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The Jackson–Vanik amendment to the Trade Act of 1974 is a 1974 provision in United States federal law intended to affect U.S. trade relations with countries with non-market economies that restrict freedom of Jewish emigration and other human rights. The amendment is contained in the Trade Act of 1974 which passed both houses of the United States Congress unanimously, and signed by President Gerald Ford into law, with the adopted amendment, on January 3, 1975. Over time, a number of countries were granted conditional normal trade relations subject to annual review, and a number of countries were liberated from the amendment.
Soviet anti-Zionism is an Anti Zionist and pro-Arab doctrine promulgated in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. While the Soviet Union initially pursued a pro-Zionist policy after World War II due to its perception that the Jewish state would be socialist and pro-Soviet, its outlook on the Arab–Israeli conflict changed as Israel began to develop a close relationship with the United States and aligned itself with the Western Bloc. Anti-Israel Soviet propaganda intensified after Israel's sweeping victory in the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, and it was officially sponsored by the agitation and propaganda media of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as well as by the KGB. Among other charges, it alleged that Zionism was a form of racism. The Soviets framed their anti-Zionist propaganda in the guise of a study of modern Zionism, dubbed Zionology. The Soviet anti-Israel policy included the regulated denial of permission for Jews in the Soviet Union to emigrate, primarily to Israel, but also to any other country.
Refusenik was an unofficial term for individuals—typically, but not exclusively, Soviet Jews—who were denied permission to emigrate, primarily to Israel, by the authorities of the Soviet Union and other countries of the Eastern bloc. The term refusenik is derived from the "refusal" handed down to a prospective emigrant from the Soviet authorities.
The Canadian Jewish Congress was, for more than ninety years, the main advocacy group for the Jewish community in Canada. Regarded by many as the "Parliament of Canadian Jewry," the Congress was at the forefront of the struggle for human rights, equality, immigration reform and civil rights in Canada.
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Nativ, or officially Lishkat Hakesher or The Liaison Bureau, is an Israeli governmental liaison organization that maintained contact with Jews living in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War and encouraged aliyah, immigration to Israel.
Jewish Bolshevism, also Judeo–Bolshevism, is an anti-communist and antisemitic canard, which alleges that the Jews were the originators of the Russian Revolution in 1917, and that they held primary power among the Bolsheviks who led the revolution. Similarly, the conspiracy theory of Jewish Communism alleges that Jews have dominated the Communist movements in the world, and is related to the Zionist Occupation Government conspiracy theory (ZOG), which alleges that Jews control world politics.
Jacob (Yaakov) Birnbaum was the German-born founder of Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) and other human rights organizations. Because the SSSJ, at the time of its founding, in 1964, was the first initiative to address the plight of Soviet Jewry, he is regarded as the father of the Movement to Free Soviet Jewry. His father was Solomon Birnbaum and grandfather Nathan Birnbaum.
The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, also known by its acronym SSSJ, was founded in 1964 by Jacob Birnbaum to be a spearhead of the U.S. movement for rights of the Soviet Jewry. Small, medium, and 6-digit-size demonstrations, at important locations, spread the message: Let my people go.
The 1970s Soviet Union aliyah was the mass immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel after the Soviet Union lifted its ban on Jewish refusenik emigration in 1971. More than 150,000 Soviet Jews immigrated during this period, motivated variously by religious or ideological aspiration, economic opportunity, and a desire to escape anti-Semitic discrimination.
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine – the biblical Land of Israel – was flawed or unjust in some way.
The Soviet Jewry movement was an international human rights campaign that advocated for the right of Jews in the Soviet Union to emigrate. The movement's participants were most active in the United States and in the Soviet Union. Those who were denied permission to emigrate were often referred to by the term Refusenik.
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The National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry (NCSEJ), formerly the National Council for Soviet Jewry (NCSJ), is an organization in the United States which advocates for the freedoms and rights of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States, and Eurasia. Emerging from the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, now with a paid staff, it played an important role in the Soviet Jewry movement, including such landmark legislation as Jackson–Vanik amendment. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it is now an umbrella organization of about 50 national organizations and 300+ local federations, community councils and committees.
Freedom Sunday for Soviet Jews was the title of a national march and political rally that was held on December 6, 1987 in Washington, D.C. An estimated 250,000 participants gathered on the National Mall, calling for the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to extend his policy of Glasnost to Soviet Jews by putting an end to their forced assimilation and allowing their emigration from the Soviet Union. The rally was organized by a broad-based coalition of Jewish organizations. At the time, it was reported to be the "largest Jewish rally ever held in Washington."
