Steven Bariban
Sunday, December 3rd, 2006Immigration is a difficult process. It is tiring, costly, and time consuming. However, men and women hoping to live the American dream are willing to sacrifice a great deal for that opportunity. My family, which included my parents, brother, and grandparents (mother’s side), experienced immigration in 1981 when moving from the former Soviet Union to the United States.
In my quilt, these two countries are represented by two distinct semicircles (the USSR featuring a yellow hammer, sickle, and star with a red background, and America showing red, white, and blue stars and stripes). My family stayed in Italy for a few weeks until they were allowed to fly to the United States. A smaller circle with the colors of the Italian flag is in the center, since it was the midpoint of their immigration.
From a distance, the quilt appears to be a basketball court layout. This design embodies the difficulty and competition faced in the long process. Russian Jews moving to America required special sponsorship from organizations located in various states, and my family was lucky enough to find support from New York. The blue background represents a mixture of air and water, which stands for the traveling from the Soviet Union to Italy and from Italy to America via plane.
Two triangles near the Soviet region on the quilt show the difficulty of practicing Judaism in the USSR, which was an anti-Semitic society. These shapes are separated since certain Jewish customs could not be practiced due to persecution and hate, thus separating them from the overall belief system of Soviet Jews. When my family temporarily moved to Italy, there was less religious pressure, and they got closer to their faith, as shown by the corresponding triangles. Finally when reaching America, the shapes were connected to form the Star of David. Being permanently established, my family was able to celebrate the various holidays in peace without fear of persecution.
