Annie Potashnick moved away against her will. She was leaving family, friends, and beloved country, going to America as a stranger in a strange land. In Volozhin, gangs of anti-Semitic thugs were raping schoolgirls, terrorizing neighborhoods, committing mayhem and arson, all unhindered by any police. So her father Beryl sent her with her uncle Max to go and live in Woodbine, New Jersey. The year was 1909. Annie, my grandmother, was 11 years old.
This year, 2021, I think often about my grandmother’s traumatic salvation.
This year, Jim and I moved away from California against our hearts’ wishes, leaving friends and dear places behind, going to a part of America where we are strangers in a strange land. In the Bay Area, gangs of greedy realtors have driven up the price of housing so that people like us could not buy a place to live. Example: a 650 square foot house in our home town for $854,000. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/93-Pine-Dr-Fairfax-CA-94930/19238071_zpid/
The culture of our little town changed with the influx of very highly paid Googlists and their ilk who can afford such a ripoff, people who run stop signs on their bikes and SUV’s, flip you off for obeying the speed limit, people who jog around the lake in loud packs at 6:30 a.m., declaiming “I’m banking $10,000 a month.” People who let go of the dog’s…
