A Leading Soviet Aliya Activist and His Family Arrive in Israel

Yasha Gorodetzky, a Leningrad mathematician and a leading aliya activist for the past six years, arrived here last night from Vienna with his wife and family. He is the second prominent Jewish activist allowed to leave the Soviet Union in less than two weeks. Eliahu (Ilya) Essas, also a mathematician, arrived in Israel with his family January 22.

Gorodetzky, 40, accompanied by his wife, Pauline, 37, their four-year-old daughter, and his wife’s mother, told reporters he did not know why he was suddenly granted an exit visa after years of being denied one. He said it could herald a change of Soviet policy toward Jewish emigration, or it could be a “miracle.”

“Jewish history is embellished by many miracles and I am one of these, if only a very small one,” he said. He has been, in recent years, a central figure in the Soviet Jewry movement. An outspoken Zionist since 1980, he was denied an exit visa in 1983. He was placed under house arrest for a time by the KGB on suspicion he was spy for Israel. He was never imprisoned.

CALLED A CHARISMATIC FIGURE

Unlike Essas, a self-taught Orthodox Jew who headed a Jewish religious revivalist movement in the USSR before coming to Israel, Gorodetzky is not observant. Nevertheless, he supported Essas’ demands that Jews in the Soviet Union be allowed to study Torah.

Other recent emigrants have described both men as charismatic figures and suggested the Soviet authorities granted them visas to be rid of them because of their considerable influence and inspiration to the aliya movement.

Gorodetzky said he fought for the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel as an act of repatriation rather than on grounds of family reunification, the only grounds the Soviets officially recognize when they grant visas.