Letter From Russia

...Books in Russian touching on subjects of Jewish history, Jewish religion, Jewish resistance in the Second World War, are absolutely essential...

...It is the very arbitrariness of the system, the total unpredictability of future KGB action, that is intended to instill fear and discourage applications to emigrate...

...The chances of getting into the musical conservatory in Leningrad for those who are Jewish are far smaller than they were just a few years ago...

...Finally, they are motivated perhaps most of all by the very existence of an Israel and an American Jewish community...

...Our people are at risk in a way that most others are not...

...We simply must...

...It has also impacted on Soviet leadership...

...That is probably the most important reason why our advocacy movement must be greatly strengthened...

...I only know how this renewal must begin...

...I talk to whomever I want, I say whatever is on my mind...

...Our ability to produce such a result will be enhanced immensely if the Soviet Jewry movement in all of the communities throughout the United States is infused with a new sense of mission...

...It is in the conversations with Jews—and non-Jews too—who have not applied to leave that one quickly discerns a real sense of oppression and despair...

...Yet, today the Soviet Jewry movement is one of the great success stories in American Jewish life...

...And yet, consider how far we have come...

...Another, "I don't think what I have been doing these past ten years as a refusenik has been unimportant...

...to relate to those who will be conducting them...

...Such a scene is inconceivable in the Soviet Union...

...Both the miracle of modern Israel and this fantastic American Jewish community are the result of an earlier, immense, Russian Jewish emigration three generations ago...

...Without a doubt, Zionism is a strong motivating factor for a great many of those who have left, and for many who have applied to leave or intend to do so...

...That is why we must keep our movement distinct from the broader human rights movement within the Soviet Union, no matter how active we may be as human rights activists in our personal capacities...

...From such a strengthening, real results will flow...

...Earlier I noted how Israeli and American Jewish activism has motivated Soviet Jews...

...But consider the consequences of success...

...They know Ted Mann, a frequent contributor to moment, is the immediate past chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations...

...I don't feel that I have wasted a life...

...You may know by now that President Reagan repeated, in his conversation with me upon my return from the Soviet Union, the pledge that he had made several months ago—that this issue would be on the table of any negotiations with the Soviet Union in the future...

...in many cases it may be the principal motivation...

...When we began, the cause seemed too hopeless...

...While the dangers they face are obviously great, these are people who have cut bait and have already made the critical decision to attempt to emigrate...

...This knowledge is branded into the historical memories of all of lis—Israelis, American Jews and Soviet Jews alike...

...Do not try to find rational explanations for this inconsistent Soviet behavior...

...The randomness of the threat, its Russian roulette quality, is testimony to the sophistication of the Soviet regime they confront...

...The suffering non-Jews in the Soviet Union are as worthy of protection as are our people...

...But the greatest need of all, of course, is to get the Soviet Jews out of the Soviet Union...

...I know that is easier said than done...

...In 1964, my 14-year-old niece, Debbie, from Fairfield, Connecticut, joined her parents in a march on Washington for Soviet Jewry...

...Therein lies not only our special responsibility to work for their release from the Soviet Union at the earliest possible time, but also our justification in urging our own Administration in Washington to give priority to Soviet Jewish emigration in all of its negotiations with the Soviet Union dealing with trade, business relationships of all sorts, and all cultural and scientific exchanges...

...I know the special difficulties in maintaining a high level of commitment to a cause that goes on and on, for decades, for generations...

...We must get them out...

...Soviet decisions in the years ahead —concerning both the safety of the refuseniks and the number of Jews allowed to emigrate—will likewise be affected by Soviet perceptions of us...

...This is surely part of their motivation in leaving...

...It is virtually impossible for a Jew to gain admission to the mathematics department at Moscow, Leningrad, or Novosibiersk State Universities today...

...that the juxtaposition of America's new immigration policy and the Soviet Union's emigration policy would by 1981 become the dominant symbol differentiating our two societies...

...How are we to make our successes of the last decade pale in comparison to what is yet to come...

...The extremes to which the authorities will go in order to seal off the population from any outside information are quite remarkable...

