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Somewhere in Between: A Look at the American Russian-Speaking Jewish Experience
Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Photo: Wiki Commons.
On a gray weekday afternoon, on the Brighton Beach Boardwalk in Brooklyn, the rhythmic clatter of dominoes on plastic tables mingles with the scent of fresh pirozhki and the soft murmur of Russian spoken with a Brooklyn lilt.
Down the street, a synagogue hosts Torah classes in three languages — English, Russian, and Hebrew — while a young woman in a puffer jacket scrolls through a WhatsApp group where Russian-speaking Jews discuss the latest news from Israel and the rise in antisemitism.
Brighton Beach — affectionately nicknamed “Little Odessa” — is the epicenter of a community that has straddled continents, ideologies, and generations: American, Russian-speaking Jews.
More than just immigrants or transplants, the Russian-speaking Jewish (RSJ) community in the United States has built a cultural enclave that is as complex as its history. Defined less by a single nation than by the Soviet past they share, the community spans immigrants from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Uzbekistan, the Caucasus, and other former USSR republics. They came not as one people, but have become one — at least on American soil.
Their journey to the US began in earnest in the 1970s, as Cold War tensions and rising antisemitism in the Soviet Union sparked a wave of emigration. Thousands of Soviet Jews — often stripped of professional status and burdened by state suspicion — left for the promise of religious freedom and opportunity. For many, the US was a distant, idealized land. For others, it was merely the first country that would take them.
The first major waves were driven by the Jackson-Vanik Amendment of 1974, which linked US trade relations with the USSR to the latter’s emigration policies. With support from Jewish aid organizations like HIAS and the Joint Distribution Committee, families arrived in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago — many with little more than a suitcase and Soviet engineering degrees that carried no weight.
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, another, larger wave arrived — often poorer, less assimilated, and more religiously indifferent. This second migration reshaped the contours of the community, fusing intelligentsia with working-class grit.
For many Soviet Jews, religion was an abstraction — Judaism inherited more as ethnicity than faith. In the USSR, synagogues were shuttered, rabbis monitored, and Jewish holidays unofficial. Yet in America, that secular Jewishness found new expression.
Enter established organizations, such as Jewish Federations, JCCs, synagogues, and RSJ-founded community groups, which have spent the last three decades building Jewish identity among young Russian-speakers, often reintroducing them to traditions their parents never had a chance to learn.
That pride often takes unexpected forms: the community has produced world-renowned scientists and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs such as Google co-founder Sergey Brin, actresses like Mila Kunis, and comedians like Eugene Mirman, all shaped by the push-and-pull of Soviet-Jewish cultural inheritance and American possibility.
Politically, Russian-speaking Jews are notably distinct from some other Jewish American demographics. Shaped by memories of authoritarianism and state control, they lean more conservative — often voting Republican in higher percentages than other Jewish groups. Many immigrants, particularly of the older generation, view terms like socialism and social justice with reprehension, as the rhetoric of the American left reminds them of Soviet talking points.
Still, this political tilt doesn’t negate the community’s internal diversity — generational divides run deep, and younger Russian-Jewish Americans often find themselves bridging the worlds of their parents’ nostalgia and their own liberal-leaning social environments.
Today, as the community enters its third and fourth generations in America, a new identity is forming — one less tied to survival and more to self-expression. Russian-Jewish-American artists, businesspeople, and professionals are weaving together old-world trauma and new-world irony.
Many Russian-speaking Jews are discovering that Zionism and Israel are playing a larger part in shaping their identity. Masha Merkulova, Club Z’s founder and executive director states, “In our work with young American Jews, including those from Russian-speaking families, we teach them that while we embrace our American identity, our Jewishness connects us to something deeper and older. This is especially relevant for Russian-speaking Jews who have already navigated multiple identities. We carry Judea—our ancestral homeland in what is now Israel—in our heritage, not the steppes of Russia. Archaeological evidence, genetic studies, and our unbroken cultural traditions confirm that Jews are indigenous to the Middle East, regardless of where history scattered us. At Club Z, we emphasize that understanding this indigenous connection doesn’t diminish our Russian or American chapters—it enriches them, giving context to our ‘between-ness’ and purpose to our journey.”
Still, traces of the old world remain: the Russian-language newspapers that line newsstands in neighborhoods where Russian-speaking Jews live, the lavish weddings that combine demonstrations of newly found opulence with Jewish ritual, and the grandparents who still call America “zagranitsa” — the “foreign country.”
To walk through the Russian-speaking Jewish neighborhoods of America is to hear echoes of exile and endurance. It is a community forever navigating between languages, ideologies, and histories — a community of “between-ness.”
But perhaps that’s what makes them most American: their hybridity, their hustle, their contradictions — all worn with pride, all deeply earned.
Or, as a Brighton Beach grandmother might put it, “We’re not from here, we’re not from there — we’re from somewhere in between. But here, at least, we can be who we are.”
Gennady Favel has co-founded a number of nonprofits in the Russian-Speaking Jewish community, for which he led community outreach. His work has appeared in NY Daily News, The Forward, Times of Israel, eJewish Philanthropy, and many other publications.
