Volume 8, Issue 3 / Adar I  5765 / March 2005

"A Country to Live In"

Nadia had a Jewish upbringing, but didn't know it was Jewish.

"I had a Jewish upbringing but didn't know it was Jewish," says Nadia Levinson. "Now, I realize that many little things in our daily life had to do with the fact that we were Jewish. My mother's cooking, for instance, was quite kosher. We never ate meat with cheese. I didn't know why, and even she didn't know - it was just something her mother did."

But in her teens, Nadia, now 25, became interested in her Jewish roots. She would spend hours pouring over old photo albums: "I began to ask about the old relatives and I became interested in their lifestyle. They went to the synagogue, they spoke Yiddish... . "

Every summer, Nadia, who was raised by her mother in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg, spent several months in Moscow visiting with her father. The cosmopolitan city offered her the opportunity to seek out books on Jewish culture and religion. "I don't know exactly why," she says. "I'm just curious, particularly about philosophy and religion."

Her natural curiosity led her to Castle Rock, Colorado, where she spent her sophomore year of high school, in 1995-96, on the US Government's Freedom Support Act Future Leaders Exchange Program. She was already fluent in English, thanks to her studies at a specialized high school whose curriculum included intensive instruction in English and English literature. As the only Russian in the school, she was forced to speak English throughout the year, improving her command of the language significantly.

"I lived with an ordinary American family, with three daughters," she recalls. "It was a great experience that made me grow up, except for the fact that they were devout members of the Salvation Army. They made me go to church and were always trying to explain why the Christian faith is the right one. I went along with them, because I lived there, but the whole thing was foreign to me."

She returned to Russia and completed her BA in political science and international relations at Ural State University. She then began MA studies in Political Science at Southampton University in Great Britain. Returning home, she traveled through Europe. "This trip confirmed what I had always felt – that I didn't want to live in Russia," she says, "but I didn't have a country I want to live in."

Back in Yekaterinburg, she noticed an ad for a Jewish Agency lecture on Jewish identity. But while looking for the talk, she went into the wrong room – which happened to be that of the aliyah representative. Nadia reconstructs the conversation:

'Are you Jewish? '

'Yes.'

'Have you considered aliyah?'

'No.'

'Think about it.'

"I thought for five minutes. I got the feeling that this was something very right to do. I could really see myself in Israel."

She brought in copies of her birth certificate as well as her mother's and grandmother's, thinking, "If it doesn't work out, I can always come back." This was in October 2003. By the end of November she was already in Israel.

Nadia spent her first ten months at the Jewish Agency's Ulpan Kibbutz program in Kibbutz Shoval in the Negev. The program was split between intensive Hebrew studies and work on the kibbutz. On the program, she met a young man who is now her serious boyfriend. "We discovered we had lived on the same street in Yekaterinburg, had gone to the same university, and frequented the same places. But we didn't meet until we came to Israel!"

This past fall she moved to Jerusalem in order to complete her MA in international relations at the Hebrew University. She hopes to continue on to a Ph.D. and pursue a career in the field.

"There are so many possibilities in Israel," she summarizes. "And there are so many Jews. I really feel that I came home."

Written by: Shifra Paikin
Photos by: Shimmi Nachtailer

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