Rough pathways to Zion
Colin Shindler recalls protracted protests. Peter Lawson samples identity poetics
JOSEPH STALIN’S last years were the “Black Years of Soviet Jewry”. The trial and execution of the Yiddish writers, the Slansky trial of mainly Jewish Communists in Prague, and the infamous Doctors’ Plot in January 1953, all characterised this period. Stalin’s unexpected demise put an end to systematic persecution and a probable deportation of huge numbers of Soviet Jews. It also prompted Shaul Avigur and Isser Harel, founding fathers of Israel’s intelligence community, to establish Nativ and task it with awakening diaspora Jews to the plight of their Soviet brethren.
Pauline Peretz’s book — subtitled “The transnational politics of Soviet Jewish emigration during the Cold War” — documents the genesis of the Soviet Jewry movement in the US. Peretz contends that Nativ became “the decisive actor in the history of the American (Soviet Jewry) movement”. President Eisenhower was in fact approached by the American Jewish leadership in February 1953 to raise the issue of emigration with the Kremlin. He adamantly refused to do so because the US needed the Arab world to act as a bulwark against Communist encroachment in the Middle East.
While the Israelis really wanted aliyah, they concurred with US Jewry to raise the issue initially as a broad humanrights one. More than 160,000 Jews had entered the US from the DP camps after 1945.Therewasalsoagrowingbelief,particularlyamongtheyoungergeneration, that Jewish leaders hadn’t done enough
British supporter of the Soviet Jewry campaign dressed as Stalin in 1977 to stop the murder of the six million in Europe and that Soviet Jewry should not belefttoitsfate.AndPeretzdemonstrates that there was still deep reluctance to establish the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry in 1963.
Atthesametime,theStudentStruggle for Soviet Jewry was founded by Jacob BirnbaumandGlennRichter.Birnbaum, originally from Germany but who grew up in Britain, was strongly opposed to the conservatism of the mainstream organisations. He argued that saving Soviet Jewry was “a struggle and not a conference”. Many members of the SSSJ were survivors’ children, Orthodox and intent on aliyah, but were highly influencedbytheAmericancivil-rightsmovement. Their symbol of the shofar was seen as the equivalent of the clenched fist of the Black Panthers.
Heightened awareness after the SixDay war and the first Leningrad trial in 1970 further catalysed American Jewry to take action. In 1971, the Union of Councils for Soviet Jewry was established to further oppose “the Jewish establishment”.
At that time, Nixon and Kissinger did not wish to raise the emigration issue with Brezhnev because they believed it would inhibit efforts to secure a détente between the superpowers — to the extent that they refused even to meet community leaders. The linking of free emigration to favourable trade terms divided these rival organisations even further.
YetAmericanJewshadthebitbetween their teeth — and Nativ lost influence to play a secondary role during the 1970s.
Peretz has written a fascinating account, especially as the relevant archives remain classified in Israel. She was probably unwise to occasionally mention the British campaign as there wereinaccuracies(includingthedescription of the odyssey of this writer).
One million Jews left the USSR for Israel and elsewhere during the 1990s. This book sets in context the origins and commitment of the American movement that led the way. Colin Shindler is an emeritus professor at SOAS, University of London. He was active in the Soviet Jewry campaign between 1966 and 1975.