Last Friday morning, I packed my bag and went to meet Ilya Lipetsker and Linda Pardes Friedburg to get on a bus and spend Shabbat in the Negev desert with a group of strangers.
Shishi Shabbat Israeli, an organization dedicated to helping Russian-speaking olim get to know Israel, set out on its 106th seminar weekend with one Israeli-American in tow, trying to understand more about the struggles of this community.
Founded 14 years ago by Linda and her husband Zeev, Shishi Shabbat Israel holds meetings across the country during the week and several seminar weekends a year. Thousands of olim had attended these events, and the waiting lists for these weekends were hundreds of people long.
As the only other American, Linda explained to me that Shishi Shabbat Israeli began when she and her husband saw how many Russian-speaking Olim would come to Israel only to leave because they felt they had no reason to stay.
“A lot of these people, they came here on their own. And especially these past two years, with the war, they had no community,” she told me.
“So we wanted to give them that, to remind them why they were zionists.”
Taking the scenic route
We took the scenic route down south, driving along the Dead Sea as Linda told me more about this organization. She talked about the people on the bus with the same fondness as her own children, which made sense given that she’d been invited to over 70 weddings of couples who met at these meetings.
“Once, I ran into a couple on the street, and they introduced me to their three children. It was just amazing,” she told me.
The bus stopped just shy of the base of one of Israel’s most beautiful phenomena, a makhtesh (a Negev box canyon).
We began the trek up, and I chatted with a few participants about what made them want to join this weekend.
Everyone I spoke to, regardless of where they were from, how long they lived in Israel, or if this was their first event, said the same thing.
“I came here for the community.”
When we got to the top, several people asked if I was okay -- I’m not a hiking kind of person. But this time, I’ll admit, it was worth it for the view.
As the group began to discuss the history of the region (I think -- I still didn’t speak Russian) I sat and watched them.
Maybe there was a metaphor in this, how leaving everything you knew to come to a place where you didn’t speak the language was like climbing a mountain. Or maybe it was just a nice view.
As we began to hike down, I started to stumble. Suddenly, a hand grabbed mine and began to lead me down. Linda’s husband, Ze’ev, smiled at me as we hobbled down the slope.
“I’m scared, too,” he said, “We can do it better together.”
As the trail continued downward, several people helped me, each one brushing it off as I thanked them.
We made it back to our bus just as it began to rain, and I watched the scenery out the window until a sign caught my attention.
The man next to me asked what I saw, and I told him, “There’s an alpaca farm.”
“We can’t ride camels because of the rain,” Ilya told me. “So, alpacas.”
If there was a lesson to be learned from the alpaca farm, I didn’t catch it. All I know is those guys were fluffy, and I had a great time petting them.
While many of the participants told me they knew each other from previous events, several of them were joining Shishi Shabbat Israeli for the first time. If it wasn’t from word of mouth, participants learned about the weekend through Facebook or Telegram, and all were hoping to find the community they’d left behind.
One thing to note is, the goal of these seminars was not to push religion on anyone. Sure, the weekend featured lectures about the Torah portion of the week and Hanukkah, but there was no pressure to participate in anything you didn’t want to be a part of.
Being there, there was no agenda. Some of the people were singing Shabbat songs, and some were on their phones. But they were together, and that’s what mattered.
While talking to Linda, I learned how, after October 7, the Shishi Shabbat community mobilized, and she helped coordinate over a thousand olim volunteering with the IDF and raised over NIS 100,000.
“A lot of these people escaped one war just to be thrown into another,” Linda explained, “Of course they want to help.”
“There’s something that feels good; you can live in a war when you feel your country is doing what’s right to defend itself,” one participant told me.
The weekend went by quickly, and after a musical havdalah, we loaded our bags back onto the bus to head home.
The bus ride home was filled with laughter and conversation, a sense of camaraderie that wasn’t there when we left.
Community.