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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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Harvard Students Charged With Assaulting Jewish Classmate Receive Slap on the Wrists
April 20, 2025, Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University and Harvard Square scenes with students and pedestrians. Photo: Kenneth Martin/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Two Harvard University students who were charged with assaulting a Jewish classmate they suspected of holding pro-Israel beliefs were spared a criminal trial on Monday, being ordered by Boston Municipal Court Judge Stephen W. McClenon to attend “pre-trial diversion” anger management courses and perform 80 hours of community service each.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, an October 2023 anti-Israel demonstration degenerated into chaos when Ibrahim Bharmal, former editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo encircled a Jewish student with a mob that screamed “Shame! Shame! Shame!” at him while he desperately attempted to free himself from the mass of bodies. The two graduate students were charged with assault and battery in May.
The penalties imposed on the men by McClenon will not require their apologizing to the Jewish student against whom they allegedly perpetrated what local Assistant District Attorney Ursula Knight described as “hands on assault and battery,” allowing them to avoid a trial and jail time for behavior that was filmed and widely viewed online.
A Jewish student at Harvard University harassed by anti-Israel protesters. Photo: Screenshot
“He [the victim] did nothing wrong leading up this incident and nothing wrong during this incident,” Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin R. Hayden, who also worked on the case, wrote to McClenon — according to excerpts of court documents shared by The Harvard Crimson. “Our request that the defendants in this matter issue an apology and an admission of wrongdoing was entirely appropriate and reasonable.”
Legal counsel for Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo celebrated McClenon’s decision in measured terms.
“We are pleased that the court agreed with us that a diversion was the appropriate resolution of this case,” said defense attorney Naomi R. Shatz.
According to a previous report by The Washington Free Beacon, Bharmal has been continuously rewarded with new and better opportunities since allegedly assaulting the Jewish student. Harvard neither disciplined him nor removed him from the presidency of the Harvard Law Review, a coveted post once held by former US President Barack Obama. As of last year, he was awarded a law clerkship with the Public Defender for the District of Columbia, a government-funded agency which provides free legal counsel to “individuals … who are charged with committing serious criminal acts.”
In 2023, The Harvard Crimson reported that the university suspended Tettey-Tamaklo indefinitely from his role as a proctor at the Harvard Divinity school, where he was a student. Tettey-Tamaklo was also ordered to vacate free housing he received as compensation for holding the position, which involves mentoring first-year students.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Harvard Students Charged With Assaulting Jewish Classmate Receive Slap on the Wrists first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hungary Approves Withdrawal From ICC Over ‘Politicized’ Stance Against Israel, Gaza War
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks to the media next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Budapest, Hungary, April 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo
Hungary’s parliament approved the country’s withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its “political” stance against Israel and the war in Gaza, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto announced on Tuesday.
“With this decision, we refuse to be part of a politicized institution that has lost its impartiality and credibility,” Szijjarto wrote in a post on X.
Hungary’s withdrawal from the ICC will not take effect immediately. Under the Rome Statute, the international treaty which established the ICC, a country’s decision to leave the court becomes official only one year after formally notifying the UN Secretary General. Until then, Hungary is still legally required to cooperate with the court.
The Hungarian Parliament just voted to withdraw from the @IntlCrimCourt. With this decision, we refuse to be part of a politicized institution that has lost its impartiality and credibility. pic.twitter.com/C9dit8xaB8
— Péter Szijjártó (@FM_Szijjarto) April 29, 2025
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar praised Hungary’s move, calling it a “clear moral stance.”
Earlier this month, Hungary announced its intention to leave the ICC during a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Budapest for a four-day trip.
Despite Hungary’s status as a signatory of the Rome Statute, Netanyahu was not taken into custody upon his arrival in Budapest, defying an ICC arrest warrant against him over allegations of war crimes in Gaza, where Israeli forces have been fighting Hamas terrorists since the latter’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of the Jewish state.
After the ICC issued the warrant against Netanyahu, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban rejected the decision by inviting the Israeli leader to Budapest and accusing the court of “interfering in an ongoing conflict for political purposes.”
Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary was his first trip to Europe since the ICC issued the arrest warrant against him last year.
During a press conference, Orban said the ICC is “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”
“I am convinced that this otherwise important international judicial forum has been degraded into a political tool, with which we cannot and do not want to engage,” Orban said after meeting with the Israeli leader earlier this month.
At the time, Netanyahu commended Hungary’s decision to withdraw from the ICC, calling it a “bold and principled action” as “the first state that walks out of this corruption and this rottenness.”
“The ICC directs its actions against us fighting a just war with just means,” Netanyahu said. “I think [this decision will] be deeply appreciated, not only in Israel but in many, many countries around the world.”
Saar also praised Budapest’s decision, highlighting the country’s “strong moral stance alongside Israel and the principles of justice and sovereignty.”
“The so-called ‘International Criminal Court’ lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for harming Israel’s right to self-defense,” the top Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.
In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which until a recently imposed blockade had provided significant humanitarian aid into the enclave throughout the war.
Israel also says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
After the ICC’s decision to issue the warrants, several countries, including Hungary, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, France, and Italy, have said they would not arrest Netanyahu if he visited.
US and Israeli officials issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
The post Hungary Approves Withdrawal From ICC Over ‘Politicized’ Stance Against Israel, Gaza War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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States, Cities, Schools Across US Declare #EndJewHatred Day in Solidarity With Jewish Community
Supporters of the #EndJewHatred movement. Photo: #EndJewHatred
State and local elected officials in the US, as well as public schools across the country, have pledged to recognize April 29 as #EndJewHatred Day in an effort to empower and show solidarity with Jewish communities in the US and Canada in their fight against antisemitism.
The international grassroots civil rights movement #EndJewHatred made the announcement on Tuesday, revealing that it has secured close to 100 proclamations, resolutions, and citations in support of #EndJewHatred Day from governors, senators, members of Congress, and state and local elected officials.
Some of the most recent proclamations have been issued by New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte and US Reps. Frederica Wilson (D-FL), Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), and Tom Barrett (R-MI). In Canada, Melissa Lantsman (MP – Thornhill) issued the first Canadian #EndJewHatred Day proclamation, followed by MP Stan Cho and MP Dawn Gallagher of the Provincial Parliament in Ontario.
The Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) latest Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, released earlier this month, revealed that antisemitism across the country last year broke “all previous annual records” since the ADL began tracking such data in 1979. The group recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in 2024, marking an average of 25.6 a day.
The new #EndJewHatred Day “serves as a unifying call to action to combat antisemitism in all its forms and to raise awareness of the ongoing challenges faced by Jewish communities,” as said in the proclamation signed by Ayotte. A proclamation signed by Colorado Gov. Jared Polis stated there is “an urgent need to act against antisemitism in Colorado and across the country.” Antisemitism in Colorado increased by 41 percent last year and by 373 percent over the past five years, according to the ADL’s latest audit.
Miami, Annapolis, and Beverly Hills are among the cities that have recently recognized #EndJewHatred Day. New York City first recognized #EndJewHatred Day in 2023.
Schools that have vowed to recognize the date include Miami-Dade Public Schools, and districts in Florida, Michigan, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. Schools will commemorate this date by making sure it is marked on school calendars and observing it “through emails, morning announcements, or in other ways,” according to the #EndJewHatred movement.
“As the #EndJewHatred movement is sweeping across the United States and Canada, elected officials are coming on board, setting aside politics and ideology, and declaring April 29 to be #EndJewHatred Day, a day of unity and solidarity with the Jewish people marking our collective commitment to end Jew-hatred in our lifetime,” said #EndJewHatred co-founder Brooke Goldstein. “As the first civil rights movement of and for the Jewish people in modern times, our common mission is to liberate the Jewish people from discrimination, violence, and oppression, and to make Jew-hatred as unacceptable as any other form of racism or bigotry.”
“Just as there are days and even months dedicated to fighting for other social justice causes, April 29 is now recognized as a day of empowerment and justice for the Jewish people,” Goldstein added.
The post States, Cities, Schools Across US Declare #EndJewHatred Day in Solidarity With Jewish Community first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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