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Towering San Francisco buildings and streams of nameless faces surrounded Etya Libenshteyn as she wandered, lost, down Market Street.

She had found her destination just fine, a medical supply store carrying specially prescribed stockings. But returning to her Richmond District home was another matter for the emigre from St. Petersburg.

Having only been in the United States a short time, Libenshteyn knew very little English. An entire day passed by with Libenshteyn inquiring of strangers, "Richmond?" in a heavy Russian accent, before she was able to find the route back.

"I enrolled in English lessons as soon as possible after that," says the 81-year-old, speaking through a translator at the Jewish Family and Children Service's L'Chaim wellness program for senior emigres at the JCFS emigre center, which celebrated its one-year anniversary last month.

Now, seven years later, Libenshteyn speaks English fairly well, but she still feels more comfortable being interviewed in her native tongue.

"When you're an immigrant, you feel very isolated from American society," she explains. "It's like another world."

Distracted by singing and laughing in an adjoining room, Libenshteyn grows a bit restless. The door swings open, revealing more than 50 L'Chaim participants dancing, chatting and sucking on chocolate fudge bars as they celebrate the group's December birthdays.

Wearing a knitted vest covered in festive, silver-studded snowflakes, Libenshteyn cranes her neck to catch a glimpse of the activity through the shutting door. She promptly excuses herself from the interview and joins her friends at a large round table.

The seniors in the L'Chaim main room share much in common with Libenshteyn: isolation, loneliness and frailty at the hands of a new country, turned to joy and health among fellow seniors and L'Chaim staff. Raised under communism, they also share common experiences of anti-Semitism and are finally getting the chance to expand their Jewish learning at L'Chaim.

On each table, seven Chanukah candles burn in a silver menorah centerpiece. As the candles melt, Betya Korsunskaya, a 78-year-old from Dnepropetrovsk in Ukraine, admits, with the help of a translator, "I didn't know much about the Jewish holidays when I was growing up. When we did occasionally celebrate them, it was always in secret."

Over the past year, L'Chaim has provided cultural and social programs such as concerts, tours, lectures and English classes for more than 200 Russian-speaking elderly immigrants in the Bay Area. It has also provided physical therapy, occupational therapy and nursing care from geriatrics professionals.

In fact, since the program's inception a year ago, several people who were unable to walk are literally back on their feet.

When 74-year-old Katya Shukhat came to the group, for example, she walked with a cane. The Odessa emigre had spent months bedridden, due to a broken hip.

Now, not only has she long forgone the cane, but she makes a constant point of proving she doesn't need it. As the music of "Hava Negillah" fills the room, Shukhat, wearing a hot-pink dress, is the first one up. She dances circles around her friends.

"I've become alive again," she says through a translator. Putting her hand on her chest, just below a string of large pearls, she adds, "Every time I am dancing and singing, I am fascinated that this is actually me."

Korsunskaya has a similar story. She had undergone a nine-hour surgery for a broken hip and was using a wheelchair when she joined L'Chaim.

"I was crying almost all the time," she says. "I had been very active before the fall but afterward I was very depressed and experiencing much pain."

Four months later, after rigorous physical therapy, Korsunskaya was out of the wheelchair. She didn't think she'd ever walk again.

"L'Chaim is not only the name of our program," says director Anna Borovik, "it is our goal."

The Bay Area has a dire need for programs like L'Chaim that give new life and hope to older emigres, according to Gayle Zahler, director of the JFCS emigre program. The area is home to more than 7,000 elderly immigrants from the former Soviet Union, most of whom are Jews, she says.

Since Borovik, as well as most of the staff, are themselves Russian-speaking immigrants, Zahler says L'Chaim "is an environment where language and cultural familiarity is not an issue."

Borovik adds: "We speak their language, we know their culture, we know their background, we know their mentality. Though I'm younger than they are, we all faced the same problems when we came here.

"These people went through a lot — they were uprooted from everything when they came to this country. It's hard enough moving to a new city. Imagine moving to a new country."

A plump woman with long gray hair bows to Borovik, who releases an ecstatic, "Ah!" and the two begin to dance. Shukhat dances nearby with a woman of her same small size. Since the women far outnumber the men, Boris Nunko, clad in a fancy gray suit and a blue tie, has his pick of dance partners. He finally sets his sights on a brunette woman, much taller than himself.

Korsunskaya, who uses a walker, doesn't dance. But rubbing her shoulder joint she says: "You know I couldn't raise my right arm when I came here."

As she quickly lifts both arms into the air, her lips curl up into a huge smile.