For more than half a century, the Queens Jewish Community Council (QJCC) has anchored the borough’s diverse Jewish communities while providing a lifeline to residents in need. Now, a new chapter begins as Diana Rachnaev, a familiar face in Queens communal and civic circles, takes over as executive director.
Rachnaev succeeds Rabbi Mayer Waxman of Jamaica Estates, who has joined the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRC-NY) as Vice President for Israel and Jewish Affairs under CEO Mark Treyger. Rabbi Waxman took the helm at QJCC in November 2021, succeeding longtime executive director Cynthia Zalisky and becoming only the fourth person to hold the position in the organization’s first five decades. Zalisky had been a defining presence at QJCC for many years, helping shape the organization into the communal and social-service institution that generations of Queens residents came to know.
For Rachnaev, the appointment brings together much of what has defined her adult life: social services, mental-health advocacy, immigrant support, Jewish communal responsibility, and years spent helping Queens’ Bukharian Jewish population find a stronger voice in civic life.
The daughter of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Rachnaev has spoken openly about intergenerational trauma within the Bukharian community. When the New York Jewish Week named her to its “36 to Watch” in 2024, the publication highlighted her work confronting the stigma surrounding substance abuse, domestic violence, and mental-health treatment in immigrant families. Rachnaev has also spoken about struggles with her own emotional well-being as a teenager and the difficulty of knowing where to turn for help.
Rachnaev earned an MBA from Capella University and also studied applied psychology, bringing formal training to a nonprofit career spanning nearly two decades. In 2019, alongside her siblings, brother Daniel and sister Ilana, a licensed master social worker, she co-founded Yesodot, Hebrew for “foundations,” to address behavioral, emotional, and mental-health challenges. Diana has served as CEO, Daniel as COO, and Ilana as a co-founder, with the late Alan Sirowitz, recognized as a legacy co-founder. Yesodot makes it easier for people to seek help in communities where mental health and addiction were often difficult subjects to discuss, a need Rachnaev knew firsthand.
At a recent Bukharian community well-being gathering, held in partnership with UJA-Federation, Rachnaev spoke about the history of mental-health and social-service needs in Queens and the importance of making help easier to reach. “When our community comes together, healing becomes possible,” Rachnaev said.
Her work has also reached beyond mental health. Rachnaev was involved in expanding the Kosher Summer Free Meals Program, which gave more than 30,000 children across New York State access to government-funded nutritious kosher meals during the summer. She also helped organize a 2021 Covid-19 antibody-testing initiative at the Bukharian Jewish Community Center with State Senators Joseph Addabbo and Toby Ann Stavisky and Valhalla Medics.
Borough President Donovan Richards appointed Rachnaev to Queens Community Board 6 in 2022, representing Forest Hills and Rego Park. She now co-chairs its Aging/Health/Recovery Services Committee, dealing with issues including recovery services and access to care.
Rachnaev also served as a Community Outreach Coordinator for Assembly Member Nily Rozic, working directly with residents, businesses, and community institutions across the district. Part of that work involved helping immigrant communities navigate government and connect with services that understood their cultural needs.
Giving the Bukharian community a seat at the table has been another recurring part of her work. Rachnaev participated in the One Queens Fellowship Against Hate and borough leadership roundtables and co-facilitated a first-of-its-kind meeting between Bukharian rabbis and Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, giving communal leaders an opportunity to raise their concerns directly.
Her civic involvement eventually brought her onto the ballot as well. In 2024, Rachnaev ran for State Committee in the 28th Assembly District and was elected a Judicial Convention Delegate. That same year, she was honored as a Power Woman of Queens.
Behind the positions and honors, Rachnaev has described herself more simply: a mother, wife, sister, and daughter.
QJCC is also familiar territory. Before taking over its day-to-day leadership, Rachnaev served on the organization’s Board of Directors and came to know its work and the communities it serves firsthand.
Founded in 1968, QJCC has long combined advocacy on behalf of Jewish Queens with helping people in need regardless of background. Its work includes food assistance, Meals on Wheels, services for seniors and immigrants, community programming, and advocacy across the borough.
Rachnaev takes charge just as QJCC completes a long-awaited move. This month, the organization is shifting its operations from its longtime home at Ezra Academy in Forest Hills to 69-69 Main Street in Kew Gardens Hills, just off Main Street and Jewel Avenue. QJCC had been working toward a dedicated home of its own for more than two decades, and the Main Street building was celebrated with a ribbon-cutting in 2023. Now, the move is finally becoming a reality in one of the borough’s largest centers of Orthodox Jewish life.
There is something particularly fitting about the timing. Jewish Queens looks very different today than it did when QJCC was founded in 1968. The large Bukharian community that now stretches through Forest Hills, Rego Park, Kew Gardens Hills, Fresh Meadows, and surrounding neighborhoods had yet to take shape. Families arriving from the former Soviet Union built shuls, schools, businesses, and communal institutions and, over time, became an increasingly important voice in Queens civic life.
For the Bukharian community, Rachnaev’s appointment is a milestone. A daughter of that community now leads one of Queens’ longest-standing Jewish umbrella organizations. It says something about how far a community of immigrants has come within a generation and the place its children now hold in the wider Jewish and civic life of New York.
Rachnaev, of course, is taking responsibility for far more than one community. QJCC serves the full mosaic of Jewish Queens: Ashkenazi and Sefardi families, Bukharian and other immigrant communities, longtime residents and newcomers, the observant and the unaffiliated, along with Queens residents who simply turn to the organization when they need food, guidance, or a helping hand.
As Diana Rachnaev takes the helm and QJCC settles into its long-awaited new home, we extend our warmest congratulations and wishes for much hatzlachah in the work ahead.
By Shabsie Saphirstein
