BRIGHTON BEACH WAS ORIGINALLY SETTLED IN THE 1880s as a middle-class summer resort. The Brighton Beach Hotel and racetrack attracted tens of thousands of visitors every summer. Then in 1909, New York State outlawed horse racing, and the resort’s golden age was over. When a housing shortage struck New York City at the end of World War I, people began settling in Brighton Beach year-round.
In the 1920s developers built thirty six-story apartment houses, and Brighton Beach became a diverse Jewish immigrant community. The area became a hotbed for both the Socialist and Communist Parties. When the Depression hit, Jews from other parts of Brooklyn flocked to the area, sharing apartments with friends and moving in with relatives.
After World War II and continuing through the 1960s, the children of the immigrant settlers began leaving Brighton Beach for the suburbs. Replacing them were Holocaust survivors and the elderly, who, motivated by the fear of crime, moved from older immigrant areas, including Brownsville, East Flatbush, and the Grand Concourse of the Bronx.
But a community of senior citizens must shrink, and by 1975 the vacancy rate in Brighton Beach was almost 30 percent. Stores and apartments stood empty. Then the city released thousands of nonviolent mentally ill patients from mental hospitals. A large number of these people moved to Brighton Beach. There was a real fear that Brighton Beach was dying.
The savior of the community came with glasnost, the thawing of the Cold War under President Ronald Reagan. The first Soviet Jews to leave Russia settled in Brighton Beach in the early 1970s because the rent was cheap and the housing decent. The settlers were taken by the fact that Brighton Beach was a seaside community. Odessa was on the Black Sea. Jews who came from there and settled in Brighton Beach were reminded of home. News traveled fast. Brighton Beach became known as Little Odessa.
By the late 1980s Brighton Beach was overcrowded. Store signs in English and Yiddish were replaced by Cyrillic letters. You could buy borscht and smoked fish, caviar and Russian pastry. Russian restaurants and nightclubs prospered. Today one is hard-pressed to find residents who speak English. Russian predominates.
Alec and Grandpa Nochim in 1972.
Courtesy of Alec Brook-Krasny
The Russian Jews even have a representative in the New York State Assembly. His name is Alec Brook-Krasny, a remarkable man with an improbable story. Brook-Krasny came to Brooklyn in 1989, at the age of thirty-one, knowing twenty words of English. In a little more than seventeen years, he went from an immigrant stock clerk in a shoe store in Greenwich Village to a New York State assemblyman from the 46th District.
When his second daughter was about to celebrate her first birthday, Brook-Krasny sought to find a place that would throw her a glitzy birthday party. When he discovered that no such place existed, he built one himself. His business was so innovative that in 1999 he was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Leisure and Entertainment magazine.
But doing well financially wasn’t enough. Following in the footsteps of a philanthropic grandfather, Brook-Krasny saw the need to bring members of the Russian Jewish community together with the mainstream Jewish community, and so he founded an organization called the Council of Jewish Émigré Community Organizations. With that platform he was able to meet all the important politicians of Brooklyn, and he was encouraged by former city councilman Howard Lasher to embark on a political career. He became treasurer of Community Board 13, and after failing twice in runs for state office, in 2006 he won a seat in the New York State Assembly. More than anything, Brook-Krasny’s story is further evidence of the vitality that immigrants bring to American life and culture.
Alec Brook-Krasny with Jan Krasny, his stepfather, in downtown Moscow. Courtesy of Alec Brook-Krasny
ALEC BROOK-KRASNY “I was born in Moscow in 1958. My father’s name was Simon Katsnelson. He was a shoemaker in his early years, and then for many years he ran a shoemaking plant. Life was hard for him in the Soviet Union. Under the Soviet regime, it was impossible even to open a small business. He had to work for the government, and he was paid about 140 rubles a month, about $100 a month at best.
“My father, who is not with us anymore, was a very smart man but because he was Jewish, he was not able to go to college. In the ’50s and ’60s they wouldn’t allow him to pass the test.
“My mother was a bookkeeper in a beauty salon for many, many years. Her name is Clara Brook, and she’s with me now. My father and mother got divorced a long time ago, and the person who brought me up in my early years was Jan Krasny. He ran a small plant that repaired refrigerators. They [Brook and Krasny] met a long time ago, and they got separated too. For some years I used the last name Krasny, but I wanted to change it to Brook. When I came to America, I came as Krasny, and when I got my citizenship I saw I couldn’t change it, because so many people knew me as Krasny, so I decided to hyphenate it and make it Brook-Krasny as a way to honor both names.