Pamela Braun Cohen is an activist in the American Soviet Jewry movement. She began her activist work in the Chicago Action for Soviet Jewry in the 1970s and served as the national president of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) from 1986-1997.
David Jonathan Waksberg, was a leading activist in the Soviet Jewry Movement during the 1980s and early 1990s. In the 1970s he became involved in the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. In the early 1980s he moved to California and began working for the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews, first as Assistant Director, and later as executive director. He initiated public and political activities on behalf of Soviet Jewry, supervised research and monitoring of their welfare and coordinated financial, medical and legal aid to Refuseniks and Prisoners of Conscience trapped in the Soviet Union. During his first visit to the USSR in 1982, Waksberg was arrested and detained by the KGB while attempting, along with refusenik Yuri Chernyak, to visit Kiev refusenik Lev Elbert. He organized numerous protest demonstrations and vigils to raise public awareness of the plight of Jews in the USSR. In 1985 Waksberg became National Vice-President of BACSJ's umbrella organization, the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews. Waksberg frequently visited Jewish communities of the Soviet Union and the former Soviet states and coordinated briefings of the American travelers interested in visiting those communities. In 1990 Waksberg took on the role of Director of the Center for Jewish Renewal, newly established by UCSJ. The mission of the CJR was to promote the renewal and development of Jewish life in the USSR and the emigration rights, human rights and resettlement needs of Jews in the Former Soviet Union. The CJR established a network of human rights and emigration bureaus in major cities of the former Soviet Union. In mid-1990s Waksberg was a member of Bay Area Council's Board of Directors and served as Director of Development and Communication of the UCSJ. Since 2007 Waksberg has served as Chief Executive Officer of Jewish LearningWorks.
The Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews (BACSJ) was founded in 1967 by Harold B. Light, Edward Tamler, Sidney Kluger, and Rabbi Moris Hershman as a grassroots human rights organization with a mission to advocate for Soviet Jewry's freedom of religion and the right to emigrate to Israel. BACSJ was one of the largest and most active local grassroots organizations in the American Soviet Jewry movement. BACSJ was a member of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ), an umbrella institution for approximately 50 organizations working on behalf of Jews in the USSR. After the fall of the Soviet Union BACSJ was renamed Bay Area Council for Jewish Rescue and Renewal and shifted its focus to monitoring the human rights conditions in countries throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia and assisting former Soviet Jewish communities in need.
Louis Rosenblum was a pioneer in the movement for freedom of emigration for the Jews in the Soviet Union, was a founder of the first organization to advocate for the freedom of Soviet Jews, the Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-Semitism, founding president of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, and a research scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Lewis Research Center.
Soviet Jews in America or American Soviet Jews, are Jews from former Soviet Republics that have emigrated to the United States. The group consists of people that are Jewish by religion, ethnicity, culture, or nationality, that have been influenced by their collective experiences in the Soviet Union. In the 60s, there were around 2.3 million Jews in the USSR, as ethnicity was recorded in the census. Jews from the Soviet Union consisted mostly of the Ashkenazi sect, and emigrated in waves starting in the 1960s, with over 200,000 leaving in the 1970s. As of 2005, over 500,000 Jews had left Soviet Republics for the United States. American Soviet Jews are often covered by the blanket term, "Russian-speaking Jews", and are a self-selecting group, due to the barriers that people leaving the USSR had to face. Often-times, Soviet immigrants struggle with the abundance of choices that they can make in America, but after learning the language, have been shown to be as well-adjusted as other immigrant groups.
References
- 1 2 Peretz, Pauline (2017). Let My People Go: The Transnational Politics of Soviet Jewish Emigration During the Cold War. Routledge. p. 117 ff. ISBN 9781351508902.
- 1 2 Friedman, Murray (1999). A Second Exodus: The American Movement to Free Soviet Jews. University Press of New England. p. 32. ISBN 9780874519136 . Retrieved 7 April 2019.
- 1 2 3 ORBACH, WILLIAM, and ויליאם אורבך. “התפתחויות רעיוניות בתנועה למען יהדות ברית-המועצות / CONFLICTS AND DEVELOPMENTS WITHIN THE SOVIET JEWRY MOVEMENT.” Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies / דברי הקונגרס העולמי למדעי היהדות, ט, 1985, pp. 389–396. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23529453.
- ↑ Golden, Peter (2012). O Powerful Western Star!: American Jews, Russian Jews, and the Final Battle of the Cold War. Gefen Publishing. p. 183 ff. ISBN 9789652295439.