I was born in a beautiful little city called Riga in the then-Soviet republic of Latvia. My family history dates back generations in Latvia. It’s where my maternal grandmother, Babushka Dina, eventually returned to – after Russian dictator Joseph Stalin sent her and her parents to a Siberian camp and after the rest of her relatives were murdered in the Holocaust. My paternal family hails from Ukraine – the first place I ever visited as a child. They, too, had to run from the Nazis but also returned. Still, the oppression of the Soviet Union was relentless (especially for Jews...