Notes on Contributors
Elina Bardach-Yalov
PhD, is a former Israeli Knesset Member and an affiliated research fellow at the PSCR Program, the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University. She holds her Ph.D. in mass communications from the University of Leeds, UK. In the past she also served as an advisor to Israeli Prime-Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Press-secretary of the Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. She currently teaches in the Jerusalem Adassa College and is a Research Associate at Ariel University of Samaria. Among her publications are: “Non-Traditional Ways of Joining the Jewish Collective: The FSU Experience,” in Becoming Jewish: New Jews and Emerging Jewish Communities in a Globalized World, edited by Tudor Parfitt and Netanel Fisher (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 185–203 (together with Vladimir (Ze’ev) Khanin).
Robert Brym
is Emeritus Professor at University of Toronto, Canada. He wrote Soviet-Jewish Emigration and Soviet Nationality Policy (Macmillan, 1983) with Victor Zaslavsky and The Jews of Moscow, Kiev and Minsk (New York University Press, 1994) with the assistance of Rozalina Ryvkina. Since 2018, Brym has been conducting research on Jews in Canada, including the 2018 Survey of Jews in Canada, with Keith Neuman and Rhonda Lenton (Environics, 2019); “Jews and Israel 2024: A survey of Canadian attitudes and Jewish perceptions,” Canadian Jewish Studies/Études juives canadiennes 37 (2024): 6–89; and “Jewish migrations to and from Argentina and Canada: Tides, waves, and streams,” with Ezequiel Erdei in Promised Lands North and South: Jewish Canada and Jewish Argentina in Conversation, edited by David Koffman and David Sheinin (Brill, 2024), 23–42. For downloads of his published works, visit https://utoronto.academia.edu/RobertBrym.
Velvl Chernin
received his PhD in the Department of Jewish Literature of Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv. Originally he graduated from the Faculty of History of the Moscow State University. Velvl Chernin made Aliya to Israel in 1990. He published in Yiddish nine books of poetry, a book of essays and a collection of science fiction and fantasy stories, as well as an anthology of poetry translations from other languages. He is the editor of Yiddish poetry anthologies in translations into Ukrainian and Hebrew and the author of scientific works on the history of Yiddish literature. Velvl Chernin is also one of the founders and editors of the book series Bibliotek fun der haynttsaitiker yidisher literatur and the literary magazine Yidishland. He is also a contributor to the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
Alexander Friedman
PhD, graduated in History from the Belarusian State University in Minsk (1996–2001) and obtained an MA in Modern and Contemporary History, Philosophy, and German as Foreign Language from the University of Saarland (2002–2005). He received his PhD from the University of Saarland (2009). Currently he is a lecturer at the University of Saarland, HHU Düsseldorf, and at the University of Applied Sciences for Police and Public Administration in North-Rhine Westphalia. His focus lies on National Socialism, Nazi war crimes, the history of Jews and Roma in Eastern Europe, and propaganda. He has published extensively on the Holocaust, Nazi crimes in the occupied territories of Soviet Union, as well as on the questions of collective memory, representations of the past in popular culture and the urban history of Eastern Europe. Among his publications are The History of the Shtetl After 1945 by Magdalena Waligórska, Marta Duch-Dyngosz, Alexander Friedman, Ina Sorkina, and Yechiel Weizman (2025); and Der Direktor des Landschaftsverbandes Rheinland Udo Klausa (1910–1998) im Spiegel von Weggefährten und Kritikern (2020).
Olaf Glöckner
PhD, is a Senior Researcher at the Moses Mendelssohn Centre for European- Jewish Studies in Potsdam (MMZ). He is also Lecturer at the Historical Institute and at the Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Potsdam. Glöckner’s main foci of research are Jewish migration, European Jewry after 1989/90, German-Israeli relations, and modern antisemitism. Among his most recent publications are: Shmuel Hugo Bergmann. A Life between Prague and Jerusalem, edited by Olaf Glöckner, Boaz Huss, and Marcela Menachem Zoufalá (De Gruyter, 2024), https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111046013; and United in Diversity. Contemporary European Jewry in an Interdisciplinary Perspective, edited by Olaf Glöckner and Marcela Menachem Zoufalá (De Gruyter, 2023).
