Our exodus from Egypt was not a one-time event, but a paradigm of Jewish history and human consciousness that continues to the present day. On the spiritual plane, it is the existential need to move from a place of narrowness to a place of growth and possibility.
The greatest modern exodus is unfolding before our eyes – albeit below the radar of the media – in the form of over 125,000 Russian-speaking olim (new immigrants), mostly from Russia, who arrived in Israel from 2022-2024 and continue to arrive each month in 2025. They include a large percentage of young talented professionals who will strengthen Israel in countless ways, as with the previous waves of immigration from the former Soviet Union (FSU) that helped create our Start-Up Nation.
They may have come now because of the war in Ukraine, but those who have stayed have chosen Israel over other more lucrative or simpler options. And today, just like when we left Egypt, the point is not just the physical leaving from the FSU, but the arrival to a place where they can draw closer to their essential identities and help us fulfill our nation’s greater destiny in the world.
Perhaps because I studied the history of Soviet Jewry and was involved in its renaissance during the 1990s, I see this ongoing aliyah from the FSU as the most improbable miracle of Jewish history and a godsend to our young country.
I am privileged to have gotten to know hundreds of Russian-speaking olim in their 20s and 30s through my work over the past 15 years. The current young aliyah from the FSU is personally impacted by wars on two fronts (Israel and Ukraine) as it works hard to adjust to a new life in a new language. But these new olim also care deeply about Israel and hope to integrate quickly, to better understand Israeli culture, and contribute their talents.
A striking example of this came right after October 7, 2023, when we were able to gather 1,500 mostly new Russian-speaking olim to volunteer on IDF bases in 12-hour daytime and nighttime shifts, packing war rations and sorting medical equipment for reserve soldiers, over the course of three months.
Over 80% of the money we raised to buy essential equipment for our soldiers was donated by new and more veteran olim, and they brought everything they could to our warehouses for the evacuated families.
Volunteering and tzedakah (charity) were never a part of the culture they grew up in, but many of the participants said that these experiences opened their eyes, and they continue to volunteer today in other frameworks.
Many of our more veteran olim serve in the IDF as doctors, physicists, and in elite combat units, while worrying about their families in Ukraine.
I was recently at the bittersweet brit milah of the new nephew of Andrey Poshivay, an oleh from Ukraine and beloved mentor in our Beersheba community, who was the last police officer alive at the Supernova music festival and in his final hours battling the terrorists saved many lives.
Just after the baby’s “name in Israel” was announced as Liam Andrey, his sister-in-law suddenly left our table in tears as she had received a message that her aunt had been wounded in an explosion outside Odesa.
BEYOND SUCH external pressures, which we need to be sensitive to, young Russian-speaking olim are in a process of Jewish cultural discovery, which is the raison d’etre of our organization, and something we can all play a role in.
Time spent with the young olim community
I enjoy many wonderful moments with our young olim community, celebrating in our yard every Independence Day, learning “Torah with a Tel Aviv vibe,” hiking while absorbing Jewish and Israeli history, braiding challah, making cholent, debating about modern Israeli art, meeting Israeli writers, watching Israeli films, making Shabbat dinners in apartments, and singing Jewish and Israeli songs and then Kabbalat Shabbat tunes together – an awkward effort at first for all of us, but now a beloved and expanding tradition at every Friday-Shabbat Seminar.
Tens of couples have met through our events, and they stay in touch as they raise their families. Every Hanukkah, I receive a new family photo from Dr. Olga and her husband, Pavel, with their three kids, in front of the hanukkiah we bought them for their wedding 13 years ago.
All this is the gestalt of Jewish experiences – 30-40 every month – created by our young olim program directors, and supported by our partners, that have helped over 18,000 young FSU olim feel more at home in Israel, more confident in their Hebrew, more connected to our people, and more joyful in their Judaism, as they build themselves personally and professionally in their new homeland.
At a Young Olim Family Seminar on the Kinneret last weekend, while we were singing “Ma Nishtana,” “Echad Mi Yodea,” and “Dayeinu” with the kids, I saw several parents absorbed in reading the Haggadah for the first time. One of these couples contacted me after Shabbat – they had made aliyah from Moscow in October 2022 – to say that they and another family want to attend a traditional Seder in Jerusalem.
We are facilitating Russian-language model Seders and community Seders for young olim in Jerusalem, Beersheba, Tel Aviv, and Haifa, with the goal of empowering participants to run their own Seders with family and friends in future years.
We can all be more proactive in ensuring that the FSU olim we know engage in Passover and in Jewish life in general by taking an interest, by inviting them for Shabbat or holidays, or by connecting them to our Russian-speaking young community.
Without these efforts toward their Jewish cultural absorption, we would be risking both their and our common futures. We would be limiting the potential of this miraculous, en-masse return of former Soviet Jews to the body of the Jewish people, to enrich and strengthen us physically, intellectually, and spiritually, and to create talented, rooted leadership for all of Israel.
We are infinitely lucky to be living as free Jews in our own country, able to teach our children about the first exodus and the exodus taking place in our lifetimes.
This is the gift and possibility we must also give all new olim coming from the FSU – the chance to teach their children, and to grow and share their stories, from generation to generation.
The writer is the founder and director of Shishi Shabbat Yisraeli – National Jewish Leadership Initiative for Young Russian-Speaking Israelis: shishi.co.il and en.shishi.co.il.