Alex Varum was 8 years old when he left Russia. Now 35 and a real estate developer in Silicon Valley, Varum grew up in California, speaks English like a native — much better than Russian — and feels American in every way.
So why would he spend an entire weekend exploring Jewish identity with a group of other young Jews from the former Soviet Union, many of whose personal ties to the Old Country are as negligible as his own?
“I feel somehow that I don’t belong to the American Jewish community,” he says. “I don’t feel Russian — I’m American. But I don’t identify as an American Jew.”
That’s the reality of the Russian-speaking Jewish population in the United States. More than half a million strong, scattered in hundreds of cities and towns from New York to Seattle, it spans a range of religious observance, income levels and career choice.
But even those who came as young children and barely speak Russian feel a bond with their landsmen that sets them apart from what they still perceive as a monolithic and elusive American Jewish community.
“Our concept of Jewish peoplehood is more ethnic than religious,” says Mark Khmelnitsky, 30, a lawyer who has been in this country since he was 16. “With American Jews it’s much more about what you do than what you are. I know I’m Jewish — now what do I do about it?”
That question is what brought Varum, Khmelnitsky and 80 other young professionals from New York and the Bay Area to Mitbachon, a weekend leadership and identity-building seminar for Russian-speaking Jews held this month in San Rafael.
Five years ago the Jewish Agency for Israel began reaching out to this second generation, sending young Russian-speaking emissaries from Israel to New York, Toronto and San Francisco — cities with large, young, Russian-speaking Jewish populations — to help them find bridges to the larger community.
It’s a challenge, says Anna Vainer, one of three New York emissaries and a co-organizer of the Mitbachon weekend.
“The ‘booze and schmooze’ model that is popular with young American Jews doesn’t reach them,” she says.
Adds Alexandra Belinski, the Jewish Agency emissary to San Francisco’s émigré community, “There is something in the Russian mentality that wants to go deeper. They’re ‘Russian from the inside,’ even those who don’t speak Russian well.”
Many in this group juggle two, three, even four identities, and just as many passports. Nearly one-third have lived in Israel, and most have family there. Some still have family in the former Soviet Union. 
This gives them a deep attachment to Israel, a history with anti-Semitism and the shared immigrant experience of living between worlds.
“In a way, we’re homeless,” says Khmelnitsky, who recently moved from New York to San Francisco. “I don’t feel very American. Israel is the place where I could have ended up, and might still end up, so I have a very positive view of it.
“American Jews are already home. They can stand to the side and criticize.”
Few of the second-generation group hold leadership positions in Jewish organizations, even though many of those raised in the United States attended religious school, even Jewish day schools.
“In New York, none of this population has taken a real leadership role yet,” Vainer says.
That’s not because they disdain the organized Jewish community — quite the opposite. It’s that they can’t find their way in, or don’t feel they need to participate.

One goal of the weekend seminar was to change that perspective.
Lev Weisfeiler, who immigrated to the United States at 22, says he’s never been part of a Jewish community and belongs to no Jewish organizations.
“As a Russian Jew, you didn’t have to show external symbols of your belonging. It was obvious,” he said.
Now that his daughter is 13, however, he wants to develop tools to articulate his Jewish identity so he can pass it on to her.
Finding their way into the community doesn’t mean the Russian immigrants don’t have a deep sense of who they are and where they come from.
Those who do become involved often turn to the familiar, such as groups that work with the Russian-speaking community.
At the Feb. 6 Émigré Community Gala for the S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services, which resettled the city’s 45,000 recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union, more than 70 of the bejeweled attendees — one-fifth of the crowd — were under 35.
Not only were they enjoying the caviar and dancing the hora with their elders, they were helping to raise funds for the organization and making their own donations.
It was the largest youth contingent in the gala’s nine years, according to Gayle Zahler, the associate executive director of the Jewish Family and Children’s Services.
Their presence represents the younger generation’s growing confidence in themselves, she says, and their growing willingness to give back.
The young people at the Mitbachon weekend, and at the JFCS gala, don’t know if their children will speak Russian or if their grandchildren will appreciate Pushkin. But just because they feel apart from the mainstream American Jewish community doesn’t mean they aren’t flexing their muscle and looking to build something of their own.
“There’s a whole base of us, a community that speaks the same language and has a specific way of being,” says Veronica Price, 32, of New York. “We are a community, and a relatively strong one, and we can teach other communities how to find their identity.”