Elizaveta A. Iakimova
is a Researcher at the Department of Israel and Jewish Communities Studies, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow. She earned her PhD/ Cand. Sci. (Rus.) in History of International Relations and Foreign Politics in 2015. Elizaveta Iakimova’s main foci of research are Foreign Policy of Israel and Jewish Communities in Europe and Eurasia. Among her most recent publications are: Israel and the Nordic Countries. Towards Partnership and Back (Moscow, 2024) (in Russian); “Complicated History with Huge Potential: Israeli-Japanese Relations’ Development,” Japanese Studies in Russia, no. 3 (2024): 30–49 (together with Dmitry A. Maryasis); and “Comparative analysis of advertising campaigns mentioning the theme of the Holocaust in Israel and Baltic states,” in Materials of Conferences and Seminars 2009–2014 (Riga, 2015).
Vladimir (Ze’ev) Khanin
is an Israeli expert on the Russian-speaking Jewish community in Israel and the Diaspora, the Israeli society, and the Israel-FSU relations and politics. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science/Contemporary History from Moscow Institute for African Studies, and a Post-Doctoral Degree from the Institute for Russian and Soviet Studies at the University of Oxford, U.K. From his 1992 aliya to Israel until 1999 he served as a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Middle Eastern and African History and the Cummings Center for Russian and East European Studies, Tel-Aviv University. From 1998–2012 and, again, since 2022, he served as an Adjunct Professor in Political Studies and heads the Post-Soviet Conflicts Research Program at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University. In 2009–2022, he served as Chief Scholarly Expert at the Israeli Ministry of Aliya and Integration. Since 2018, he has served as an Academic Chairman at the Institute for Euro-Asian Jewish Studies (Herzliya, Israel). He has published nine books, eight edited volumes, and numerous articles on Israeli, East European, Jewish, and African politics and society. Among his most recent books are From Russia to Israel … And Back? Contemporary Transnational Russian Israeli Diaspora (2022) and The Jews of the Contemporary Post-Soviet States: Sociological Insights from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Kazakhstan (2023).
Samuel (Sam) Kliger
PhD, is the Director of Eurasian Affairs at the AJC (American Jewish Committee), New York. He mainly focuses on Public Diplomacy, Diplomatic outreach, and researching on immigrant communities and on Jewish communities in the countries of the Former Soviet Union in particular. Kliger earned his PhD at the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Science, Moscow (USSR), and has worked there as Senior Researcher as well. In the early 1990s, Kliger was Visiting professor at Kings College, New York City. He has written two books and over 50 publications (both in English and Russian), among them: “The Ten Commandments in Soviet People’s Consciousness,” in Religious Policy in the Soviet Union, edited by S.P. Ramet (Cambridge University Press, 1993) (together with Paul de Vries); “Russian-Jewish Americans and American Jewry: Encounter, Identity, and Integration,” in Sociological Papers, Vol. 12 (Sociological Institute for Community Studies Bar-Ilan University, 2007).
Natiya Kuznetsova
is a New York City-based independent researcher who focuses on Bukharian Jewish community in the USA. She got her master’s degree (MFA) from the University of Idaho and M.A. degree in Arts history from the Pratt Institute (New York). Since 2010s Natiya has been involved in publication activities with the NYC-based Ohr Nathan Bukharan synagogue. Her recent publications (co-authored with Rita Kuznetsova) include Between the ‘Russian World’ and Israel: The Ethno-Cultural Growth of New York Bukharian Jews (2023).
Rita Kuznetsova
is an anthropologist with research interests in the status of women and hybrid religious cults in the Caucasus as well as immigrant communities of the Georgians and Bukharan Jews in the New York Area. She is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of General History of the Kuban State University in Krasnodar and is also affiliated with the Institute of Oriental Studies, the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow). She is a participant and team member of numerous fieldwork projects in different countries, including Turkey (2015), Latvia (2016), and Georgia (2023–24). Among her publications are the books Women in Abkhazia Before and After the War (2003), Ethnographic Notes on the Georgians of New York City (2022), and The Familial Occult: Explorations at the Margins of Critical Autoethnography, ed. Alexandra Coţofană (2024), as well as the article “Can Ethnography of the Occult Be Transformed into Occult Ethnography?”
