Silent No More: Saving the Jews of Russia, the American Jewish Effort, 1967-1989Leading scholar and author of the celebrated five-volume series, The Jewish People in America, Henry L. Feingold offers a fresh and inspiring look at the Russian/Soviet Jewish emigration phenomenon. Haunted by its sense of failure during the Holocaust, the Soviet Jewry movement set for itself an almost unrealizable goal of finding sanctuary for Jews from a hostile Soviet government. Working together with activists in Israel and Europe, and with a remarkable group of refuseniks that had been denied the right to emigrate, this courageous group mounted a relentless campaign lasting almost three decades. Although Feingold credits Israel with initiating the struggle for Soviet Jewry and fostering it within American Jewry, he maintains that it was the actions of a secure and confident American Jewry that finally delivered the Jews from the Soviet Union. Feingold’s mastery of detail and broadness of scope provide a prodigious and sweeping account of the American Jewish movement. He finds early roots of the effort in the American Jewish involvement with Jewish emigration in late Tsarist Russia. He highlights both the human dimension of the exodus and the complex international ramifications of the movement, especially in the Middle East. "Silent No More" concludes by pondering the role of the movement’s effective public relations campaign, which focused on the human right of freedom of movement in hastening the collapse of the Soviet empire. Feingold’s rigorous scholarship sheds light on an important, yet rarely told episode in history, one that will enliven further examination of the subject. This book will be of interest to scholars of American Jewish history, the cold war, Israeli studies, and American ethnic and immigration history. |
Contents
TWO Setting the Stage | 37 |
THREE The Curtain Rises | 70 |
FOUR JacksonVanik | 109 |
FIVE Dropping Out | 149 |
SEVEN The Soviet Jewry Question | 227 |
EIGHT Free at Last 獵 | 261 |
NINE Afterthoughts | 293 |
Abbreviations | 319 |
Glossary | 367 |
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Common terms and phrases
administration agencies agreement AJCong aliyah American Jewish American Jewry anti-Semitism became become campaign Carter Cold Cold War Committee Communist concern conflict Congress congressional convinced cultural delegation Democratic détente Dinstein diplomatic dropouts economic effort emigration issue favored finally folder foreign policy Gorbachev Helsinki Accords Helsinki Final Act HIAS Holocaust human rights immigration Israel Israeli Jackson amendment Jackson-Vanik Amendment Jerry Goodman Jewish community Jewish leaders Jewish organizations Jews Kissinger Kremlin later leadership ment Middle East million Morris Abram Moscow Nahum Goldmann NCSJ negotiations Nixon NJCRAC NYPL organizational percent political president problem public relations question Rabbi Reagan refuseniks regime release resettlement role Russian Jewry Schiff settle in Israel Sharansky Shultz Soviet authorities Soviet emigrants Soviet Jewry issue Soviet Jewry movement Soviet Union SSSJ strategy tion trade and credit UCSJ United viet visas Washington West Wiener Oral History York Zionist