MARINA from Belarus and Ida from Ukraine were selling jewelry on fold-up tables by the beach, alongside Malka from Georgia. On the way over, I had met Natalya from Russia and Igor from Uzbekistan, who were holding hands as they strolled around a hilltop park, sunning themselves on a sparkling winter afternoon. Should it have been any surprise that Yana, the saleswoman at the nearby mall, grew up in Azerbaijan?

Israel Travel Guide.

Signs in Russian and Hebrew advertise nonkosher meats at a supermarket.

All around me in the Israeli city of Ashdod, people were chatting in Russian, darting in and out of stores with signs in Cyrillic, living the lives that they had once lived, as if they were in a mythical, far-flung former Soviet republic. I had come from Moscow to explore Israel, but when I reached Ashdod, a port on the Mediterranean that is shunned by most guidebooks, I almost felt as if I were back where I had started. Minus the snow.

Israel has many guises: Jewish and Christian, Arab and secular, pottery-shard old and stiletto-heel new. Over the last two decades, a wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union has added another piece to the country’s mosaic of cultures and identities and textures. Russian speakers now account for roughly 15 percent of Israel’s 7.5 million people. Even so, their influence is not ballyhooed for outsiders. You can spend a week or two as a tourist and have only an inkling of their impact.

But it is everywhere. On Channel 9, news anchors discuss the latest wrangling with the Palestinians in the language of Pushkin. Graduates of Soviet institutes have helped transform the Tel Aviv region into such a fertile high-tech center that some Israelis quip that you have to master Russian to get ahead there. Across the country, the symphonies and theaters abound with performers trained in Moscow or St. Petersburg or Kiev. So do the streets. One day, I approached a violinist fiddling for change in Jerusalem and, on a lark, greeted him in Russian. He was from Siberia.

The younger crowd frequents Bar Putin in Jerusalem, where the walls are decorated with photos of the man himself, as well as advertisements for Soviet champagne and vintage Communist Party posters. You can dine on Georgian or Uzbek specialties in Tel Aviv, or examine rare volumes spirited out of the shtetl at the Russian Library in Jerusalem, which has been championed by Israel’s most famous Russian immigrant, the dissident Natan (formerly Anatoly) Sharansky. And then there is the most startling symbol of this influx: pork. But more on that later.

As a resident of Russia, I found something poignant in the world of these immigrants. In their tumultuous history in the Soviet Union and in the Russian empire before it, Jews were subjected to brutal prejudice yet often flourished. And so their exodus has left a gap in these societies. Of course, Jews have remained, and communities are reviving. But in Israel, you can catch a refracted glimpse of what once was.

A fine place to start is Ashdod, a coastal industrial center of 210,000 people that is Israel’s fifth largest city and a 45-minute ride south from Tel Aviv. It is here that high-rise buildings sprouted in the 1990s to provide apartments for families from the former Soviet Union, who make up more than a third of the city’s population.

Most are not religious, a result of Soviet state-enforced atheism, and on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, they thronged the beachfront, not the synagogues. The slightly shabby promenade reminded me of Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, another place with a Russian soul. I arrived to a beguiling scene: scores of people doing coordinated Israeli dances on an outdoor square, a sign that the newcomers (whether from the former Soviet Union or elsewhere) had embraced some Israeli traditions. In fact, Ashdod likes to consider itself the country’s dance capital.

“Ashdod is one of Israel’s secrets,” said David Stromberg, a journalist and cartoonist who was my navigator for the day. The son of immigrants who were born in Moldova and Georgia, he spent part of his childhood in the city.

“You could call this the Israeli Riviera,” he said. “It has a very pan-Mediterranean feel.”

Ashdod’s beaches did not disappoint, and while my wife and children swam, I mingled. I was curious as to whether adults who emigrated from the former Soviet Union as youngsters had a connection to the old country. Most of the people I met seemed pleased to be Israelis; some were more ambivalent.

Leonid and Yulia Novikov walked by with their baby daughter and a few friends, all from Ukraine, now in their 20s. Mr. Novikov, a security guard, said he had visited Ukraine recently, and it did not seem familiar, especially now that he had served in the Israeli Army and learned Hebrew.

“I can’t really communicate with people in Ukraine in the same way anymore,” Mr. Novikov said. “My mentality has changed.”

Along the water, I ran into Valery Burbyga, 42, who was fishing. A machine-tool worker, Mr. Burbyga said he had left Kiev in the 1990s because the economy had swooned. He said he was a quarter Jewish — one grandfather — and his wife was Christian.

“I’m thankful to Israel that there is work here, and possibilities,” he said. “But I’m homesick.”

The religious status of his family was not unusual. Many people with partial or no Jewish ancestry arrived after the Soviet collapse in 1991.

Their presence — and that of Jewish immigrants with no religious background or interest in Judaism — has sometimes stirred resentment.

At Tiv Ta’am, an Israeli supermarket chain, you can see why.

