During the darkest days of the Soviet Jewry movement, American Jews felt lucky when they managed to travel to the Soviet Union and meet with some of the thousands of refusenik families forbidden to either leave the Soviet Union or to openly take part in Jewish religion or culture.
“In the height of the despair, it was a question of Americans bringing messages of comfort and hope to the refusenik community,” said Gerald Strober of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry.
But with the growing numbers of Jews being given permission to emigrate, the national leadership of the Soviet Jewry movement is now emphasizing cultural and religious development within the Soviet Jewish community as an important new focus of visits by American Jews.
The movement, to be sure, has not forgotten the approximately 2,000 refusenik families that remain in the Soviet Union.
However, in the present climate, there is a widespread acknowledgement that refuseniks should now no longer be the only Soviet Jews with whom American Jews make contact.
“Even at the best rate of emigration, Jews will be living in the Soviet Union for generations, if not forever,” said Micah Naftalin, national director of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews.
Leaders are referring to the changes under Mikhail Gorbachev — allowing greater religious and cultural expression — as “a window of opportunity.”
CARPE DIEM
While there is no guarantee as to how long that window will remain open, they say the chance must be seized now to help the Soviet Jews develop a healthy communal life.
Next month, for the first time, the United Jewish Appeal will be officially sponsoring a travel mission to the Soviet Union. The 20-member group, composed of UJA donors from across the country, will visit Leningrad and Minsk.
Visiting refuseniks will be part of the mission’s itinerary, but efforts will be made to “participate in whatever Jewish cultural events are available,” according to a UJA official.
Conveying this new focus on cultural activism to communities across the Soviet Union is a central function also being played by the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council.
“Reaching out to the invisible and anonymous Jews” in the Soviet Union is how Al Chernin, executive vice chairman of NJCRAC, sees the post-glasnost challenge for American Jews.
“We should play the role of a Pied Piper for Jews whose names are not on any list,” said Chernin.
Recently, NJCRAC and the NCSJ held a meeting for 35 local directors of community relations councils for discussions about how this new orientation should shape local activities.
At the meeting, Rabbi Doug Kahn, the CRC director for greater San Francisco, gave a presentation on a pioneering experiment in reaching out to Soviet Jews developed in his community.
In June, seven rabbis and seven ministers traveled to Moscow to meet formally with their religious counterparts. The non-Jewish clergy included Episcopalians, Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, Catholics and Presbyterians, while the rabbis came from synagogues across the greater San Francisco area.
Their trip revolved around what was billed as a three-day conference on human dignity and Jewish-Christian tradition, a gathering organized and arranged by the American participants and the Jewish Cultural Center in Moscow.
Kahn said the main goal of the trip, and its “single-most achievement,” was the ability to display positive interreligious relationships to the Soviets.
“We were modeling interfaith cooperation for Soviet Jews and Christians who have had no model of interfaith relations,” he said.
‘INTEREST LEVEL ASTOUNDING’
Kahn said that the San Franciscans hadn’t known how the project was going to be received when they planned the event, but that they found “the interest level astounding” among the Soviets. He said that the 60-odd Soviets who took part in the conference discovered common goals in their two communities.
The conference concluded with a vote on a declaration on human dignity and religious relations. Kahn said the document was being circulated among various religious communities in the Soviet Union, and that hopes were high that it could result in the formation of a Soviet interfaith organization.
“We weren’t trying to import a uniquely American phenomenon. We were exploring to what extent Soviet Jews and Soviet Christians do have common interests,” said Kahn.
The conference was also notable in that it was apparently free of interference by the Soviet government.
“We proceeded on the premise that we should be able to do what we want,” Kahn said, adding that the conference was arranged in this manner in order to “test or even expand the limits of glasnost.”
The Union of Councils for Soviet Jews will conduct a similar test when they hold a 10-day conference in the Soviet Union in October.
UCSJ’s Naftalin said that about 50 Jews from the West and about 100 Soviet Jews are expected to take part in the meeting, which will be held in Moscow and Leningrad.
FOCUS ON COMMUNAL LIFE
Naftalin said while there will be sessions on emigration, a substantial part of the conference will focus on Soviet Jewish communal life.
The meeting will include reports from the burgeoning Jewish communal life in the Soviet Union including, Naftalin said, a new yeshiva, a new Zionist organization which is being formed and a Jewish historical society. There will also be a full-day session on anti-Semitism.
Naftalin said that he doesn’t believe encouraging Jewish communal life in the Soviet Union detracts from the UCSJ’s call for free emigration.
His philosophy, he said, is to “advocate emigration as if there is no future for Jews in the Soviet Union, and the same time support the Jewish infrastructure that exists there.”
He added that the goal for American Jews working with Jews in the Soviet Union should be to help them build strong independent institutions.
“We have to develop a situation where the Soviet government will deal with their own Jews and not one where progress is only made when western Jews get involved,” Naftalin said.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
