Mishmash is a universal word meaning a confused jumble. But for one group of Bay Area young adults, mishmash means something very different: togetherness.
Mishmash is a program of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s Israel Center. Currently in its first year, the program takes local young Russian Jews and grooms them for community leadership.
The 23 participants come from diverse — call them mishmashed — backgrounds, but all want to learn more about the Judaism long forbidden to their parents and grandparents. And all are quite comfortable speaking both English and Russian.
“The idea was to create a pluralistic educational approach,” said Alexandra Belinski, a Russian Israeli emissary from the Jewish Agency for Israel and the program’s coordinator. “We offer different ways of engagement with Jewish education. For some it’s going to be Israel, for others more of a connection to religion, and for others arts and culture.”
The Mishmash cohort recently completed an inaugural weekend retreat in Mill Valley, where participants got to know each other better.
Among them, Ukrainian-born Ira Krakhman, 31, and Yelena Kozlova, 29, are typical of the bilingual, bicultural generation of Russian Jews.
“Accessing Judaism is an issue,” said Krakhman, who grew up in New York and moved to the Bay Area a year ago. “A lot of people my age are very curious about Judaism, but are still uncomfortable going to synagogue, not knowing the ritual, the protocol, and maybe feeling ostracized.”
Kozlova came to San Francisco at age 10 and attended the Lisa Kampner Hebrew Academy, growing up with the kind of Jewish education many of her peers never got. For her, however, education alone
wasn’t enough.
“For our generation it’s not just about what is this knowledge, but what is our connection to this knowledge,” she said. “We know we can walk into a synagogue, but how do we make a connection to it? Why are we doing it? That’s a subject Mishmash explores.”
To that end, Belinski has taken a three-pronged approach in the Mishmash program: personal identity, Jewish community exploration and launching community projects.
Kozlova and Krakhman have a project idea to introduce Jewish meditation to the Russian Jewish community.
“We decided to create an experiential workshop,” Krakhman said, “a sampler of Jewish meditation blending Zen and Judaism. We’re still working on the format, but it’s a way of experiencing this interesting nexus of traditions.”
Kozlova has another idea: to use the arts to recount the Russian Jewish émigré experience in the Bay Area, a story now in its fourth decade.
“I am inspired by the creativity in the Russian Jewish community,” she said. “There are photographers, writers, theater groups. So the project asks: What has our immigration created? What have we done the last 30 years?”
All of this is intended to prep these young adults for leadership roles in the Jewish community. Belinski says the American passion for volunteerism is unique to this country, and doesn’t come naturally to the Russian émigrés.
“The goal is to expose people to different leadership opportunities in the community,” Belinski said. “What is federation and the other [Jewish] organizations, and how can we be involved? What does it mean to sit on a board? The idea of lay leadership culture is very new to the Russian Jewish community.”
Meanwhile, the Mishmash participants want to continue reaching out to their peers. They admit it’s not always easy to rope them in.
“We’re having problems defining our community,” Krakhman said. “We’re on foot traveling in the dark. It’s one person at a time. Hopefully we’ll do better outreach through programs like Mishmash.”
And when they do gather at monthly meetings, they get down to business with Jewish education, lectures and other learning experiences.
That’s all conducted in English. But when business is concluded, everyone relaxes and starts speaking the mother tongue.
“All the informal parts of the program are in Russian,” Belinski said. “Guitar playing, and all the rest.”
For more information about Mishmash, contact Alexandra Belinski at (415) 512-6285.