Linda Pardes Friedburg, founder of Shishi Shabbat Yisraeli (SSY - Israeli Weekend), began working on behalf of Russian-speaking Jews as a teenager, collecting funds to support the Soviet Jewry Movement in her hometown in New Jersey.
She studied Russian, visited refuseniks in Moscow and Leningrad, and following her Aliyah in 1990, helped perpetuate the Jewish Renaissance in the FSU, through informal Jewish educational work via the Russian department of the AJJDC in Jerusalem.
In 2010, she founded SSY and after recognizing a clear need to build a warm Jewish community for new Russian-speaking olim in their twenties and thirties, who mostly came to Israel without their families on short-term, government-funded programs, but found themselves very isolated, lonely and estranged from Israeli culture after making aliyah.
The goal of SSY is to help remind young, talented Russian-speaking olim of all the reasons they chose Israel as their home, that they are part of a much bigger picture of Jewish history, and the Jewish activism that many enjoyed as students in the FSU can continue here too, in Israel. SSY’s weekly activities in five cities help them explore the country through excursions, experience enriching Jewish and Israeli culture through celebrating Shabbatot and holidays, engage in lectures and workshops together, volunteer, find new friends, and advance their careers through networking and professional mentoring.
Fourteen thousand young Russian-speaking olim are active in SSY’s national community, and dozens of young couples have married and are raising young Israeli families because of their acquaintance through Shishi Shabbat Yisraeli.
With the recent aliyah of over 70,000 new Russian-speaking Jews because of the war in Ukraine, SSY’s national network of Russian-speaking volunteers is helping Israel’s newest olim navigate government offices, accompanying them to daily appointments, finding apartments and tutors for their kids, helping them learn about Israeli and Jewish culture, and aiding with other first steps in their lives here.
Pardes Friedburg’s message to her fellow Israelis today: “The Russian-speaking olim that have only recently arrived are very fine and deep people who want to belong. It will take a while before they learn Hebrew, but it is so important to reach out to them and help them feel welcome! Invite them for Shabbat or holidays – they may not initiate these invitations, but every person who makes a new [immigrant to Israel] feel at home does a tremendous service to themselves, our country and people. It is our warmth and their sense of being part of a community that will ultimately make them feel happy here and want to stay and contribute.”