I left everything but my doll behind in Russia

M

ay 2 marked 44 years since I first stepped foot on the shores of Australia — a place I’m still proud to call home, a place that not only gave me refuge from the persecution of Communist Russia, but also became a place of my personal spiritual redemption.

The year was 1977, and the mass exodus of Russian Jews was reaching its peak. All around me, Jews were talking in hushed whispers about getting papers to leave. I was eight years old, and like most Soviet children at the time, I was busy not only with school but with music, ballet, and ice-skating lessons. I was a tall child, shy and introverted by nature, with long, brown hair that was tied up with a big bow for school.

One day, I came home to find yellow exit invitations spread out in my parents’ room. Reading them, I understood that these were invitations to leave the USSR to reunite with family in Israel. My heart fluttered when I saw the names on the papers: I was listed there, but my beloved Dedushka was not.

Dedushka, my mother’s grandfather, lived with us, and I was not going anywhere without him. In the Soviet Union, childcare was delegated to grandparents while the parents went out to work, so I spent most of my days in Dedushka’s company. He was already 80 years old when I was born. He had lived most of his life in the Ukrainian town of Belaya Tserkov, about 80 kilometers from Kiev. His parents had been frum Jews — they even had a shtibel in their house — but most of the children had left Torah observance. Dedushka and most of his siblings relocated to Kiev, where I grew up. I remember how, before Pesach, Dedushka would get blue boxes of matzah.

I was an only child, and if not for Dedushka, my childhood might have been lonely. Dedushka was my biggest fan and supporter. I would bring my friends from the building to meet him — after all, who else had such an old Dedushka? And as he was a retired pediatrician, it’s not surprising that he had the patience to spend his days entertaining a child.

We were among the first of our extended family to receive the coveted “invitation” to leave the USSR. As part of the Family Reunification Agreement, those seeking to emigrate needed a family member to send them an invitation from Eretz Yisrael. How my extended family procured this invitation, I do not know, since we had no relatives in Israel. The “family” we were reuniting with was the extended Jewish nation.