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Tag : soviet jews
February 25, 2020 by Liba Vaynberg
My Father’s Daughter
I couldn’t shut up about Papa. In fifth grade, this kid Neil was sitting next to me on the bleachers. Los Angeles. We were sweating, waiting for a parent to put us in a car and out of our misery. I must have been going on. Finally, Neil turned to me and said, “Is your dad dead or something?”
I went red. Then silent. Then I must have cried. The next day Miss Campeau insisted that Neil apologize.
Papa shaved in the mornings with a little yellow brush while I read the back of the cereal box and listened to his pocket radio on the kitchen table. Then the drive to school: major battles of World War II and how to orient yourself using the sun and how to spell state names on license plates. “Mississippi” amazed him every time. I always got it right.
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January 10, 2019 by admin
Power of Protest: Freeing Soviet Jews •
With the refrain “Let my people go!” American Jews in the 1970s and 1980s launched a successful human rights campaign and a grassroots effort to demand freedom for Soviet Jews denied the right to speak, write, worship, work, or depart the Soviet state. Inspired by the civil rights, antiwar, and feminist movements of the 1960s, students, community leaders, and tens of thousands of people mobilized to free Jews in the Soviet Union. Many of the courageous travelers who smuggled in prayerbooks and Jewish ritual objects were women. “Power of Protest: The Movement to Free Soviet Jews,” organized by the National Museum of American Jewish His- tory, is on view through February 24, 2019, at the Oregon Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. www.ojmche.org
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