“The person who had the greatest influence on me was actually my grandfather, Nochim Katsnelson, and I’m sitting in my office looking at his picture. My grandfather mentored me in many, many different domains, including Jewish heritage and Jewish culture. He was a religious man, and he taught me many of life’s values. He was a very honest man who was ready to help others. I can remember him bringing in people virtually from the street, who needed food and clothes. There were only four little synagogues in all of the Moscow metropolitan area with its 15 million people. He was a gaboy in one of them, in a small village outside of the Moscow called Perlovka. The whole of Perlovka knew him, and people of virtually every nationality liked him a lot. He helped a lot of Russians, and other people, including the Tartars. He was a shoemaker all his life. He had a small store right by the Perlovka train station.
“He was proud to be Jewish, and during the repressive ’50s and ’60s he dared to walk the streets of Moscow wearing a yarmulke. The state didn’t like it, but they never punished him for it because he was absolutely, openly Jewish and religiously so, and I believe to some degree they were afraid to touch him. Everyone knew how helpful he was to so many, and maybe that was the reason they didn’t touch him.
Alec in the fifth grade in Moscow.
Courtesy of Alec Brook-Krasny
“He was my hero, but unfortunately, he passed away when I was fifteen. When I was a young boy, I had a bris, because of him. My mother was totally against it. Every year in school you had to take a physical exam. My mother said, ‘Your first physical exam will bring you a lot of trouble.’ And it turned out that way. The exam revealed my secret: that I was Jewish. And within five days, the whole school knew. So it wasn’t the best experience, but I’m still very grateful to my grandfather for doing it, because I’m proud of it. And though I was always a good student, I never received any awards I might otherwise have gotten.
“Leonid Brezhnev ran the country when I was growing up. The country was regressing. It’s interesting to make comparisons with life in the United States today. Two days ago I was in the state senate, and we had to vote on a new state comptroller. Alan Hevesi had been removed from his position, and according to the Constitution, his successor is supposed to be chosen by the assembly and senate together. The governor Eliot Spitzer—who I liked very much—decided he was going to interfere with the process by using his own version of the process. Now, making parallels, I lived for thirty years in a country where the legislative branch was totally inferior to the executive branch, and that was one of the main reasons why the country collapsed.
“When I got up in front of the assembly, I told them this, and explained why I was voting against what the governor was trying to do. Because I believe in the separation of powers. That’s the only way democracy can exist. It was not in place in the Soviet Union at all. We didn’t have jobless people, but all of us were making what we here call welfare, or even less than that.
“Everything was lacking. Absolutely everything. There was nothing to buy. In the early 1970s there wasn’t even any bread. Fortunately my mother and father were able to find things on the black market through their own connections.
“There was a bright side. The educational system was very good. I got to college, and I went to the Moscow Technological Institute. I got a degree in engineering and economics. It took me seven years to get it, because I was working for a government agency overseeing the production of refrigerators. After I graduated I became manager of a small plant with about forty people repairing refrigerators. It was what my stepfather had done, but I felt it was something I could do within the framework of the governmental system in which I was living. I was making about 200 rubles a month, which is $150.
“For the Russian people, one of the highlights was our space program. We all were proud of it. Yuri Gagarin was our first cosmonaut, and we followed him up into space. I had mixed feelings, because on the one hand you know what the government is all about, and on the other hand, you live in a country. You love the streets where you were born.
“In 1985, when I was twenty-seven years old, Mikhail Gorbachev replaced Chernenko, and Gorbachev instituted glasnost, and it meant a lot to me. I was aware of the practices behind the Iron Curtain, and I was aware of democracy. I was listening to the Voice of America. I was also part of a group of about forty Jewish boys and girls who would get together every September and celebrate the festival of Simchas Torah, where everybody dances. We would gather at a Hebrew school every year.
“We weren’t dissidents. We just wanted to celebrate our roots. And we would go to a hotel and spend holidays together. I’m still friends with people from that group, including Alexander Lubov and Igor Schtarkman. That was very unusual. In Moscow it’s usually very hard to find a group of Jewish guys, because everyone remains hidden. But I was following in my grandfather’s footsteps, and he didn’t hide it, and I didn’t hide it either. I would never hide it.
“And he was probably the reason my first wife was Jewish, and now my wife is Jewish. But getting back to Gorbachev and glasnost, in 1985 I came to the mistaken conclusion that everything can be changed in the country. By 1987 I realized that for the country to change, it would take a hundred years.
