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Family Is All That Matters 70 Iosif remembers the apartment outside Moscow where Rosa and Dmitry lived. It was on the ground floor of a four-family house, and huge by Russian standards, having three big bedrooms and a big kitchen, plus a private backyard. The whole family tended to congregate at the Kidermans' for holidays, weekends, and extended summer getaways. But when the Kidermans le Russia to go to Israel, there was no buyer for their home. They had to abandon it. A typical activity for the Kiderman family was wild mushroom picking in the nearby forests. Iosif remembers accompanying them on many such outings. He had a picture guide to edible mushrooms. "Making a mistake in picking mushrooms was deadly," he says. "The rule we applied was: if you're not sure, leave it." When they got back to the big kitchen, Rosa would y the mushrooms with potatoes for the entire family to enjoy. "Rosa was a good-natured person; she liked to help people," Iosif says. Rosa and Dmitry had two children, Aleksander and Sam, born in Reutov. Aleksander married Lena Frumkina on October 19, 1968, in Moscow and they have one child, Alik. In October of 1989, they immigrated to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they still live, and where Aleksander was interviewed for this book in April of 2007. Aleksander remembers his father Dmitry as a very strong man, an adroit soccer player. In his army uniform, he was very dashing. He was also a wise man, committed to Jewish orthodoxy and the doctrines of tzedekah (good deeds) and tikkun olam (repairing the world). "One of the lessons he quietly communicated to me was that it is relatively difficult to lead a good life. The main value was to respect family, support each other, and be generous in whatever way you can," Aleksander says. His father was very supportive, but was always a joker. When Aleksander was studying piano, the teacher came to the house every week. Dmitry gladly paid for the lessons, but could not resist joking, "Do you know how much it costs me each time you press a piano key?" There is a memorable story about how Aleksander started taking piano lessons. Originally he was taking violin lessons. On a train going to school one day, a passenger saw Aleksander's violin case and asked the student to play a tune. So, right there in the middle of the train, Aleksander took out his violin and began to play. The commuters no doubt enjoyed the impromptu concert tremendously, but somehow the story got back to Dmitry and he was not happy. "Enough!" said Dmitry, and that was the end of his son's violin career. When Aleksander was 16, Dmitry didn't like some of his son's habits. He took the boy out of school and got him a manual labor job. Aleksander worked all day and went to school at night. "If you have time for drinking and girls, you have time to work," his father said. "I was angry at the time," says Aleksander, "but now I understand the lesson my father was trying to teach me."

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