Bridge to the Beloved Community: John Lewis's Interracial and Jewish Community Outreach

This article captures my personal relationship with Congressman John Lewis, his wife, Lillian, and their son, John-Miles. Readers will discover Congressman Lewis's unique ties with the Jewish community and his lifelong commitment to strengthening Black-Jewish relations. It notes the issues he championed—from voting rights to Israel's security—and includes his own words marching in solidarity with the Jewish community and speaking out for freedom for Soviet Jews.

Saving Soviet Jews and the Future of the Global Jewish Diaspora

Soviet Jews were once an object of Israeli, American, British, and other Jews’ efforts to get the Soviet government to “free them,” since the borders to the Soviet Union were closed without permission. With the collapse of the country, post-Soviet Jews went from being a group in need of other Jews’ assistance to active subjects of their and others’ destinies. Post-Soviet Jews speak multiple languages and hold dual citizenships, which gives them financial, social, and political capital with which they shape the global Jewish future. They have done so by forming political parties in Israel such as Yisrael ba’aliya to the far right Yisrael beiteinu, whose politics have become mainstream in the Israeli electorate. Wealthy post-Soviet Jews have used their vast financial resources and connections with political power to shape the future. They have done this by donating huge sums of money to cultural institutions and universities as well as by forming large-scale Jewish philanthropic endeavors like the Genesis Philanthropy Group and the Blavatnik Archive to put issues of concern to former Soviet Jews on the global Jewish communal agenda. This has not been without consequences for the future of global Jewish life.

Relations between Israel and USSR in 1956—1957: according to Documents of State Archives of Israel

Authors of the article analyze the relations between Israel and the USSR in 1956-1957. Particular attention is paid to Israel’s efforts to ensure national security, the consequences of the Sinai campaign and the “problem of the Jews of the USSR”. The relevance of the study is due to the importance of these issues for bilateral relations. The opinion that the USSR has passed to unconditional sup-port of the Arabs and that this policy will not change is commented on the opinion that has taken root in Israel. It is noted that Israel’s victory in the 1956 Sinai campaign dealt a blow to the positions of the USSR in the Arab world, but the Israeli leadership realized that the USSR would not agree with the loss of these positions. It is shown that Israel strove to maintain an “atmosphere of dialogue”, to develop trade relations, cultural and scientific ties with the USSR, fearing that the position of the USSR on the Middle East would affect the position of Soviet Jews. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that the authors used un-published and previously untranslated archival materials, which made it possible to look at the events through the eyes of Israeli diplomacy, to understand the reasoning for decision-making. The authors conclude that the events of 1956 influenced the way the country’s leadership perceived Israel’s place in international relations. It is emphasized that at this time Israel finally established itself in a pro-Western foreign policy orientation.

Arkadi Zeltser, Unwelcome Memory: Holocaust Monuments in the Soviet Union. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2018. 386 pp.

This chapter explores Arkadi Zeltser's Unwelcome Memory: Holocaust Monuments in the Soviet Union (2018). Despite its modest title, Unwelcome Memory is a profoundly serious study that successfully engages with the many aspects of Jewish–Soviet relations in the postwar period, showing how both the Soviet regime and Soviet Jews came to terms with Holocaust memorialization. Zeltser's understanding of the complexities of this relationship is truly remarkable and this, coupled with the book's many illuminating photographs, makes it essential reading for students of Soviet and Soviet Jewish history. Unwelcome Memory also offers rich opportunities to reflect upon the issue of the postwar state response toward Holocaust legacy. To what extent was Soviet exceptionalism responsible for the state's response? It appears that owing to a unique alignment of circumstances, such as ebbs and flows in anti-Jewish bias at the state and local levels, and evolution of the general approaches toward war legacy and remembrance, Jews were occasionally able to find loopholes in the seemingly indifferent and omnipotent bureaucratic Soviet state.

The Child Who Cannot Ask: The Holocaust Poetry of Moisei Teif

The Soviet Jewish poet Moisei Teif, whose young son was murdered during the Holocaust, wrote a number of poems in Yiddish on the taboo subject of the massive loss of Jewish children during the Second World War—a trauma that almost every Soviet Jewish family experienced, but often lied or kept silent about. This chapter focuses on one poem in particular, “Kikhelekh and Zemelekh,” which was translated into Russian and incorporated into a play, and which, in the course of time, became an emblematic work for Soviet Jews who, for years, had lacked the language (or means) to commemorate their losses.