Part of a Ukrainian-Jewish family that came to the U.S. in 1993, Roman Shmulenson made his first meaningful contact with the Jewish community while studying at a Brooklyn high school the next year. A social worker from the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services who met with émigré teens arranged a scholarship for Shmulenson to visit Israel.
The trip energized his Jewish feelings; today he’s paying his spiritual debt, as a leader of the émigré community.
As a member of the New York University community for nine years, recently as an NYU Law School Tikvah post-doctoral scholar and previously as an NYU JLIC educator, Michelle Sarna was gratified when Shalhevet, NYU’s Orthodox student group, elected its first female president four years ago – succeeded by three more female presidents.
Rebecca Missel grew up mostly in Mesa, Ariz., a predominantly Mormon city with few Jews. But when she moved to Morristown, N.J., she was surprised to find she felt a more acute lack of connection with her community.
She used to doubt the power of Twitter. After all, how much can you really express in 140 characters? — Twitter’s strict word limit. But after mobilizing 2,000 students to direct tweets at President Obama while he appeared on MTV, and receiving a response from the president himself on national television articulating his administration’s policies about genocide in Sudan, Emma Goldberg officially reformed her views.
When Yvette Edidin and her family moved from Manhattan to her childhood village of Roslyn Harbor (pop. 1,200) on Long Island six years ago, it wasn’t the place she remembered. “There was litter on the street, speeding on the roads,” she said. “It wasn’t what it was like when I was growing up.”
Yair Saperstein has been a science guy for a long time (witness the permanently singed hair on the back of his hand from an elementary-school science “‘magic show” that went amiss).
As a child, Symi Rom-Rymer heard stories about her great-grandfather’s 1911 journey from Russia to the U.S.
“I was very aware of the immigrant experience,” says Rom-Rymer, who is a founder and director of the Global Muslim Jewish Friendship Forum, an Internet-based grassroots organization that tries to unite members of both faiths in discussion about politics, culture and religion.
Born in Minsk, Belarus, Rubin came to the U.S. with his family as a child. They settled at first in Brooklyn, then moved to northeast Pennsylvania. He was attracted to business and thought he wanted to be “a finance guy.” But after studying business at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Rubin decided he wanted to do “more than just finance. I want to make things and impact the world.”
Jaimie Mayer Phinney, 28, grew up around philanthropy. Nathan Cummings was her great-grandfather, and she has childhood memories of wearing cowboy boots around the swimming pool at family retreats to work on building the foundation named for him.
