Notes From the Private Lives Editor

With a keen and searching intellect, Michael Stern, an Israeli transplant coming to America as a graduate student, cleverly describes the challenge of a crossword puzzle, posing it as a metaphor for the demands of adapting to a new language and culture. Immersed in a new life, Michael, a psychologist, husband, and father, demonstrates the rewards and pleasures of conquering the nuances of the American language and culture by his eventual mastering of the crossword puzzle.

Michael’s parents had fled Nazi Germany to Israel, where Michael was born. Fortunately for him, the home was multilingual. Hebrew and German provided him the skills to later learn English. As his English became proficient, his native languages declined from disuse. While we applaud Michael’s gains, we can’t help but wonder what he may have lost in his assimilation process and the impact on his memories and sense of self.

I am reminded of Eva Hoffman’s classic Lost in Translation. In her book she describes how her Polish language atrophies from disuse. Linguistic dispossession, she explains, “is close to the dispossession of one’s self.” As she adopts her new language and loses Polish, she becomes conscious of the perils of assimilation. How does one adapt to a new culture without losing one’s self? How do you establish a balance between the old and new self?

Michael’s essay reminds me of my own immigration experience. My mother and I arrived in New York City in 1949, when I was eleven. I spoke fluent Polish, German, and sufficient Hebrew, but only pigeon English. With a scholarship, my mother placed me in summer camp, where I was immersed in English and American sports—baseball, volleyball, basketball. I was in this cultural boot camp for two months. Through my camp and public school experiences, I quickly learned my new language. My mother, however, spoke with her peers in Polish, German, or Yiddish. To learn the new language, she insisted that I speak to her only in English. The early languages, onc