Marianna Levtov
PhD Candidate in Business, Strategy, and Enterprise at the University of Gloucestershire, UK, is the Head of Network and Advocacy at AELER Technologies, with over 15 years of experience in industrial diplomacy. She specializes in IoT technologies for intermodal transportation and the digital supply chain. Marianna serves as the convenor of ISO TC 104 (Freight Containers)/SC4/WG2 (AEI for containers and container-related equipment) and previously led the CEN/CENELEC/ETSI Industrial Data Task Group during 2023–2024, resulting in a published recommendation paper on industrial data. Her research focuses on digitalization in logistics, sustainability in freight transportation, and industrial regulatory frameworks. Among her most recent publications are: “Chinese Diplomacy Discourse in the Prism of Relations with the Sub-Saharan Region,” Advances in Politics and Economics; and “The Chinese Generation 5.0: Taking the Lead in Industry 4.0,” Chinese History and Society 52. Marianna Levtov was the Jewish Agency Emissary to Germany in 2012–2015 and the Executive Assistant to the Chief Scientist of the Israeli Ministry of Immigration and Absorption (2009–2012). She has earned an M.A. in European Studies and a B.A. in International Relations/East Asia.
Daria Malyuta
is an associate lecturer in sociology at Université Paris Cité. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the Centre de recherches sur les liens sociaux (CERLIS), Université Paris Cité. Her academic work focuses on topics including Jewish identity, transnational migration, and the interplay between cultural memory and social structures. Among her most recent publications are: “Portraits de familles d’immigrés juifs de l’Ukraine, de la Russie et de la Moldova en France: la transmission familiale et l’intégration culturelle,” in Revue européenne des migrations internationales (forthcoming, 2025); “Being a Russian-speaking Jewish immigrant in France today: socialisations and identity variations [Rousskoiazytchnoe evreïstvo v sovremennoi Frantsii: sotsializatsii i identitchnosti],” Tiroch: Troudy po ioudaike, slavistike, orientalistike [Tiroch: Works on Jewish, Slavic, and Oriental Studies], Center Sefer, Institute of Slavic Studies, no. 19 (Moscow), 298–323; and “Ashkenazi Food [Pischa ashkenazov],” in Yevreï (Peoples and Cultures) [The Jews (series Peoples and Cultures)] (Moscow: Nauka, 2018), 255–272.
Marina Morgenshtern
PhD, is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Social Work at Trent University. Her main areas of research are immigration and critical social work education. Among her most recent publications are: “In Search for Inclusion and Recognition: Immigrant Experiences in the Search for Professional Employment in Durham Region, Ontario,” in “Special issue ‘Migrant Integration in Canada’s Small and Medium-Sized Centers,’” Canadian Ethnic Studies 56 (3): 69–97 (together with G. Novotna, G., D. Taylor, and U. Danish), https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/ces.2024.a939616; and “Experiencing Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Gender: Jewish Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Toronto,” in The Ever-Dying People? Canada’s Jews in Comparative Perspective, edited by Robert Brym and Randal F. Schnoor (University of Toronto Press, 2023). She is currently working on a Routledge International Handbook of Radical Ethical Social Work, co-edited with J. Schmid. The Handbook will be published in September 2025.
Petr Oskolkov
PhD, is a political scientist and sociologist. Currently, he is a postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Communication and the Department of Political Science at Ariel University (Israel), and an affiliated research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University (Israel). His main foci of research include the behavior and discourse of far-right movements, extremism and radicalism on social media, and ethnic politics. His most recent papers have appeared in such journals as Ethnopolitics, Nations and Nationalism, Social Media+Society, and Europe-Asia Studies (his most recent published title is “‘Let them hate, as long as they fear’: The Russian NS/WP movement on Telegram”).