Daniel Estrin is a radio and print journalist. His stories have been featured on American public radio programs and in publications including The World, Marketplace, The Associated Press, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, The Forward and Tablet Magazine.
Twenty years ago, throngs of Jewish immigrants fled the crumbling Soviet Union for a better life in Israel. More than a million arrived, making it Israel's biggest wave of immigration to date. But what happens when a million immigrants, stripped of their religious affiliation under Communism, integrate into the Jewish state? In Israel, Estrin explores how Israelis have stomached their new neighbors' pork penchants and Christmas-like celebrating. In Russia, he discovers how rabbinic sleuths comb government archives to piece together immigrants' lost Jewish heritage. And in Ukraine, he observes how locals remember the Jewish communities that once were.