- How did a bunch of Jewish college kids and housewives
bring down the Soviet Union?
Got your attention?
Communism, anti-Semitism and near impossible emigration
were just a few of the challenges faced by
Russia's Jews in the 20th century.
But their plight inspired a grassroots movement
that became a global phenomenon,
unifying young and old Jews around the world
in support of their confined brothers and sisters.
These Soviet Jews came to be known as refuseniks,
and their suffering led to the largest ever gathering
of Jews in American history.
Grab your sickle and hammer, dust off your fur hat,
because we're about to dive into the who, what, whens,
and whys of the Soviet Jewry of the last 100 years.
(upbeat music)
To start, let's go back to good old 18th century Russia.
Anti-Semitism was serious business in Russia
in the mid to late 17 and 1800s.
The Russian Czars regularly implemented laws
that restricted the rights of Jews,
who were required to live in the western region of Russia
known as the Pale of Settlement,
which was designated by Catherine the Great in 1791
as one huge ghetto for all of Russia's Jews.
Fast forward a century and not much had changed.
The assassination of Tsar Alexander the Second in 1881
was falsely blamed on the Jews,
which set off a wave of pogroms,
which were violent, well-organized attacks on Jews
carried out by murderous mobs
and condoned by the authorities.
The vast majority of Soviet Jews still lived in the Pale
at this time, but a few thousand had relocated to Moscow
where they were permitted to work as bankers, pharmacists,
doctors and midwives.
But, the majority of these Jews
were expelled from Moscow in 1891,
and it was during this period that scholars believe
a early version of the infamous propaganda hoax,
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was published.
The Tsar's autocracy was dismantled in 1917
as part of the Russian revolution,
which lead to the formation of the Soviet Union
a few years later.
Like many other points in Jewish history,
the ascent of the Soviet Union was an example of things
getting worse for the Jews before they could get better.
The rise of Zionism in the 1930s
was met with distrust by Soviet leaders
who were deeply threatened by the idea of Jewish nationalism
in their anti-nationalist, socialist republic.
Increasingly, anti-Semitic sentiments were expressed
through anti-Zionist language.
However, after World War Two, the Soviet dictator
Joseph Stalin, supported the emerging Jewish state.
He noted that many of Israel's founders
had socialist dispositions which jived well
with his policies and led him to believe that
Israel would be a Soviet ally.
The Soviets supported the formation of the state,
they were the second country to recognize
Israel's independence, in the famous
UN Partition Plan vote in 1947.
And the new Jewish state even receive weapons from the USSR.
But soon, Soviet support for Israel decreased
for a number of reasons,
including, the Israeli Law of Return
which was passed in 1950.
This law allowed any and every Jew
to return to Israel and become a citizen.
Israeli leaders started pushing for Jews around the world,
especially those whose day-to-day freedoms were limited
to emigrate to the new Jewish state.
The Soviet leadership wasn't really on board with this,
saying that Russia's Jews were doing just fine
and didn't need a Jewish promised land.
As the Pravda, the state sponsored news paper
put it a few years earlier,
"The State of Israel has nothing to do
"with the Jews of the Soviet Union,
"where there is no Jewish Problem,
"and therefore no need for Israel."
A rift grew between the two
and the USSR eventually turned away from Israel
and instead supported its Arab neighbors
in the wars that were to follow.
The Soviet leaders may have thought that the Jews
were doing just fine, but the Jews had different ideas.
Russian Jewry felt an immediate kinship
to the most recent iteration of their ancestral homeland,
and their current lack of freedom
made a Jewish country extremely enticing.
Shortly after the state was formed, Golda Meir,
the newly appointed Israeli ambassador to Russia, visited Moscow.
She attended Rosh Hashanah services at a local synagogue,
which usually drew a crowd of 2000.
Although the government warned
against Jews attending in support,
50,000 Jews turned up to greet her.
Which of course, didn't sit well with Soviet leadership.
Stalin later initiated what came to be known as,
The Doctors' Plot,
an anti-Semitic campaign that, in 1952,
saw hundreds of Moscow's Jewish doctors
accused of conspiring to murder Soviet leaders.
Unsurprisingly, the looming trial led
to an uptick in anti-Semitic activity and propaganda,
with plans to mass deport Russia's Jews to Siberia.
Luckily, Stalin died before the plot could be carried out,
and the administration that took office after him
dismissed all charges due to lack of evidence.
Overseas however, a counter-movement
had started to take root in response to the Soviet
anti-Jewish sentiment.
This grass-roots movement was initially made up of
young Jews from New York,
but eventually reached across the country,
inspiring Jews everywhere to get involved.
So much so, that it was later joked
that a bunch of Jewish college kids and housewives
broke the Soviet Union.
The movement's goal was simple,
they wanted to save Soviet Jewry.
In 1964, Jacob Birnbaum,
a student at Yeshiva University in Manhattan,
founded the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, or, SSSJ,
which brought thousands of young Jews together
to protest outside the Soviet mission to the UN,
and demand freedom for Soviet Jews.
SSSJ leader Rabbi Avi Weiss later said
that the movement arose after,
"Jews, 20 years after the Holocaust,
"stood up and said, 'Never again.'"
It didn't hurt that the Civil Rights Movement
had bloomed a few years earlier
and many young Jews were influenced
by the late Reverend Martin Luther King Junior,
who had spoken out in support of Soviet Jews.
Over 10,000 people attended a rally
at Madison Square Garden in 1964.
Birnbaum blew the shofar, the biblical call to arms
that symbolizes freedom from oppression.