The post Somewhere in Between: A Look at the American Russian-Speaking Jewish Experience first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Former Columbia University President Appointed as UK Economic Adviser
Columbia University administrators and faculty, led by President Minouche Shafik, testified before the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, 2024. Photo: Jack Gruber/Reuters Connect
i24 News – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has named Minouche Shafik, former president of Columbia University, as his chief economic adviser at Downing Street, a move aimed at stabilizing the country’s fragile economy and averting a potential budget crisis.
Shafik, an economist of Egyptian origin with dual British and American nationality, has held senior roles at the Bank of England, the IMF, and the World Bank.
She later led the London School of Economics and was elevated to the House of Lords in 2020.
Her tenure in the United States was more turbulent. Shafik stepped down as president of Columbia University in 2024 after just a year in office, amid fierce criticism over her handling of pro-Palestinian protests following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza.
US officials accused her of failing to confront antisemitism on campus, while students and faculty condemned her decision to call in police to dismantle protest encampments.
Since returning to Britain, Shafik has played an active role in policy and cultural institutions. She advised Foreign Secretary David Lammy on international aid reform, has chaired the Victoria & Albert Museum since January, and led the “Economy 2030” inquiry for the Resolution Foundation, where she argued for reforms to the UK’s system of wealth taxation.
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Israel Mulls West Bank Annexation in Response to Moves to Recognize Palestine
The Jordan Valley. Photo: Юкатан via Wikimedia Commons.
Israel is considering annexation in the West Bank as a possible response to France and other countries recognizing a Palestinian state, according to three Israeli officials and the idea will be discussed further on Sunday, another official said.
Extension of Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank – de facto annexation of land captured in the 1967 Middle East war – was on the agenda for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet meeting late on Sunday that is expected to focus on the Gaza war, a member of the small circle of ministers said.
It is unclear where precisely any such measure would be applied and when, whether only in Israeli settlements or some of them, or in specific areas of the West Bank like the Jordan Valley and whether any concrete steps, which would likely entail a lengthy legislative process, would follow discussions.
Any step toward annexation in the West Bank would likely draw widespread condemnation from the Palestinians, who seek the territory for a future state, as well as Arab and Western countries. It is unclear where US President Donald Trump stands on the matter. The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar did not respond to a request for comment on whether Saar had discussed the move with his US counterpart Marco Rubio during his visit to Washington last week.
Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the prime minister supports annexation and if so, where.
A past pledge by Netanyahu to annex Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley was scrapped in 2020 in favor of normalizing ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in the Abraham Accords brokered by Trump in his first term in office.
The office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The United States said on Friday it would not allow Abbas to travel to New York for the United Nations gathering of world leaders, where several US allies are set to recognize Palestine as a state.
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Israel Pounds Gaza City Suburbs, Netanyahu to Convene Security Cabinet
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli forces pounded the suburbs of Gaza City overnight from the air and ground, destroying homes and driving more families out of the area as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet was set on Sunday to discuss a plan to seize the city.
Residents of Sheikh Radwan, one of the largest neighborhoods of Gaza City, said the territory had been under Israeli tank shelling and airstrikes throughout Saturday and on Sunday, forcing families to seek shelter in the western parts of the city.
The Israeli military has gradually escalated its operations around Gaza City over the past three weeks, and on Friday it ended temporary pauses in the area that had allowed for aid deliveries, designating it a “dangerous combat zone.”
“They are crawling into the heart of the city where hundreds of thousands are sheltering, from the east, north, and south, while bombing those areas from the air and ground to scare people to leave,” said Rezik Salah, a father of two, from Sheikh Radwan.
An Israeli official said Netanyahu’s security cabinet will convene on Sunday evening to discuss the next stages of the planned offensive to seize Gaza City, which he has described as Hamas’ last bastion.
A full-scale offensive is not expected to start for weeks. Israel says it wants to evacuate the civilian population before moving more ground forces in.
HAMAS SPOKESPERSON TARGETED
Netanyahu confirmed on Sunday that Israeli forces had targeted Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson of Hamas’ armed wing. Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Abu Ubaida was killed. Two Hamas officials contacted by Reuters did not respond to requests for comment.
Gaza health authorities said 15 people, including five children, were killed in the attack on a residential building in the heart of Gaza City.
Abu Ubaida, also known as Hozayfa Al-Khalout, is a well-known figure to Palestinians and Israelis alike, close to Hamas’ top military leaders and in charge of delivering the group’s messages, often via video, for around two decades, delivering statements while wearing a red keffiyeh that concealed his face.
The US targeted him with sanctions in April 2024, accusing him of leading the “cyber influence department” of al-Qassam Brigades.
In his last statement on Friday, he warned that the planned Israeli offensive on Gaza City would endanger the hostages.
On Saturday, Red Cross head Mirjana Spoljaric said an evacuation from the city would provoke a massive population displacement that no other area in the enclave is equipped to absorb, with shortages of food, shelter and medical supplies.
“People who have relatives in the south left to stay with them. Others, including myself, didn’t find a space as Deir Al-Balah and Mawasi are overcrowded,” said Ghada, a mother of five from the city’s Sabra neighborhood.
Around half of the enclave’s more than 2 million people are presently in Gaza City. Several thousand were estimated to have left the city for central and southern areas of the enclave.
Israel’s military has warned its political leaders that the offensive is endangering hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza. Protests in Israel calling for an end to the war and the release of the hostages have intensified in the past few weeks.