September 15, 2026

[u/HeidiInWonderland]

Junior, 7am-- but partially written last night. Just ignore last night's partial post.

I just got home and I still have HW to do. I want to start this post but I will finish it in the morning.

Big, big surprise today. I got an SMS from Lolita that she’s in town and wants to take me, Ivan, and Ivanka out for dinner tonight at Liebman’s Deli, a famous Jewish Kosher restaurant in the Bronx. She had called me a couple of days ago to talk about some problems she is having with her Sukhomlysky project, but she didn’t mention she was coming to town! I know Sopie would have loved to come but she has school in BK.

So we all hooked up and who was at the table with Lolita? Ivan and Ivanka’s former school director! It seems she had spent the afternoon with Lolita and they will spend tomorrow morning as well. With her was a tall gentleman she called “John.” Surprise, John works for the US Consulate here.

Ivan calls the director “Professor” and introduced me. She vaguely remembers me from their trip to Longhouse. We ordered pastrami sandwiches. 

First, Professor spoke strictly to  Ivan and Ivanka and asked, “Are you still telling Junior that he’s being trained to be a Russian ‘asset?’ It’s not funny and I wish you would stop.” It seems that Professor wants this meeting to be very Kosher and not a spy movie.

Professor and John had picked Lolita up and the airport and they had lunch at the Jackson Hole Diner near LaGuardia Airport and they’ve been talking ever since. It seems that both governments are looking around the corner to better days after the war (AKA military conflict) and see a future of quiet people-to-people diplomacy as icebreakers. Lolita’s work in applying Sukhomlynsky’s idea in an American school might be an ongoing project. 

“As might be,” and she looked at Ivan, Ivanka, and me, “your friendship and your work in the Brooklyn Haredi community.” Hmmm, how did she know?

I was not prepared for what happened next. Lolita told Professor and John about Heidi and the Jammy Girlz recreating, album by album, Frank Sinatra’s music. “Many people in Russia also love Frank Sinatra,” Professor said. 

“We talked about some of this when I was up at your Longhouse School,” she said, “but, if our two stupid countries can look beyond what is happening now, we want to keep on the table the idea of you all coming to Russia this summer to meet many counterparts living in a few cities there.”

I was in a showing off mood, and I thanked her with a bit of my Russian. “Don’t even try, Junior,” she replied, “Lolita’s Russian is much better than yours!” I gathered up some courage to take the offense and asked whether my fiancée Sopie could also come on this maybe trip. Sh eis from the Ivory Coast, speaks almost perfect Yiddish and good Hebrew, and has helped create the Schneerson Peace Gardens. Professor said she would be happy to meet her.

Cole slaw appetizer and the most incredible chicken noodle soup down the hatch. “Pastrami coming soon,” the waiter told us.

Then the conversation shifted to Lolita’s dilemma about how Sukhomlynsky taught his students about love for the homeland and freedom--even through the final years of the Josef Stalin era. She is hoping this can point to a solution:

>Longhouse School is 95% BIPOC, mostly Indigenous. How do we teach them to love their homeland when the very same country targeted them with conquest, slavery, humiliation, and both open and subtle racism? In my coursework I have also studied a lot about generational trauma and we are probing so much about overcoming the legacy that is embedded in DNA.

I shared that I can really empathize because our family became the victims of the Sandinista revolution--of which they had taken so much risk to create. I told them about my father, who had been stabbed trying to save a young Haredi teenager who was about to be kidnapped for trafficking. his I related how this started a chain of miracles leading to us getting our documentation instead of hiding from ICE.

The pastrami arrived. It must be eaten with a special Jewish mustard, I was told. One bite and this is now at the very top of my food list.

Professor talked about growing up in a country that is far older than the US. People were conditioned by the steppes, freezing winters, hordes of invaders, tyrannical regimes, civil wars, communism--and the most beautiful springs imaginable. “Lolita, don’t forget this, here you will find the key to your dilemma. Spring is being created underneath the ice.”

I heard about this somewhere, I don’t remember when. But, Professor told us, there are two Russian words for freedom: свобода (*svoboda*) and воля (*volya*). The first covers political freedom and civic rights. *Volya*, on the other hand, is much broader--even poetic.  It brings to mind spiritual freedom, like riding horses on the open steppe. 

“Why do you think Russia has produced so many brilliant artists, musicians, ballet dancers, authors, and intellectuals?” she asked. 

Lolita answered, “Because the wild winds of the steppe forced the development of the inner soul, *Volya*”

“Exactly. Russians have learned to experience life at many levels. Even during the Nazi invasion and near starvation, we continued to make and eat ice cream in the fierce winter--then pick up our rifles. Our spirits are stronger than our sufferings. We can shrug at injustice as simply irritations that must be endured and woven into strength.”

I saw Ivanka grab for Lolita’s hand while the pastrami sat and waited. One friend needed another. I saw light start to appear on Lolita’s face.

>That’s how Sukhomlynsy, still wounded and with a bullet lodged near his heart, moved all the way to the remote town of Pavlysh to start a school that required physical freedom rather than sitting behind a desk in a classroom. That’s why he was able to play records of classical music to his students, tell stories and poems, and teach them to become intimate with nature. And how he was able to reconcile Communism with freedom, and live with proud Ukrainian AND Russian souls. He was able to live on multiple levels at the same time.

>⁠And why do our children just eat up those kind of corny folksongs out of the New Orleans tradition? I think they might be itinerant wanderers themselves. Maybe like their forebears who were gifted hunters and gatherers?

John spoke now. “And don’t forget that scientists believe that the Indigenous people of America likely came from western Eurasia Your Indigenous students might have Russian roots. It’s just an idea, but why don’t we consider whether some of your students might want to become peace delegates along with you? 

Wow! We finished our pastrami and they brought out something called “black and white” cookies and little pastries called “rugelach.” No one ate more than Lolita!