I am the youngest daughter of the first American-born daughter of a Jewish family who fled their shetl in the 1905 pogrom in Russo-Poland. My grandfather, a talmud scholar, came and worked two years to earn enough money to buy steamship passage for my grandmother, my five uncles and aunt to join him. A sixth uncle had died after being conscripted into the Russian army at 13 years old. These immigrants founded a successful business together; one uncle earned a medical degree, one a law degree, and one an engineering degree. My cousins, born in America, became university professors, lawyers, bankers, and writers as well as successful businessmen and a doctor.