Member Dvarlette: Jonathan Rochkind

The following is a reflection given on Yom Kippur by Hinenu member Jonathan Rochkind, on the theme of makom.

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All of my great-grandparents immigrated here around the turn of the 20th century, from a place in Europe, where in family stories I’ve been told “sometimes it was Poland sometimes it was Russia, that didn’t matter much to their lives.” — because these were just borders drawn by the powerful for their own ends. One time it did matter was when my great-grandpa Joe was threatened with conscription into “the czar’s army” to risk his life for someone else’s borders.

So he left hoping to find safety in the U.S. — he didn’t come here the ‘right’ way, he got here any way he could. And he had to get fake travel documents in someone elses name in order to get across the several borders in between where he started, and Detroit where he wound up. When he arrived here that borrowed fake name from the fake papers, a not typically Jewish name, Heideman, became his legal surname, and is my mother’s ‘maiden’ name. Arriving in the U.S around 1908, Joe Heideman focused much of his energy on organizing with the Workman’s Circle, and worked in the Detroit business office of the Yiddish Daily Forward.

This is a common story, others here probably have similar stories. And a common kind of story for lots of different kinds of people at different places and times. What I want to take from this story is that borders have not been where we put our allegiances or necessary to our identity. Borders have not kept us safe, and in fact borders have endangered us and been barriers to finding places of safety and belonging. Not just for us, militarized borders and restrictions on migration are a threat to all humans.

And so one thing “diasporism” means to me is rejecting the right of the powerful to decide where people do or don’t belong because of their ethnicity or what side of a border they were born on. That it’s lovely when different people who find themselves neighbors learn from each other and work together to build a world where all who need a safe place can find one. We all belong here, we will protect each other, and the home we make together this way is the best kind of home.