Photo Gallery A Plea for Parallels
Svetlana Gerner, was born in Kiev in 1964 and came to Germany in 1992. She speaks Russian at home, eats primarily Russian food and celebrates Russian holidays. But she feels at home in Germany.
Parallel societies are not difficult to find. In fact, New York is full of them. In flexible, changing populations, parallel societies are almost an inevitability. Here, a parade in New York's China Town.
The annual Feast of San Gennaro festival in Little Italy, New York. Why should people "with immigration backgrounds," as Germans so carefully say, be forced to dissolve into the society of the majority if they would rather remain among themselves?
A view of Yorkville, the former German district in New York, in 1942. Pparallel societies are unavoidable and perhaps even desirable and useful. They give people the feeling of belonging to something that they can grasp -- provide the kind of security that society at large cannot.
In New York, many quarters host one parallel society after another. Washington Heights in northern Manhattan is now dominated by immigrants from the Caribbean. In its past, the area has been home to Irish immigrants, Jews from Germany, and Greeks.
In Israel, where the majority of residents have "immigration backgrounds," there are several parallel societies. Here, a meeting of the "Black Hebrews" in Dimona.