“Since I knew a lot of young Jewish people, the idea of immigration was in the air. For many years I was thinking about it, but for many years I was afraid to apply, because I knew what would happen to me. I knew people who applied and who lost their jobs, their opportunity to feed their family, the chance to make any kind of money at all. So I have to say I was afraid of the government. I was afraid my family and I would end up like them. By the end of 1987 it appeared that the climate had changed, that there would be no reprisals if I applied for an exit visa, and so I applied early in 1988, and it took me a year to get an Israeli visa, because that was the only chance to leave the former Soviet Union. I left with my wife and daughter.
“At the time, I credited Ronald Reagan with getting us out of Russia. I was sure he was the one who helped open the doors. I feel a bit differently today. I believe that Mikhail Gorbachev was the driving force, and I can say that Nancy Reagan was second, and Ronald Reagan followed her lead. But certainly you can say that the work of Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan made it possible.
“We went to Vienna, and I went to the American consulate and asked for permission to enter the United States. This process, which was supported by HIAS [Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society] and NYANA [New York Association for New Americans], took about six months, and we lived in Italy during this time, in Torvaianica, a small village about forty minutes from Rome, on the Mediterranean Sea. I worked for my landlord as a fisherman, pulling nets from five in the morning until one o’clock in the afternoon for $5 an hour. I was rich. It was a wonderful village with a real sense of camaraderie. My landlord and I became very close. He didn’t want us to leave. The first month our rent was $750, and he lowered it to $370 in an attempt to keep me from leaving.
“I had it in my mind to go to the United States. My ex-wife, Elvira, had relatives in Brooklyn, and we rented an apartment on Avenue Y and East 13th Street. The first time I saw Brighton Beach, I was very disappointed. I had heard about all the big skyscrapers, and I was imagining them there in Brighton Beach, and there weren’t any. But after only twelve days in this country, I was working already. I started as a stock boy in a shoe store in Greenwich Village in Manhattan on West 8th Street. Igor Schtarkman, one of my childhood friends, was friendly with the store owner.
“I worked there about two years. I spent a year as a stock boy and a salesman, and then as soon as I picked up the language I became a manager of the store. I came to this country speaking twenty words of English—hello, good-bye, please, thank you, shoes—and Greenwich Village turned out to be an excellent place to learn English, because there were no Russian speakers around.
“I lived at Avenue Y and East 13th Street for about a year. Elvira was a dentist, and she went to NYU to get her credentials. I guess she was under the impression I was going to be a stock boy for the rest of my life, and she found another dentist. Being the mild kind of person I was, I decided I would throw away all her suitcases and start over. My daughter Dina stayed with me, and my mother, realizing I was alone and struggling, making $350 a week, came over from Russia to help look after her. Dina is twenty-four years old now. She works for CBS Sports. She is absolutely great, the smartest twenty-four-year-old girl I know.
“In 1992 I decided to attend the York Institute, a business school in Manhattan, just to pick up the lexicon. I became an accountant, and in 1994 I became the manager of a trucking company in Brooklyn.
“I met my wife, Iviva. She’s from Vilnius, in Lithuania, and on February 14, 1994, my second daughter, Rebecca, was born. At the beginning of 1995 I went looking for a place to celebrate her first birthday. When I couldn’t find a place, I realized this was something lacking in the city. I went to my childhood friends, Alex Lubov and Igor Schtarkman and a couple others, and they became my investors, and within a year I converted an old beer warehouse on Neptune Avenue in Brooklyn into a beautiful, fourteen-thousand-square-foot space that became a kids’ community, entertainment, and educational center called Fun-O-Rama.
Alec with daughter Dina, wife Iviva, daughter Rebecca, and son Jonathan. Courtesy of Alec Brook-Krasny
“During the six months I spent investigating the business, I discovered that a Chuck E. Cheese in Vancouver, Canada, went out of business. I bought the equipment for 15¢ on the dollar, rented three trucks, and carted it back to Brooklyn. For 15¢ on the dollar anyone would do it. So Fun-O-Rama was built, and from the second month it was profitable. It caught the attention of some people in the industry, and why, I don’t know, but in 1997 I was named the Entrepreneur of the Year by Leisure and Entertainment magazine. And then it caught the attention of the local politicians. With the development of the place, I got acquainted with the local city councilmen, Howard Lasher and Jules Polonetsky, and they appointed me to Community Board 13 in 1997. For six months I sat there doing absolutely nothing, and then I started to get involved.
“The first issue was the building of a cultural center in Brighton Beach. It was to be a center for Russian-speakers, but, due to lack of parking, the community board rejected the proposal to build it.
“Out of curiosity, I decided to look into the matter. I saw that according to a grandfather law, the owners of the building had a right to put up a movie theater with four thousand seats in the building. I also realized it was a historical landmark. They could not demolish it. In other words, you had to do something with it.