...Those of us who twenty-five years ago were involved in the successful battle to liberalize America's immigration laws could hardly have anticipated that the Soviet refusal to let our people go would become the great symbol of Soviet repression...

...they know they are not shouting into a silent void...

...They have a purpose in life, a set of defined goals, which helps lift their mood in times of obviously great trouble...

...It is only through the renewal of spirits and commitment that such visits by community leaders would bring about that we can hope to strengthen the Soviet Jewry movement within each of the communities in America...

...Thus the biweekly scientific seminars conducted by the refusenik scientist in Moscow have been broken up by the authorities for the past several months...

...I found myself thinking how wonderful it would be if this mood, this sense of mission, this feeling of serenity even in the midst of deadly struggle, were woven into the texture of the Soviet Jewry movement in the Jewish communities throughout the United States...

...Today I feel like a free man...

...An applicant for emigration who does not hold an "ideological" position within the Soviet Union will likely not be fired from his job today...

...One of the remarkable facts about Jewish life today is the way Jewish concerns have become intertwined with the great universal issues of our time...

...Yet, Jewish history seminars in the same city, attended by 60 to 80 younger Jews, many of whom have not yet applied to emigrate, have been broken up in the last several months and arrests have been made...

...Debbie later married a Soviet physicist, one of the 250,000 Soviet Jews—think of it, 250,000!—who have gotten out in the last decade...

...Those early Zionists in 1881 could hardly have dreamed that in 1981 the little state they wanted to recreate would turn out to be a dry oasis surrounded by the world's greatest reservoir of oil, and thus at the very vortex of a great super-power con^ frontation...

...Far more must be done...

...they would be doomed if they were to wage this struggle alone, in a totally uncaring world...

...consider the consequences of success...

...But we know that the best presidential intentions do not always translate into actual policy...

...The power of the printed word is best demonstrated by the Soviet Union's oppression of it...

...They are not engaged in some quixotic struggle of an individual Jew against one of the greatest superpowers in human history...

...The Soviet perception of the American Jewish community and its political "power" unquestionably contributed to its willingness to allow 250,000 Jews to leave...

...When I consider the 350 square feet of living space in the homes of so many of those I visited—crammed with large libraries, with exercise equipment nailed to the walls—I am distressed not so much by our own conspicuous consumption but by the realization of how material impoverishment impacts on the minute to minute quality of life...

...These are problems that we must work to resolve...

...And it is difficult...

...The motivations behind the Soviet Jews' decision to emigrate are many, and they overlap...

...For example, the exclusion of young Jews from the best Soviet universities is the clearest possible message to even mature scientists that there is no future for them in the Soviet Union and there never again will be...

...Thus they deeply appreciate the fact that there is an independent Jewish state that cares...

...A colleague of Kevin Klose illustrated the enormous difference in freedom between the Soviet Union and Poland (not exactly a free society either...

...Community leadership must be urged to visit the Soviet Union...

...The terrible indecision that permeates the lives of the other Jews in the Soviet Union—the extinction of personal freedoms endured by everyone around them—these are no longer the problems of the refuseniks...

...But if the Soviet system continues to fail economically, and it seems very likely that it will, it is our people, not the others, who will be the victims of political anti-Semitism—the last ace in the hole for an aging leadership desperately attempting to hold onto its power...

...Thus, one refusenik of world renown (I am omitting names for obvious reasons) said, "Ten years ago I would have been enormously fearful of meeting with any foreigner...

...The same kinds of seminars in Leningrad have continued, with no harassment at all...

...There are great difficulties too at the present time in getting invitations from Israel into the hands of Soviet Jews—indeed, this was the most frequent complaint I heard...

...Tapes of Jewish and Israeli music and cultural and religious artifacts must be received by them, as difficult as that may be...

...And the J DC packages sent to many refuseniks twice a year are received regularly by some, not at all by others and once every few years by still others...

...And so, what is most important in our advocacy movement is that they hear us, hear from us, and know that when they speak we hear them...

...Mahy of the youngsters who boarded buses that day had utterly no idea what they were doing or why...

...They gradually came to realize that it might be possible to leave, that they had a choice other than slowly disappearing under relentless oppression...

