How Do You Define Your Roots?
My father was born in Berlin. His parents were born in Vienna and Kyiv. My mother was born in Chicago. Her parents were born in New York and Chicago. I was born in Chicago, too. That’s my hometown. But how do I define my roots?
I’ve been in Berlin this week, which always evokes strong feelings and a wellspring of questions. My father departed Berlin by the skin of his teeth as a 10-year-old in 1939. The scarring experience of that first decade in Nazi Germany remained the defining experience of his 94 years of life.
You might expect that Berlin would cause more than a little controversy for me. You would be right. I visited the building where my great-grandmother lived until the summer of 1942 when she was shipped off to Theresienstadt and her death. I also visited my father’s childhood home, from which he and his family were forced to leave after the terror of Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938.
But I also feel a powerful sense of connection in Berlin, as if this were somehow my city, too. It surely helps that the large majority of Nazis are gone now; visits here decades earlier led me to ask when I saw gray-haired people walking by: What were you doing in 1942?
It also helps that the city has become noticeably diverse and progressive. The younger generations largely believe in such things as democracy and climate change and the role of government to make lives better.
But while I may be the son of a Berliner, who became a most proud American, I am an American. So I return to that opening question: How do you define your roots? When you live in America, your roots are not necessarily or wholly in America. And I think that’s how it is for most of us in this country that has been largely shaped by its history of immigration (be it by choice, under duress or force).
While the roots may not be deep in the land, they can be defined by the depth of our connection with the idea of America and the belief in and commitment to democracy. It’s what millions of Americans fought for. It’s what millions of Americans continue to fight for. And, truth be told, apart from whatever genetic realities may connect me to lands far from the teeming shores, these ideas and commitments firmly root me in America.
What about you?
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*Roots photo compilation by Vizerskaya via Getty Images.
Roots? We are all immigrants or a product of immigrants. One generation or many. Doesn't matter.
We need more immigrants. We are aging out. Our birth rate is below replacement.
In Florida there are 55 applicants for every 100 job openings.
We need hard working new Americans. And there are thousands applying for the positions.
Not "open borders". But an expanded system of welcoming those displaced by the Climate Crisis and thuggery.
They need a home. We need workers in almost every category. It's win, win.
Roots? Our family is Northern European blended with Ashkenazi and Sephardic - all were immigrants who sought a new life. Grateful and welcoming we should be.
I hope I may be permitted to change the question slightly to 'how do you define your home' - it is the question which I grappled with years ago, after I had been living in Scotland for a few years. What was my home? Was it Scotland? Or was it the 'other place', the place which I had left behind?
I found this a really difficult question until I realised that I did not have one 'home', I had two. One 'home' in was in the sense of the German phrase 'Heimat', which was the village back home, where my grandparents had been courting and my great-grandparents had been buried in the local cemetery. I still have a connection to that place, it feels to me as if my bones belong there. It is home.
But equally Scotland is home. I live here, I am part of the people of Scotland, I belong here. It is my 'home' in the sense of the French phrase 'chez moi', my place and where I hang up my hat of an evening.
Once I had defined 'home' along those two (!) lines, my sense of identity became clear(er) to me and I have felt settled ever since.