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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.
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US State Department Revokes Visas of UK Punk Rap Act Bob Vylan Amid Outrage Over Duo’s Chants of ‘Death to the IDF’
Bob Vylan music duo performance at Glastonbury Festival (Source: FLIKR)
The US State Department has revoked the visas for the English punk rap duo Bob Vylan amid ongoing outrage over their weekend performance at the Glastonbury Festival, in which the pair chanted “Death to the IDF.”
The State Department’s decision to cancel their visas would preclude a planned fall concert tour of the US by the British rappers.
“The [US State Department] has revoked the US visas for the members of the Bob Vylan band in light of their hateful tirade at Glastonbury, including leading the crowd in death chants. Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau wrote on X/Twitter on Monday.
During a June 28 set at Glastonbury Festival, Bob Vylan’s Pascal Robinson-Foster ignited a firestorm by leading the crowd in chants of “Death, death, to the IDF,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces. He also complained about working for a “f—ing Zionist” during the set.
The video of the performance went viral, sparking outrage across the globe.
The BBC, which streamed the performance live, issued an on‑screen warning but continued its broadcast, prompting criticism by government officials for failing to cut the feed.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and festival organizers condemned the IDF chant as hate speech and incitement to violence. The Israeli Embassy in London denounced the language as “inflammatory and hateful.”
“Millions of people tuned in to enjoy Glastonbury this weekend across the BBC’s output but one performance within our livestreams included comments that were deeply offensive,” the BBC said in a statement following the event.
“These abhorrent chants, which included calls for the death of members of the Israeli Defense Forces … have no place in any civil society,” Leo Terrell, Chair of the US Department of Justice Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, declared Sunday in a statement posted on X.
Citing the act’s US tour plans, Terrell said his task force would be “reaching out to the U.S. Department of State on Monday to determine what measures are available to address the situation and to prevent the promotion of violent antisemitic rhetoric in the United States.”
British authorities, meanwhile, have launched a formal investigation into Bob Vylan’s controversial appearance at Glastonbury. Avon and Somerset Police confirmed they are reviewing footage and working with the Crown Prosecution Service to determine whether the performance constitutes a hate crime or incitement to violence.
United Talent Agency (UTA), one of the premier entertainment talent agencies, dropped the duo, claming “antisemitic sentiments expressed by the group were utterly unacceptable.”
The band defended their performance on social media as necessary protest, stating that “teaching our children to speak up for the change they want and need is the only way that we make this world a better place.”
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Dem House Leader Hakeem Jeffries Urges Mamdani to ‘Aggressively Address’ Antisemitism in NYC if Elected Mayor
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
US House Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (NY) urged Democratic nominee for mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani to “aggressively address the rise in antisemitism” if he wins the general election in November.
“‘Globalizing the intifada’ by way of example is not an acceptable phrasing,” Jeffries said Sunday on ABC’s This Week. “He’s going to have to clarify his position on that as he moves forward.”
“With respect to the Jewish communities that I represent, I think our nominee is going to have to convince folks that he is prepared to aggressively address the rise in antisemitism in the city of New York, which has been an unacceptable development,” he added.
Jeffries’s comments come as Mamdani has been receiving an onslaught of criticism for defending the controversial phrase “globalize the intifada.”
Mamdani first defended the phrase during an appearance on the popular Bulwark Podcast. The progressive firebrand stated that he feels “less comfortable with the banning of certain words.” He invoked the US Holocaust Museum in his defense, saying that the museum used the word intifada “when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic, because it’s a word that means ‘struggle.’”
The Holocaust Museum repudiated Mamdani in a statement, calling his comments “offensive.”
Mamdani has continued to defend the slogan despite ongoing criticism, arguing that pro-Palestine advocates perceive it as a call for “universal human rights.”
Mamdani, the 33‑year‑old state assembly member and proud democratic socialist, defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other candidates in a lopsided first‑round win in the city’s Democratic primary for mayor, notching approximately 43.5 percent of first‑choice votes compared to Cuomo’s 36.4 percent.
The election results have alarmed members of the local Jewish community, who expressed deep concern over his past criticism of Israel and defense of antisemitic rhetoric.
“Mamdani’s election is the greatest existential threat to a metropolitan Jewish population since the election of the notorious antisemite Karl Lueger in Vienna,” Rabbi Marc Schneier, one of the most prominent Jewish leaders in New York City, said in a statement. “Jewish leaders must come together as a united force to prevent a mass Jewish Exodus from New York City.”
Some key Democratic leaders in New York, such as US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Gov. Kathy Hochul, have congratulated and complimented Mamdani, but have not yet issued an explicit endorsement. Each official has signaled interest in meeting with Mamdani prior to making a decision on a formal endorsement.
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Israel Eyes Ties With Syria and Lebanon After Iran War
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar attends a press conference with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (not pictured) in Berlin, Germany, June 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
Israel is interested in establishing formal diplomatic relations with long-standing adversaries Syria and Lebanon, but the status of the Golan Heights is non-negotiable, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Monday.
Israeli leaders argue that with its rival Iran weakened by this month’s 12-day war, other countries in the region have an opportunity to forge ties with Israel.
The Middle East has been upended by nearly two years of war in Gaza, during which Israel also carried out airstrikes and ground operations in Lebanon targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah, and by the overthrow of former Syrian leader and Iran ally Bashar al-Assad.
In 2020, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco became the first Arab states to establish ties with Israel since Jordan in 1994 and Egypt in 1979. The normalization agreements with Israel were deeply unpopular in the Arab world.
“We have an interest in adding countries such as Syria and Lebanon, our neighbors, to the circle of peace and normalization, while safeguarding Israel‘s essential and security interests,” Saar said at a press conference in Jerusalem.
“The Golan will remain part of the State of Israel,” he said.
Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981 after capturing the territory from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War. While much of the international community regards the Golan as occupied Syrian land, US President Donald Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over it during his first term in office.
Following Assad’s ousting, Israeli forces moved further into Syrian territory.
A senior Syrian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Syria would never give up the Golan Heights, describing it as an integral part of Syrian territory.
The official also said that normalization efforts with Israel must be part of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and not carried out through a separate track.
A spokesperson for Syria‘s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The 2002 initiative proposed Arab normalization with Israel in exchange for its withdrawal from territories including the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and Gaza. It also called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Throughout the war in Gaza, regional power Saudi Arabia has repeatedly said that establishing ties with Israel was conditional on the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
Israel‘s Saar said it was “not constructive” for other states to condition normalization on Palestinian statehood.
“Our view is that a Palestinian state will threaten the security of the State of Israel,” he said.
In May, Reuters reported that Israel and Syria‘s new Islamist rulers had established direct contact and held face-to-face meetings aimed at de-escalating tensions and preventing renewed conflict along their shared border.
The same month, US President Donald Trump announced the US would lift sanctions on Syria and met Syria‘s new president, urging him to normalize ties with Israel.
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