Morey Schapira | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Morey Rael Schapira 1949 (age 73–74) |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | High Tech Executive |
| Known for | Soviet Jewry activism |
| Spouse | Barbara |
| Children | 3 |
Morey Schapira (born 1949) is a Silicon Valley High Tech executive and Soviet Jewry activist leader. [1]
Schapira was born in Chicago. He resides in Sunnyvale, California. [2]
In 1970, Schapira graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a Bachelor of Science in Physics cum laude . In 1977, he received an MBA from Harvard Business School. [3]
Schapira began his career as a research scientist at Raytheon Corporation in Waltham, Massachusetts. He was at Raytheon from 1970 to 1975. In 1976, Schapira worked as a scientist at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts. [2]
In 1977, Schapira moved back to the west coast. He worked at the Hewlett Packard Company, where he was involved in various product marketing engineering positions in microwave semiconductor and optoelectronics from 1977 to 1985. Schapira spent two years at Micro Power Systems, then from 1987 to 1993 was in sales at Network General. In 1993 he worked at Digital Link Corp., from 1994 to 1997 at SmartDB Corp., from 1997 to 1999 at NetCom Systems, from 1999 to 2000 to BlueSteel Networks, Inc., and from 2000 to 2002 at Broadcom. [2] Schapira later founded the company, REDmedic, which was purchased by BlueCross BlueShield.
In the late 1960s, Schapira became active in the movement to free Soviet Jews and quickly became a leader. In 1971 he became president of the New England Student Struggle for Soviet Jews, and became a national vice president of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry in 1974. While in Boston he also co-founded Action for Soviet Jewry of Boston and Medical Mobilization for Soviet Jews.
In 1973-1974 Schapira was the editor and publisher of "The Guide to Jewish Boston," one of the first Jewish City Guides in the United States. [4]
From 1979 to 1984, Schapira was president of the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews [5] and from 1984 to 1986, was national president of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews. [6] [7] [8]
He regularly testified before the United States Congress; in 1986, for example, he testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs' Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East. [6]
In a lecture at Stanford University in 2004 Natan Sharansky referred to Schapira as a "Five-Star General in the Army of Students and Housewives." [9]
Schapira is married to his wife Barbara. He has three children. [10]
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.
Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union (UCSJ) is a non-governmental organization that reports on the human rights conditions in countries throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia, exposing hate crimes and assisting communities in need. UCSJ uses grassroots-based monitoring and advocacy, as well as humanitarian aid, to protect the political and physical safety of Jewish people and other minorities in the region. UCSJ is based in Washington, D.C., and is linked to other organizations such as the Moscow Helsinki Group. It has offices in Russia and Ukraine and has a collegial relationship with human rights groups that were founded by the UCSJ in the countries of the former Soviet Union.
Michael Berenbaum is an American scholar, professor, rabbi, writer, and filmmaker, who specializes in the study of the Holocaust. He served as deputy director of the President's Commission on the Holocaust (1979–1980), Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) (1988–1993), and Director of the USHMM's Holocaust Research Institute (1993–1997).
Galician Jews or Galitzianers are members of the subgroup of Ashkenazi Jews originating and developed in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and Bukovina from contemporary western Ukraine and from south-eastern Poland. Galicia proper, which was inhabited by Ruthenians, Poles and Jews, became a royal province within Austria-Hungary after the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century. Galician Jews primarily spoke Yiddish.
The American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) was founded in 1892 with the mission to foster awareness and appreciation of American Jewish history and to serve as a national scholarly resource for research through the collection, preservation and dissemination of materials relating to American Jewish history.
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.
Si Frumkin was a Lithuanian-born Jew who survived imprisonment at the Dachau Nazi concentration camp, and emigrated to the United States, where he became a prominent textile manufacturer and activist involved in issues relating to Soviet Jewry.
Micah H. Naftalin was an American advocate for the rights of Soviet Jews. He was national director of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews from February 1987 until his death.
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.
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."
Mervin Feldman Verbit is an American sociologist whose work focuses on sociology of religion, American Jews and the American Jewish community. He is currently the chair of the Sociology Department at Touro College.
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.
Moshe Decter was a New York intellectual, and a prominent activist for Israel and Jewish causes. His articles in The New Leader and Foreign Affairs first brought the persecution of Soviet Jews to the attention of journalism and policy elites as well as ordinary citizens in the 1950s and 1960s.
Jerry Goodman was a leading activist in the Soviet Jewry Movement and the founding executive director of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, a national agency established to coordinate the efforts of the American Jewish communities on behalf of Jews in the Soviet Union. He co-established the organization in 1971 and directed it until 1988. Prior to creation of the National Conference, Goodman was Director for European Affairs at the American Jewish Committee and helped coordinate the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry that was later restructured and renamed to National Conference on Soviet Jewry. Goodman acted as a consultant to the U.S. Congress in creating the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and helped the passing of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, a 1974 provision in United States federal law intended to restrict U.S. trade relations with USSR. He was one of the coordinators of the 1987 Freedom Sunday for Soviet Jews, the largest human rights national manifestation for Soviet Jews in the history of the Soviet Jewry movement.
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.
The Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry (GNYCSJ) was founded in 1971, as a non-governmental grassroots organization that worked to secure human rights for Jews in the Soviet Union. It served as an umbrella agency for a number of regional organizations of the Soviet Jewry movement. In the 1980 GNYCSJ was renamed Coalition for Soviet Jewry.
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.
Israel Finestein QC MA (1921–2009), an English barrister and Deputy High Court Judge, was a leader and historian of British Jewry. His writings analysed the history of divisions amongst the Jews of England; in varied roles he worked for communal change and reconciliation.
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