In 2012, the Russian-Jewish singer-songwriter Regina Spektor performed at a fundraiser for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in New York. Spektor had already achieved mainstream radio success, and HIAS had helped Spektor’s family emigrate from the Soviet Union when she was a child. All those years later, she still wanted to show her appreciation. Members of her family were in the audience, and the combination of nerves and a pronounced cough led to her making mistakes, starting songs over, and bashfully apologizing: The opportunity to show her gratitude and share the occasion with a theater full of American Jews, many of whom had similar life stories, was simply too important to her to let herself take a sick day. It was a deeply charming, intimate moment, and in some important ways a microcosm of the modern American Jewish experience.
This past Saturday night, Spektor was again moved to talk about her family’s emigration—but for dispiriting reasons.
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