JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
In November 1987, I visited Soviet refuseniks in Russia as part of a grassroots volunteer organization in Chicago dedicated to helping Soviet Jews. The USSR was in its final days. I recall how few lights were on when my plane landed, a reflection of a nation that struggled to provide basic necessities like electricity. Food…
In the dark days of the Cold War, photographer Bill Aron, the son of a Russian émigré to Philadelphia, traveled to the Soviet Union. In Moscow, Leningrad, and Minsk, he took portraits of refuseniks— Soviet Jews who were demanding their freedom— as well as photographs of the Jewish synagogues and those worshipping there. Starting Nov….
When the Iron Curtain fell and Soviet refuseniks were finally allowed to settle in Israel, many found some novel worries, and some familiar ones, waiting on the other side. While they looked for work, these Jews found themselves navigating a new country and a new language. But, amid the stress of assimilation they still had…
This week, 33 years ago, I stood on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for the first time in my life, amid 250,000 American Jews and allies, listening to the legendary refusenik Natan Sharansky speak. “No missiles and tanks, no camps and prisons can extinguish the candle of freedom,” he told the throngs of people….
(JTA) — Maria Slepak, a Prisoner of Zion and Soviet Jewry leader with her husband before they were finally allowed to immigrate to Israel, has died. Slepak and husband Vladimir were permitted to leave the Soviet Union in October 1987, 17 years after they first applied for an exit visa. Their son Alexander had departed…
A candidate for Secretary of State in the Trump administration clashed with a Moldovan-born Jewish news anchor Wednesday over Vladimir Putin’s human rights record. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican California congressman known for his pro-Russian views, was speaking with Yahoo News anchor Bianna Golodryga about rights abusers in China when she said, “much could be said…
Gal Beckerman, Forward’s opinion editor and author of “When They Come For Us We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry,” the defining book on Soviet Jewry, talks about meeting the refuseniks who attempted to hijack a plane and draw attention to the troubles of Russian Jews. What is life like for the…
Hybrid event in London and online.
Aug 14, 2022
1:30 pm ET ·
Join audiences and participants from across the globe for this live celebration of Yiddish songs, poems, jokes, stories, games, serious and funny - all performed in Yiddish with English translation.
