Jesse arrived in Gravesend in the mid-2000s, part of the end of the post-Soviet immigrant wave. He settled into an apartment on Bay Parkway near the D train, carrying the anxieties of someone who had lived through systemic exclusion. In Russia, being Jewish was a label that felt like a target. In Gravesend, however, he found he was simply another neighbor. Jesse’s realization of the neighborhood’s intertwined nature happened at a local pharmacy. He was struggling to explain a specific blood pressure medication to the pharmacist when a younger Chinese woman stepped in to help translate into English. Afterward, they walked out together, and he watched her enter a bakery to buy a loaf of challah for her own family’s dinner. On the wall of his hallway hangs a blue ceramic Hamsa, a symbol he bought at a Cantonese-owned gift shop on 86th Street. He found it deeply comforting that a sign of his own heritage was sold to him by a neighbor from the other side of the world. "In Russia, everyone stayed in their own circle," Jesse reflected. "Here, the circles overlap until you can't see the edges." He described the support he found during a particularly cold winter when his heater broke, and his Uzbek neighbor brought over a heavy wool blanket and a container of hot plov. Jesse sees the strength of Gravesend in its lack of friction. He observes the way the Italian grandmothers on their porches nod to the Sephardic families walking to the synagogue, creating a mutual respect. 

– DA

Relationship:  Im/migrant Im/migrant