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TomaLivshizSecondPaper 8 - 15 Jun 2012 - Main.SkylarPolansky
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| | | Being Your Own Deliverer | |
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< | This year, I spent Passover with my family – all people who had emigrated from the former Soviet Union. For many, Passover is a ritual commemorating an ancient story, but for many Russian Jews, it is more personal tale of liberation. It eventually became clear that the story we read from the Haggadah had a familiar cast: my parents’ generation saw Russia as Egypt, the Communists as Pharaoh, America as Freedom, and themselves as Moses—as deliverers. The journey to America was not forty years long, but it was difficult and only somewhat chartered. Between Russia and America, my family spent a month in Austria and several more in Italy, where my father, a mathematician by trade, peddled goods on the streets of Rome in order to ensure our manna. With this legacy, it seems counterintuitive that I, raised with several orders of magnitude more privilege than my parents, could be so risk-averse, so unwilling to take advantage my many options. | >
> | This year, I spent Passover with my family – all people who had emigrated from the former Soviet Union. For many, Passover is a ritual commemorating an ancient story, but for many Russian Jews, it is more a personal tale of liberation. It eventually became clear that the story we read from the Haggadah had a familiar cast: my parents’ generation saw Russia as Egypt, the Communists as Pharaoh, America as Freedom, and themselves as Moses—as deliverers. The journey to America was not forty years long, but it was difficult and only somewhat chartered. Between Russia and America, my family spent a month in Austria and several more in Italy, where my father, a mathematician by trade, peddled goods on the streets of Rome in order to ensure our manna. With this legacy, it seems counterintuitive that I, raised with several orders of magnitude more privilege than my parents, could be so risk-averse, so unwilling to take advantage of my many options. | | | But what this class has forced me to admit to myself, is that going to work for a big law firm is a choice too, just like my parents could have stayed in Russia, and Israelites chose to remain in Egypt. If that is the path that I will take, the defense of inevitability is a hollow one. Even if I am being ushered towards bonds, mortgages, securities and mergers, I could choose to lose my place in line and go do something else. |
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