Overview

"Rabbi Jonathan Porath recounts the story of his lifetime of experiences with Soviet and post-Soviet Jews spanning over fifty years. This first-person account is packed with anecdotes from one of the great sagas of modern Jewish history, the near loss and ultimate return of Soviet Jewry to the Jewish people after more than seventy years of Communist rule. ""Anyone even remotely involved in the Struggle for Soviet Jewry will find something they can identify or which will stir a memory. The important message of the book is that regardless of the degree of antisemitism, attempts to eradicate the Jewish people and the time from of isolation from the rest of the Jewish world there is always a remaining spark that rekindles revival. It happened after the Holocaust. It happened after centuries of Jewish exile from the ancestral homeland, and it happened with Soviet Jewry, just as it did throughout Jewish history."" Greer Fay Cashman Jerusalem Post, 4 November 2022"

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9789657023921

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Reviews

A moving message of Jewish connection and an important perspective on a chapter in Jewish history worthy of being told. --Natan Sharansky, former Prisoner of Zion Filled with unforgettable vignettes, the volume serves both as a primary historical source on the Soviet Jewry movement and as a monument to a proud Brandeis alumnus who helped transform the Jewish world. --Jonathan D. Sarna, University Professor and Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University One of the most vivid accounts I know of the modern exodus. This book belongs on the very short list of essential books on Soviet Jewry. --Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute; author, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor

Author Information

Rabbi Jonathan Porath attended Brandeis University and Hebrew University, received an MA in history from Columbia University, and was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He served as the pulpit rabbi at Temple Beth O'r in Clark, New Jersey, before making aliyah to Israel in 1984 with his family. From 965 through 2019, he visited the Soviet Union and FSU 175 times, primarily as leader of the United Synagogue Youth Russian Pilgrimage (1969-1974) and as a senior staff member of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee's Russian Department (1993-2008), where he was Country Director for St. Petersburg, Central Russia, the Urals and Belarus, and responsible for academic and student programs. His previous books include Jews in Russia: The Last Four Centuries.

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