This weekend, I was also reminded of a more recent Russian saying. There was at one point a well-known Russian line (I’ve seen it credited to Ilf & Petrov’s The Golden Calf) that “a car is not a luxury, it is a means of transportation.” I’m a bit hazy on the precise meaning of the saying, but that doesn’t quite matter here. What matters is that in the 1970s, when most Jews — and, with them, their family members — but virtually no Russians were allowed to emigrate, someone coined this variant: “A Jewish wife is not a luxury; she is a means of transportation.”