...The dangers the refuseniks face differ from year to year and from city to city...

...by recalling an incident in Warsaw where he saw a nun leaving a xeroxing establishment with a pile of papers in her hands...

...In ways that none of us wanted, the Jewish people have moved from the periphery to the epicenter of world history...

...The refuseniks, despite the awful uncertainties they face, are in a sense the freest men and women in the Soviet Union...

...Still others are undoubtedly motivated by the wretched quality of the material life in the Soviet Union...

...Theatrical performances in Dr...

...consider the consequences of failure...

...So how can we infuse our Jewish communities with the kind of dedication to the cause of Soviet Jews that is so essential...

...Thus, the President has expressed his commitment as unambiguously as it could be expressed...

...his children will likely not have to suffer severe social consequences...

...For her part, Debbie thought they were going to see Soviet jewelry, but it made no difference to her at the time...

...It is now up to us to make certain that President Reagan's commitment also becomes American policy on a day-to-day basis...

...It really is up to us...

...must meet and come to identify with some of the Soviet Jews who so desperately need our help...

...It is their discovery, over the past twenty years, that we care desperately about them that has given impetus to the movement, a certain elan to its leadership, and a sense of hope to the rank and file Soviet Jew...

...These are not men and women who simply seek to leave...

...They know now that if they scream out in pain they will hear more than their own echoes...

...But when you enter the Soviet Union, your luggage is x-rayed for books...

...President Reagan's pledge is carried out...

...Still another, "Five years ago if you applied to emigrate from the Soviet Union all of your friends would ask you why you had done so...

...Increasingly, the same factor operates in respect to other occupations as the university quota system becomes more restrictive...

...A personal anecdote will illustrate how in Jewish life there is no such thing as "hopeless...

...For if we care deeply enough, so will our representatives in Congress and so will the Administration in Washington...

...They are, and they know they are, the vanguard of a major phenomenon in Jewish history, forerunners in a massive effort to find freedom and safety, struggling on behalf of their own children, on behalf of the Jewish people, and on behalf of the cause of freedom for all...

...And so will the leaders of the Soviet Union...

...The university quotas are becoming worse and are rapidly approaching zero in various disciplines...

...And most Soviet Jews fear for their own security and the security of their children in a society whose government daily preaches anti-Zionism and increasingly permits the publication and distribution of the rawest kind of anti-Semitism...

...There is a special risk in being a Jew in the Soviet Union that no other ethnic or national groups share...

...Today, if you have not applied to emigrate from the Soviet Union, all of your friends ask you why you have not done so...

...it is up to us to be informed on what negotiations are likely to take place in the months ahead...

...Nevertheless, the basic cultural and religious needs of our Soviet brothers and sisters must be met...

...an American Jewish community that cares...

...Much is being done within our movement to fill the need of the refuseniks and Soviet Jews generally...

...Hebrew classes in Leningrad, involving a dozen Hebrew teachers and several hundred students during the course of each year, remain undisturbed...

...His article "Improving the Jewish Community" appeared in moment in June 1981...

...and to make certain that in those negotiations...

...It is possible now to achieve an emigration of comparable size and in the process, not only save lives, but enrich the quality of Jewish life and spirit several generations from now, both in Israel and here...

...Aleksandr Lerner's apartment by refusenik artists in the presence of refuseniks and the American media are unimpeded...

...must come to understand that just as twenty years ago a Jewish community leader was expected to visit Israel and see first hand what its problems were, so today he and she must become informed first hand of this enormous responsibility for the American Jewish community in our time—to rescue several million of our co-religionists...

...The consequences of failure are chilling, and have been noted above...

...TED MANN The mood in the refusenik community was not as depressed as I would have expected...

...Kevin Klose, Washington Post correspondent, compared the nobility of the refusenik movement to the way religion sometimes reaches its most exquisite expression under conditions of oppression rather than freedom...

...On the other hand, in the three synagogues in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, I saw ample copies of the midrash and gemor-rah, of siddurim and chumashim, sent to them by Western rabbis...

...When you and I board an airline in the United States, our luggage is x-rayed for weapons...