid memory of him putting his hand in my underwear. I must have been five or six years old may be even younger. I am not certain but I’m pretty sure he told me not to tell anyone.

There was never any discussion of what to do if something like that happens. It was the 1970’s in communist Russia and I think people were paranoid of talking about anything serious at home or in public. Then one of the worst memories I can recall happened.

It happened in 1979 when my mother was preparing to leave Russia with me, I think she wanted to get as far away as possible from my father. We had a man come to our house who was helping us pack up boxes and I was left alone in a room with him. My grandmother and my mother were both at home, but he didn’t seem to care or worry. He seemed very tall and very intimidating; I don’t even remember his name. He undressed my lower half, laid me on a futon that was in one of the rooms of the apartment and put his mouth on my private area. It felt funny but good and I didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t used to being around men that much, so I did was I was told. That may have been the first time I had an orgasm.

He then asked me if that felt good and took out his penis and told me it was my turn to reciprocate “it was only fair he said and don’t tell anyone, it will be our secret”. I wasn’t sure what to do so I obliged though I didn’t know what I was doing. And I didn’t tell anyone until I was maybe thirty years old may be even older when I told my mother about the two incidents, and I guess out of denial or guilt she told me I must have dreamed it. Of course, I wanted to kill her when she said that to me. I suppose I should be grateful that he didn’t have intercourse with me and left me a virgin or worse rape me anally.

I tell you this because this was my second experience with a man, and it would set the tone for my relationships with men for the rest of my life. These experiences taught me to be quiet, not to rock the boat and since no one ever talked to me about men or anything else I learned to be pleasing not only to men but to people in general. Don’t rock the boat and do what people asked was what I learned, and we don’t air our dirty laundry, even if the whole fucking neighborhood knows each other’s dirty laundry anyway. I also recall once my mother was masturbating right in front of me and didn’t ask me to leave the room. I was going to leave this part out, but I think it is important because when I asked her about it later she swears she doesn’t remember and that’s how everything in my family was, just one long denial.

I’m not really sure how my parents got together, and I don’t think it’s important in my story except to say that I think back in 1969 when feminism was rocking the world it didn’t seem to be happening in Russia and women though expected now to work because that’s the only way a family in Russia could survive, they were still expected to be docile and subservient at home. So, the women worked, came home, took care of the kids (who were being babysat by potential pedophiles) and expected to have dinner on the table.

Come to think of it, feminism wasn’t all that different for women in the rest of the world. Though women were coming into the work force, they were still expected to do their duties at home even though they earned very little compared to men. I love the show ‘Mad Men’. If you’ve never seen it, I highly recommend it. I think it paints a perfect picture of how men treated women in the late 1960’s. It is in my opinion one the best shows ever made.

Anyway, we were coming to America! I didn’t know what that meant as of course as no one talked to me about anything or asked for my opinion since I was only nine years old and most Russians at the time probably thought America was paved with gold. All I can remember about America when I was a child in Russia was the news on television always showing homeless black people right in front of the White House. That of course didn’t give much hope and made me wonder why we were going there.

Before we left, my mother took me to her hairdresser and we both got our hair chopped off. I looked like a boy and people stopped us in the street to comment what a cute little boy I was.

I had only a few visits with my father that I can recall, and I didn’t realize that the last visit may be the very last visit I ever had with him. It was a rarity to have visits with him at all, so I thought nothing of it. I know nearly nothing of my paternal grandparents, though in my opinion considering the type of person my father is they must have fucked him up pretty good.

My father had gotten remarried, and I do recall once he came to visit me at school. His new wife was blonde with penetrating blue eyes, and she was staring at me with those dagger eyes, looking like she wanted to kill me or harm me in some way.

I had no idea that I was about to leave everything I ever knew behind and be taken to a new land, and I would be leaving behind all my friends who I never saw again and my grandmother whom I spent so much time with. Later on, this would become a common theme in my life as I learned to just keep running and moving and would later learn that you can’t run away from yourself no matter how far you run, and I think my mother learned the same lesson along with me.