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Family Is All That Matters 30 as Iosif started Russian school. Attending Russian school in Moscow aer learning in a Jewish school in Gorodok was hard for all the children. For one thing, they spoke Yiddish and Ukrainian, not Russian. Still, the children were very gied and learned languages quickly. Iosif recalls his first language test aer he arrived in fih grade, at the age of 12. He made more than 50 mistakes. While Ukrainian and Russian have some similarities, the grammar is Above: Inna Volsun in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 1945. different. His classmates, once again, laughed at him. This time, the teacher, an older woman, was sympathetic. She invited Iosif to her home every aernoon aer school, and she tutored him in Russian. The next time he took a language test, he made only 23 errors. Inna recalls that all the Volsun children were straight-A students. Some school officials were surprised. Inna's father and mother worked so hard they never had the opportunity to visit the school or attend any of the children's events. Inna remembers that early one evening, she answered a knock on the door and there stood the principal of her school. He wanted to know how it was that the busy parents had such smart children. "My mother and father beamed with pride," she recalls. "My mother told the principal the children look out for each other, which was true." Shlomo did not generally lecture the children about how to behave. Rather, he modeled values by his own conduct. By his own practice, he encouraged the children to be patient and helpful. He encouraged them to practice mitzvot (the commandments) and tzedakah (charity). Although the family observed all the Jewish holidays as well as they could, practicing religion was always a risk in Soviet Russia, and they had to be inconspicuous about it. There was never any question that Iosif would become a bar mitzvah (literally, "son of the commandments") when he was 13 years old. But it would not be the very public affair that American Jewish boys celebrate today. On the appointed Saturday, Shlomo arranged for all of Iosif 's sisters to spend the day with their iends. The bar mitzvah would happen at home, without them. Shlomo was justifiably scared; any religious ceremony was officially against the law. That's why he sent the girls away. He didn't want to take the risk that the girls might inadvertently say something that would alert a nosy neighbor. There were informers everywhere. When Iosif 's sisters returned home, they could tell something important happened. There was a nice meal

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