My name is Diana Diner, and I am a 23 year old Russian Jew. I was born and raised in New Jersey, and after graduating college with a degree in Psychology and Broadcast Journalism, I decided to move to Los Angeles to further pursue my passion, which was an acting career. For the past year I have been living in Hollywood with my older sister, who is also an actress.

Because the house I grew up in was not very religious, I really had no ties to Israel when I was growing up. After going on Birthright when I was 21, my whole life changed, and I fell in love with Israel. After going back twice on my own, and once more as a staff for Birthright, I decided that California no longer made sense, and Israel was where I had to be.

I am so excited to be joining ISC because of the interaction I will have with the people around me. I am so outgoing, and I just love meeting new people. In addition to acting, I love to read, to learn, to do comedy and make people laugh. And I absolutely love dogs.

I have many hopes for my time in Israel, but one of the major ones is that I hope to learn Hebrew, because I think it is such a beautiful language. Hopefully I can use my Russian to interact with the Russian community in Israel. As much as they can learn from me about being a Russian-American Jew, I really want to learn from them what it is like to be a true Russian Jew. I am so looking forward to improving my Russian language skills. It would mean to much to me if I was accepted into the Russian Jewish community.

I am hoping that I can get just as much from my time in Israel as I put in. I am not going just to volunteer my services, whatever they may be, but I am going to hopefully grow as a person as well. While I have only spent 1 or 2 weeks at a time in Israel, those days have had a profound meaning in my life. I am so excited to see what 5 whole months will bring to my life.