Living with hate is an arduous task. I had to confront it daily throughout my childhood and adulthood. At the beginning of my school years, I could not understand why I was different in a class of forty children.
            At seven, it was hard for me to figure it out. I looked just like any other first grader in my class. I wore the same uniform and carried the same school bag to school. My skin tone was the same as the rest of the pupils. The only thing that stood out in my appearance were the curly, dark locks. My Mama refused to let me grow my hair long so she could braid it. She had this superstition about curls. She thought that by braiding my hair, my curls would disappear. And Mama loved them. I was the only one among my siblings who inherited them from my father.
           Papa’s hair, just like mine, was curly and beautiful. He had one unruly lock that would not stay still on his head. It escaped and fell down his forehead, blocking his vision. I can see it in my mind each time it happens. Papa patiently ran his hand through his thick mane to secure it on top of his head, but he failed miserably at his task, and the darn lock escaped again and again. In my class, I was the only one with curls, even though we had four other Jewish children.
            I still wonder why my first-grade teacher singled me out on the first day of school. I could only assume that she hated Jews. In Ukraine, antisemitism was rampant. It went back to the mid-seventeenth century when Bogdan Khmelnitsky massacred Jews, continued to the brutal killing fields during World War I, and the blood lands soiled by Nazi murderers in the operation Barbarossa in 1941.  
           When my teacher selected me as the scapegoat, she sent a signal to the rest of the children and split our class. Children are intuitive. They pick up on emotions and use them to their advantage. Those who wanted to be liked by the teacher became her pets, and the rebellious ones ignored her signal. They became my friends. They fought my battles and spoke up against prejudice. I used different techniques to win the haters in my quest to belong.
          At some point, I noticed some students who did poorly in class come over to the nerds asking to copy homework, I decided to become the best pupil in my class. I figured they would have no choice but to beg me to help them with homework, and I hoped that they would eventually discover my true self and like me for who I was.
           
 

​Today is Easter. It is one of the most sacred Christian holidays. I honor this tradition because I know how important the religion is. In the country of my birth, religion was forbidden and punished by law. The Communist Party members did not accept God and used every tool available to brainwash its citizens.
            When Yuri Gagarin, the first-ever cosmonaut to fly into space, returned to Earth, he declared, “I see no God up here.”  I was seven, and I could never forget the excitement the people of the Soviet Union felt when his spaceship took off.
            Every TV channel, which there were a few, and the radio station repeated his name non-stop for months. The oppressive totalitarian government that owned TV and Radio controlled what the social media spewed. Under its auspices, it had to follow the written script composed of words full of propaganda to brainwash the proletariat.
            Yuri Gagarin became an instant hero. The image of him dressed in his cosmonaut suit with the Universe in the background was on display on the façade of every official government building. Above his head, the slogan about God was printed in giant capital letters.
            Granted, the USSR had a reason to celebrate its achievement of being the first in the world to reach space. That meant that they beat their number one enemy—the United States of America.
            At the time, I, too, was brainwashed and believed in the superiority of the Godless country. But later, when I grew older and more intelligent, I realized how horrific it was to live in a world where there was no God. I realized that believing in God is essential and extraordinary. Believing in God means that there is hope for the believer. Believing in God would have sustained everyone who lived in the USSR. Because in the darkness of the oppression, a light illuminating the path to God would have shone through, relieving the oppressed masses.
            So, in today’s celebration of Easter, I would like to reflect on the greatness of God and on the opposing forces that try to exterminate the value of religion in my beloved America. When a government cares more about the pronouns we must use to address each other than honoring the religious practice of most people, I begin to worry. These days, the more I look around and hear the news on social media, the more I recognize the similarity between the tactics the Communists used and the tactics our government uses to suppress the spirit of the American people.