The branch in Ashdod is huge, offering immigrants from the former Soviet Union (whatever their religion) a festival of pork, vodka, black bread and other Russian-oriented products. Cases are filled with pork salamis and sausages and hot dogs. And could there be anything more unkosher than slabs of salo, a salted pork fat that conjures up images of Ukrainian peasantry?

The food got us thinking about sampling a Russian restaurant, a goal that was more challenging than we expected. (What does a guy have to do around here to get a bowl of borscht?) In Ashdod, people directed us to a restaurant called Integral, which had a cook from the Ural Mountains. The food, while excellent, was more high-brow European-Russian fusion.

“A Russian never sells Russian cuisine,” Yevgeny Rassin, 40, co-owner of Integral, told me, only half joking. “Why? Because Grandma always makes it better at home.”

It was easier to find Georgian and Uzbek cuisine, both of which are very popular in the former Soviet Union — akin to Chinese or Mexican food in the United States. In Tel Aviv, we stumbled upon an appealing cafe called Caffeine, whose co-owner, Avi Ovadia, 30, emigrated from Georgia at age 11.

Mr. Ovadia, who has decorated the walls of the restaurant with worn photos of his family life in Georgia, said he obtained suluguni, the sour cheese that is a key Georgian ingredient, from an uncle in Israel who made it at home. It was as good as anything that I had had in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.

The immigrants have brought not only a taste for pork, suluguni and vodka, but also a political bent that has tilted Israel to the right. Around Ashdod and other Russian enclaves, posters promote “Israel Is Our Home,” a rising political party whose base is Russian speakers. Its leader is Avigdor Lieberman, an immigrant from Moldova who is Israel’s foreign minister — and who has a good rapport with Vladimir V. Putin.

While the immigration from the former Soviet Union has been epic, there are questions about how long its influence can last, given assimilation.

Bar Putin in Jerusalem prides itself on offering “a night like you could have back in Russia,” said its co-owner, Yulia Kaplan, 27, who is from St. Petersburg. She spoke over music that ranged from the ballads of Vladimir Vysotsky, who was the Soviet Bob Dylan, to the latest bubblegum pop of Dima Bilan, winner of the 2008 Eurovision talent competition. Ms. Kaplan was not optimistic about future clientele.

“The children of Russians, they reject things Russian,” she said.

Still, the legacy will endure at the Russian Library in Jerusalem, whose founder, Clara Elbert, 57, was once a Moscow librarian. She delighted in pulling works off the shelves and recounting their origins for me.

Many of the 100,000 books were donated by immigrants: classics by Tolstoy, Communist Party records from the 1930s, stories translated to Russian from Yiddish, volumes of Russian Jewish newspapers, and mementos. “This is a first-place award for a student in the sixth grade, Shayna Grinberg,” reads an inscription from a work from 1880.

Not long ago, the library, which is part of the city system, was threatened with closing after losing its lease. A debate broke out about whether it was worth saving. Wasn’t the point of creating a new life in Israel to leave behind the old one, to cast aside the burdens of the Jews of the former Soviet Union? But after an outcry, the library acquired a home. “You cannot become a true Israeli,” Ms. Elbert said, “if you do not know where you came from.”

IF YOU GO

Several airlines offer nonstop flights between New York and Tel Aviv, including El Al, Continental and Delta. European carriers like British Air and Air France have connecting flights to Tel Aviv through their hub cities. Tourist visas are not required for American citizens.

WHERE TO EAT

Integral (6 Hagdud Haivri, Ashdod; 972-8-866-8824) offers Russian-European fusion with plenty of brands of vodka on hand.

Nanuchka (30 Lilienblum Street, Tel Aviv; 972-3-516-2254) has Georgian specialties in an atmosphere that turns ebullient late at night, with dancing on the tables.

Caffeine (63 Nachalat Binyamin Street, Tel Avivl; 972-3-686-8986) is a charming Georgian cafe. Try the khachapuri, the signature bread filled with suluguni, the national cheese.

Fergana (54 Ha-Peled Street, Holon; 972-3-556-0210) offers tasty and inexpensive Uzbek cuisine in a modest setting. The plov, the pilaf dish of Central Asia, and manti, meat dumplings, are excellent.

Bar Putin (19 Jaffo Street, Jerusalem; 972-5-2431-9695) pays quirky homage to the Russian leader and his land.

SIGHTSEEING

The city of Ashdod is a perfect day trip for people staying in other major Israeli cities. It is a 45-minute car ride from Tel Aviv, or an hour and 15 minutes from Jerusalem. There is regular bus service from both cities; sometimes a transfer is required (egged.co.il/Eng/).

Tiv Ta’am is a supermarket chain specializing in Russian food; there is a store at 37 Jabotinsky Street, Ashdod; 972-8-851-3999; tivtaam.co.il. The Russian Library (88 Agrippas Street, Jerusalem; 972-2-537-5723).