Sam Kliger

Sam Kliger is AJC's director of Russian Jewish Community Affairs. His responsibilities include creating, developing and implementing a variety of programs with the goal of successfully integrating Russian Jews into the American Jewish community and general American society. He also serves as a liaison between AJC and Russian Jewish communities and organizations around the world. Among other things, Kliger is responsible for preparing a new generation of leaders from the Russian Jewish community. Kliger immigrated to the U.S. from Moscow in 1990 after being a "refusenik" for many years.

Kliger is the founder and chairman of the Research Institute for New Americans (RINA), a think tank and research organization for the Russian-speaking community in the U.S. He served as the principal investigator in a number of surveys about Russian Jewish communities in New York and Philadelphia and conducted three major AJC-sponsored studies.

Kliger received his doctorate in sociology from the USSR Academy of Sciences. He has published a number of works on Russian immigrants in the U.S.