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Pioneering refuseniks lead polarized lives in USSR
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BY: CYNTHIA DETTELBACH Editor
Last week in this space, I began my account of an unforgettable trip to the Soviet Union in October 1985.
The goal of the six of us from Ohio on that journey was to bring needed items and messages of support to refuseniks (Russian Jews who applied to immigrate to Israel and were refused). In my cover story about that trip, “Jews of Strength” (CJN, Nov 1, 1985), I wrote:
On the afternoon we visit her and her husband in their Moscow flat, Tanya Bogomolny, wife of refusenik Benjamin Bogomolny, wears an intriguing neck pendant designed as two silver wire triangles. At times the triangles appear simply as modern shapes; at others they form a perfect Star of David. “It’s symbolic of the dualness of our life here,” Tanya comments wryly…
The terrible truth of that statement will haunt us all the time we are in the Soviet Union.
Leading polarized lives, one private and one public, exacted a stiff price on refuseniks. The family of one young teenager warned him not to wear his kipah at school for fear of reprisal and anti-Semitic slurs. The youngster followed his parents’ advice, but in an attempt to remain true to his faith, he covered his head with a napkin during lunch. Everyone thought he was being a clown n and the teacher roundly scolded him for acting up.
Several adults said that if their bosses at work ever found out they had applied to emigrate, they would be fired on the spot.
One refusenik’s three children, who were newly observant like their father, tried to lead Jewish lives even outside the home. They didn’t attend Saturday classes or join the Komsomol (Communist youth party). As a result, admitted their father, the children were resented by their classmates and teachers.
For those adults who dared to teach Hebrew or Jewish history to others, the reprisals were far more draconian. Last week, Cliff Savren, one of our group of six, wrote of Lev Furman, who, days before our visit, was interrogated and harassed by the KGB as he arrived at a metro stop to meet some prospective students. Twice before, Furman was beaten up for his teaching “offense.”
Despite the harassment and physical abuse, these “Jews of Strength” soldiered on … teaching and learning forbidden Hebrew texts and celebrating Jewish holidays.
Aleksandr Mariasin, the acknowledged leader of Jewish activists in Riga, Latvia, had no illusions that freedom for him and his critically ill wife was at all imminent. Yet, I wrote, “he works tirelessly, translating and duplicating much-needed Jewish books and cultural materials into Russian. He makes the complicated, secret arrangements for large-scale Purim and Chanukah celebrations, which the KGB always seeks to prevent.”
For those who were observant n and not all refuseniks were n Shabbat was one time in the week they could put their duality and public deception on hold. For 25 hours or so, they could rejoice in just being Jews.
Synagogues, like the sole functioning one we visited in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), crawled with KGB and its informers. So the refuseniks we met chose to celebrate Shabbat quietly in their homes.
Ludmilla, her husband Igor, and their two children lived in a flat that even by minimal Russian standards was deplorable: “alarmingly large cracks in the ceiling and hopelessly soiled wallpaper coming loose from the walls,” as I described it at the time. Yet their Shabbats were brightened by Ludmilla’s unceasing efforts. Each week she baked eight challot and made kosher cheese and kosher wine from raisins, which she served to her family and guests along with talk and study of Jewish texts.
At a Shabbat seudah (Sabbath meal) held in the small Leningrad apartment of Lev Furman and his elderly father, I met several refuseniks who, like Lev, were taking great risks to study and teach Hebrew and Jewish history. Since there was an incredible shortage of such books and the KGB confiscated them if found, teachers like Lev resorted to photocopies.
I’m not talking about computer-generated printouts. Rather, each page of a desired text was painstakingly photographed and developed in some refusenik’s darkened closet or bedroom.
I still have an image of the “book” Lev showed me. It was a stack of 8 x 10 photographs three or four inches thick and buckling at the edges from so much handling. One young man we met at Lev’s, his face practically pressed against the grimy window to catch the dying light of day, strained to read that book’s precious words.
The hunger for learning and for books, both Jewish and secular, and efforts the refuseniks made to acquire them gave meaning and impetus to their lives. I wrote at the time that “the almost perverse freedom a refusenik feels in rejecting the Soviet system and taking on a strong Jewish identity … gives these individuals an inner glow that illumines their faces and is unmistakable in their eyes.”
Before we left the Soviet Union, we asked each of the refuseniks we met what they wanted the next group of visitors to bring in. Apart from some lifesaving medicines only available in the West, the answer was always the same: Books! As my friend and roommate on the trip, Dr. Nancy Lerner, wrote in her CJN article, “The People of the Book find their faith in books.”
“Our” refuseniks, as I like to think of them, were leaders in the Jewish renaissance blossoming virtually like mushrooms in Soviet darkness. The “light” would come a few short years later with the lifting of the Iron Curtain and with the once unimaginable opportunity to emigrate.