And it was at this rally that Shlomo Carlebach,
the charismatic and controversial hippie Rabbi
who wrote hundreds of songs
that are still widely sung today,
penned the tune that would become the anthem
for the freeing of Soviet Jewry,
Am Yisrael Chai or, The People of Israel Live!
The song was so popular
that it quickly spread around the world
and was chanted by Soviet Jews in synagogues
and during secret meetings.
Other prominent Jewish figures also got involved,
including Elie Wiesel, who published a book in 1966
where he called out Jewish inaction writing,
"What torments me most is not the Jews of silence
"I met in Russia, but the silence of the Jews
"I live among today."
Wiesel spoke at many rallies over the coming years
and visited Soviet refuseniks.
Similarly, Rabbi Haskel Lookstien
of the Upper Eastside of Manhattan
got his own start in activism with repeated visits
to the Soviet Union.
And later, organized rallies on behalf of Soviet Jewry.
The main issue Soviet Jews faced at this time
was immense difficulty in emigrating from Russia
to countries that respected their basic human rights.
Even just applying to leave the country
had seriously harsh consequences.
If they applied, Russian Jews almost surely lost their jobs,
were blacklisted, and even faced imprisonment.
Which meant that hundreds of thousands of Jews
were stuck in Russia against their will
and incapable really of doing anything to fix it.
These Jews came to be known as the refuseniks,
and their plight became the focal point
of the free Soviet Jewry Movement.
But, it was Natan Sharansky who really became the icon
of the refusenik campaign
and the one person who came to personify
Soviet Jewry's struggle.
He identified strongly with the grassroots movements
around the world and became an activist and advocate
for Soviet Jewish emigration, which in 1978
resulted in his arrest by the Soviets for trumped up charges
of treason and spying for the US.
Sharansky was sentenced to 13 years
in a forced labor camp in Siberia.
Different Jewish groups advocated different tactics
to try to free Sharansky,
and the rest of Soviet Jewry.
The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry
held many demonstrations and rallies
outside the Soviet Consulate,
while the more militant Jewish Defense League,
led by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane,
pushed for more violent means.
And yet, other more conservative and established
Jewish organizations called for quiet acts of diplomacy.
But Sharansky's wife, Avital, was the most tireless
campaigner for her husband's freedom.
She met with activists and political leaders across the US
and by the end of the year, her activism,
as well as the activism of hundreds of Jewish women
inspired by her,
led to the signing of a Statement of Conscience
by 2400 American scientists,
including 13 Nobel laureates, who pledged
to avoid cooperating with the Soviet Union
until Sharansky was freed. Which, he was,
nine years into his sentence in dramatic fashion
as part of an East-West prisoner swap
that was pushed for strongly by Avital,
community leaders, and politicians,
including US President Ronald Reagan.
Sharansky immediately left Russia and moved to Israel
where he was welcomed as a hero.
His release galvanized the movement to free Soviet Jewry,
Sharansky, fresh out of prison,
took off on a whirlwind tour of more than 30 US cities
where he spoke to dozens of Jewish communities.
He hoped to organize a rally of tens of thousands
of Jews in Washington DC.
But American Jewish leaders
warned him against overreaching,
telling him that it would be near impossible
to get that number of people to mobilize
on such short notice.
Why risk the embarrassment of a small turnout
that would just show Russia that the Soviet Jewry movement
didn't have legs?
Establishment leaders were even frustrated
with Sharansky's zeal.
Sharansky recalls them telling him,
"Who are you to teach us how to have demonstrations?"
But his efforts and that of his fellow activists
led to the largest gathering of Jews in American history.
On December 6th, 1987,
250 thousand Jews came together
on the National Mall in Washington DC
to protest on behalf of the three million Jews
still under Soviet control
and against the regime itself keeping them there.
The demonstration, where hundreds of thousands of voices
chanted, "Let my people go!"
and, "Equality now for Soviet Jews!"
was held one day before a summit between President Reagan
and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Supposedly, the rally inspired Reagan to tell Gorbachev,
"Yesterday, I had 250 thousand people in my backyard saying,
"'Let my people go.'
"Until you do what they want,
"nothing between us will happen."
It took two more years but in 1989,
just around the same the Iron Curtain was collapsing,
which many attribute in part
to the Free Soviet Jewry Movement,
Gorbachev approved measures
that allowed Jews to leave the country.
From 1989 to 2006, more than 1.6 million Russian Jews
relocated to countries like the US and Germany,
but most of all to Israel,
which welcomed more than one million Russian immigrants
during that time,
no small feat for a country with only
four million citizens in 1989.
Although, not a surprising move from Israel
which has always been deeply concerned
with saving Jews around the globe.
In almost no time at all, these Russian olim, or immigrants,
made significant contributions to the country
in the fields of science, high tech, medicine and education.
Many of these immigrants were highly educated
including tens of thousands of Russian trained engineers
who assimilated seamlessly into the labor market,
providing key scientific and IT skillsets.
Today, one in four professors in Israeli higher education
is a native Russian speaker,
and that number is even higher in science focused fields.
The story of the ill-treatment, suppression, imprisonment
and eventual redemption of Soviet Jewry
highlights the tremendous power of people
to unite over a shared cause and create change,
even when there's disagreement over the correct approach.
It goes to show that Jews,
who can be notorious for disagreeing with each other,
and some might even say have elevated civil disagreement
to a religious practice,
can rouse and inspire multitudes of other Jews
across the planet.
The lyrics to Carlebach's anthem, Am Yisrael Chai
were spot on.
The Jewish nation lives and even more than that
thrives when they realize that
they are in fact their brothers' and sisters' keepers.
(upbeat music)