Anna Lanskoy

Anna Lanskoy (née Rivkin) was born on August 16, 1948, in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Her father, Boris Raevsky, was a famous children’s book author, and her mother, Berta Volchok, was an anthropologist at the Institute of Ethnology in the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, where she worked on a team with Yuri Knorozov that made a crucial contribution to deciphering the Mayan language.

Anna grew up along the bank of the Neva river, and when it was time to attend university, she would walk along the embankment to the Leningrad University campus. She graduated with a degree in Biology in June 1971. Her youth revolved around an idyllic romance with Alexander Lanskoy, whom she married in August 1968, and a tight-knit community of young intellectuals, many of them connected to the Writers’ Union and its Guest House in Komarovo, a vacation community outside Leningrad.

Anna and her family emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1979, settling in Brooklyn. Feeling that they were starting their careers in the US late in life, they worked extra hard to rapidly launch Alex’s medical practice and buy a house in Marine Park. In 1995, the family experienced the tragic loss of Alex Lanskoy. Many of the tight circle of friends from her youth in St. Petersburg had made their way to New York. That group of friends sustained Anna emotionally when Alex was gone, and in due course they introduced Anna to Emmanuil (Misha) Shrayer, also a recent widower from St. Petersburg.

In 1998 Anna moved to Lexington, Massachusetts, to be with Misha. The couple were married in a beautiful ceremony at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in NYC in January 2006. Anna and Misha had a loving marriage, enjoying each other’s company on numerous foreign trips and walking tours of European capitals. While Misha took charge of the beautiful garden, Anna helped to harvest the lilies of the valley. They built a cohesive composite family where all their children and grandchildren felt included and loved.

Anna began her career as a lecturer in biology at two medical schools in Leningrad. There, she discovered a love of teaching and presenting that stayed with her throughout her life. In the US, she worked in the clinical pathology departments of Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Long Island College Hospital while Alex studied for his medical exams and completed his residency. She switched to selling life insurance for Metlife and was the first Russian-speaking insurance agent in Brooklyn. Popularizing insurance in the Russian community carried a strong element of instruction, since the concept of insurance was novel for this population, and over time she built a large and well-to-do client base. When Alex started his medical practice in 1984, Anna became the office manager—she supervised the construction of the office that is still a medical practice at 2424 Kings Highway in Brooklyn.

In Boston, she worked at Tufts HealthCare and managed a medical practice for a local physician. She came into her own, working as a social worker in adult day care centers at Second Home and Pearl from 2006 to 2017. This became the role she enjoyed the most because it had autonomy and agency. She was working directly with patients, helping them to achieve tangible improvements and benefits. Anna is proud of her work helping others. She thrived in many jobs using her range of medical, managerial, and communication skills.

Anna is survived by her daughter, Miriam, and by her granddaughter, Emma Alexandra. Anna is also survived by her husband, Emmanuil Shrayer; his daughter, Nina Shrayer, and her wife, Margaret Griffith, and granddaughters Mona and Greta; and his son, Boris Shrayer, and his wife, Irina Shrayer, and grandchildren, Eva, Greg, Abby, and Rafaela.

The funeral service will be on Monday, June 16, 2025 at 12:00 PM at Congregation B'nai Tzedek.The funeral service may be livestreamed via https://youtube.com/live/3OHjMb7M4Bc?feature=share. Burial to occur at 2:00 PM at Judean Memorial Gardens.