Kitchen Judaism: Identity, Belonging and Migration from the USSR to the UK
Wed 03 Jun
|Chabad Islington
A chaired discussion on growing up Jewish in the Soviet Union, migrating West, and negotiating Jewish identity in Britain today — through memory, food and lived experience.
Time & Location
03 Jun 2026, 19:00 – 21:00
Chabad Islington, 1-3 Elliott's Pl, London N1 8HX, UK
Guests
About the event
What did it mean to be Jewish when religion was inaccessible, identity was coded, and silence was a survival strategy?
This event brings together Alissa Timoshkina and Marina Sapritsky-Nahum, writers and cultural researchers with roots in the former Soviet Union, to explore how Jewish identity was lived, hidden, adapted and carried across borders — and what happens when that experience meets British Jewish life today.
In conversation with author and BBC journalist Nadia Ragozhina, they draw on family histories from Russia and Ukraine to explore how Soviet Jewish life was often lived not in public spaces but around the kitchen table, where families and trusted friends shared food, memories and stories that quietly sustained Jewish heritage.
These intimate gatherings offered moments of safety, belonging, and affirmation of Jewish identity, creating a practise of “kitchen Judaism”.
The conversation will trace their move to the West, including the UK, where “coming out” as…