It was with great joy and pleasure that I, like so many other early visitors, was able to meet some of these courageous role models again n this time, happily, in the U.S. or Israel.
cdettelbach@cjn.org
The goal of the six of us from Ohio on that journey was to bring needed items and messages of support to refuseniks (Russian Jews who applied to immigrate to Israel and were refused). In my cover story about that trip, “Jews of Strength” (CJN, Nov 1, 1985), I wrote:
On the afternoon we visit her and her husband in their Moscow flat, Tanya Bogomolny, wife of refusenik Benjamin Bogomolny, wears an intriguing neck pendant designed as two silver wire triangles. At times the triangles appear simply as modern shapes; at others they form a perfect Star of David. “It’s symbolic of the dualness of our life here,” Tanya comments wryly…
The terrible truth of that statement will haunt us all the time we are in the Soviet Union.
Leading polarized lives, one private and one public, exacted a stiff price on refuseniks. The family of one young teenager warned him not to wear his kipah at school for fear of reprisal and anti-Semitic slurs. The youngster followed his parents’ advice, but in an attempt to remain true to his faith, he covered his head with a napkin during lunch. Everyone thought he was being a clown n and the teacher roundly scolded him for acting up.
Several adults said that if their bosses at work ever found out they had applied to emigrate, they would be fired on the spot.
One refusenik’s three children, who were newly observant like their father, tried to lead Jewish lives even outside the home. They didn’t attend Saturday classes or join the Komsomol (Communist youth party). As a result, admitted their father, the children were resented by their classmates and teachers.
For those adults who dared to teach Hebrew or Jewish history to others, the reprisals were far more draconian. Last week, Cliff Savren, one of our group of six, wrote of Lev Furman, who, days before our visit, was interrogated and harassed by the KGB as he arrived at a metro stop to meet some prospective students. Twice before, Furman was beaten up for his teaching “offense.”
Despite the harassment and physical abuse, these “Jews of Strength” soldiered on … teaching and learning forbidden Hebrew texts and celebrating Jewish holidays.
Aleksandr Mariasin, the acknowledged leader of Jewish activists in Riga, Latvia, had no illusions that freedom for him and his critically ill wife was at all imminent. Yet, I wrote, “he works tirelessly, translating and duplicating much-needed Jewish books and cultural materials into Russian. He makes the complicated, secret arrangements for large-scale Purim and Chanukah celebrations, which the KGB always seeks to prevent.”
For those who were observant n and not all refuseniks were n Shabbat was one time in the week they could put their duality and public deception on hold. For 25 hours or so, they could rejoice in just being Jews.
Synagogues, like the sole functioning one we visited in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), crawled with KGB and its informers. So the refuseniks we met chose to celebrate Shabbat quietly in their homes.
Ludmilla, her husband Igor, and their two children lived in a flat that even by minimal Russian standards was deplorable: “alarmingly large cracks in the ceiling and hopelessly soiled wallpaper coming loose from the walls,” as I described it at the time. Yet their Shabbats were brightened by Ludmilla’s unceasing efforts. Each week she baked eight challot and made kosher cheese and kosher wine from raisins, which she served to her family and guests along with talk and study of Jewish texts.
At a Shabbat seudah (Sabbath meal) held in the small Leningrad apartment of Lev Furman and his elderly father, I met several refuseniks who, like Lev, were taking great risks to study and teach Hebrew and Jewish history. Since there was an incredible shortage of such books and the KGB confiscated them if found, teachers like Lev resorted to photocopies.
I’m not talking about computer-generated printouts. Rather, each page of a desired text was painstakingly photographed and developed in some refusenik’s darkened closet or bedroom.
I still have an image of the “book” Lev showed me. It was a stack of 8 x 10 photographs three or four inches thick and buckling at the edges from so much handling. One young man we met at Lev’s, his face practically pressed against the grimy window to catch the dying light of day, strained to read that book’s precious words.
The hunger for learning and for books, both Jewish and secular, and efforts the refuseniks made to acquire them gave meaning and impetus to their lives. I wrote at the time that “the almost perverse freedom a refusenik feels in rejecting the Soviet system and taking on a strong Jewish identity … gives these individuals an inner glow that illumines their faces and is unmistakable in their eyes.”
Before we left the Soviet Union, we asked each of the refuseniks we met what they wanted the next group of visitors to bring in. Apart from some lifesaving medicines only available in the West, the answer was always the same: Books! As my friend and roommate on the trip, Dr. Nancy Lerner, wrote in her CJN article, “The People of the Book find their faith in books.”
“Our” refuseniks, as I like to think of them, were leaders in the Jewish renaissance blossoming virtually like mushrooms in Soviet darkness. The “light” would come a few short years later with the lifting of the Iron Curtain and with the once unimaginable opportunity to emigrate.
It was with great joy and pleasure that I, like so many other early visitors, was able to meet some of these courageous role models again n this time, happily, in the U.S. or Israel.
cdettelbach@cjn.org
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| A look back: Visiting with refuseniks in 1985 | Playing a part in Soviet Jewry movement |
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