“When I realized that their proposal was for establishing a theater with about 1,900 seats, I saw a way to get it built. I went to the community board, and they gave me three minutes to speak. And within three minutes I explained to them very simply that for 1,900 seats you need half as much parking as for 4,000 seats, and for the first time in the history of Community Board 13, five months later they reversed their decision. It was all over the newspapers.
“I didn’t tell them they were wrong. I told them their lawyer was wrong.
“What was even more important, Howard Lasher and Jules Polonetsky realized what I could do. Two years later I was elected treasurer of the community board, and was the only Russian-speaker on the board.
“I was also very active in the mainstream community—I was more active in the mainstream community than in the Russian community—and in 2000 I ran for state assembly. It was Howard Lasher’s idea. I was nominated by the local Democratic club, and I believed I would win, but I was removed from the ballot. They played a dirty trick on me. I was running against Adele Cohen, and she had won the previous election by 2,500 votes. You needed 500 signatures to run, and I had more than 4,000, but 12 of those 4,000 were collected by a twelve-year-old boy. I knew nothing about it. Adele Cohen went before a judge, and the judge removed me from the ballot.
“I had come from the former Soviet Union, where this sort of thing happened all the time. And in the United States it was happening to me! I was very upset, but I didn’t give up. I ran a write-in campaign, and in 2000 I set a record for a write-in candidate. I got about 1,600 votes, and I came in second.
“In 2001 I ran for city council against Dominick Recchia, who became a very effective public servant. Of the seven candidates, five were American-born. And I won the New York Times’s endorsement over Recchia. I met with the editors for over three hours. It was 2001, and when people talked about the Russian community, they were talking about the Russian mafia. They really had to know who I was and where I came from. But I got the endorsement.
“Dominick was the choice of the Democratic machine, and he won.
“That same year I started an organization called the Council of Jewish Émigré Community Organizations (COJECO). I started with a few files in the trunk of my car right after September 11. I wanted to build a bridge between the mainstream Jewish community and the Russian Jewish community. What I was saying was that it was no accident that the Rabinowitz from New York and the Rabinowitz from Moscow had the same last names. We needed a bridge and COJECO became that bridge. I found good people for the board of directors, and we started programs for youth, for seniors, for going to Israel, for rallies in support of Israel. We had mutual programs with big Jewish institutions like the 92nd Street Y [in Manhattan]. For two years in a row our organization has been named on the list of the top fifty most innovative Jewish organizations in North America.
“After Dominick Recchia won, the council redistricted about five thousand Russian Jews out of his district just to keep me from beating him. On the other hand, the redistricting of the assembly also was taking place, and those same Russian Jews were in the 46th Assembly District, and by that time Howard Lasher was very ill with Alzheimer’s, and I decided to run for his seat. I was able to convince Dominick how important the Russian-speaking community was by showing him the numbers and by its economic success, and he campaigned for me from sunup to sundown. My opponent was Ari Kagan, a journalist for a Russian-American newspaper.
“Ari was preparing himself for this race for a few years, and while he was writing about what I was doing in the community he was actually getting lessons from me. He was ready for a big fight.
“I realized by reading about elections in different ethnic communities that the first election is always about the former country. I found out that Ari had graduated from a military academy in Russia and that he had become a propagandist for the Soviets in 1988, and he was using some of those techniques. Ari, in turn, accused me of having ties to the Kremlin. Walter Ruby had written an article about me in Jewish Week, in which I stated I supported a meeting of Hamas leaders and the Russian leaders. You should know what the other side is thinking. It made a lot of sense. But based on that, Kagan started accusing me of supporting Putin and Hamas.
“I thought I would win by a big margin, but I won by only 140 votes out of 6,000. I ended up getting more mainstream votes than I got Russian-speaking votes. I won because of mainstream voters.
“And now that I am a member of the state assembly, I feel like I can do good for my community. I don’t think I can change the world tomorrow, because Albany is probably harder to change than the whole world. But I am a fan of after-school programs. I’m a product of them in the Soviet Union; that’s where you learned culture, music, and art. We don’t teach these things in the American school system, and I talked to the governor about this for a couple minutes, and he was very receptive. So I think I can change things. In some areas I think my knowledge will be helpful.
“I never would have become a politician in the Soviet Union. They talk about democracy, but Russia is still a long way from democracy. And in my heart, I would not have been able to become a politician in another kind of government. Because I believe in democracy totally.
“I have lived in Sea Gate for fourteen years. It’s on the western tip of Coney Island, an incredible place to raise kids and live with your family. Even though I wasn’t born there, I really feel like a Brooklynite.”
Courtesy of Alec Brook-Krasny