"A New Home with New Freedoms." Anthropological Essay on a group of Russian Immigrants living in a small town.

A New Home with New Freedoms.

I did not have to travel far from home to research my subjects. In fact, it took just five minutes by automobile to pull onto the snow covered streets of Northfield Green. A small retirement community off Allen Avenue in Boston, MA, Northfield Green provides government subsidized housing, with a minimum age requirement for the occupant being 62 years of age. Although the majority of the senior citizens that the 200 apartment community houses are of American decent, a small sub-community of eastern European Jews call it home. The four immigrants studied differ in their nationalities and are unique in their own ways, but share many common beliefs and rituals.

Although different in many ways, the obvious being the age gap, the subjects and I are bound by language, creed, and religious faith, which in turn allowed me to understand them on a more personal level.

In 1989 at six years of age, I immigrated to the United States from Ukraine under "political asylum," or at least that is what is said on my visa. Spending the next 12 years of my life in California, I was drawn to and embraced American culture, so much that I feel that it had more of a role raising me than my parents. After the initial interviews with all of the subjects, I realized it was difficult for me to understand their overall happiness living in Boston, MA due to lack of social relationships, drastically altered consumption habits, and the language barrier. During the study of the eastern European, Russian speaking Jews of the Northfield Green Community, I not only discovered why the subjects enjoyed life in Boston, MA as opposed to their countries of birth, but also on insight on my own life.

Knowing the four...