The last time I thought about the plight of Jews in the former Soviet Union was in 1997 at the Pesah seder of my girlfriend's (and soon to be fiancé's) family. We sat around the table and read line by line from the booklet their family had been using for decades. As the reading made its way to me, I was given the part about modern oppression and specifically about the still oppressed and not yet free Jews from behind the Iron Curtain. At that evening's celebration of freedom, the Soviet Union had already collapsed over nearly a decade earlier, and some 1.3 million Jews had long since emigrated from Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States, and Eastern Europe to Israel and the United States. Needless to say, we chuckled at the anachronism and moved promptly into the maror dipped in charoset step of the seder.

We've long since adopted an entirely new Haggadah, forgetting about that chapter in our history when modern oppression existed for Jews worldwide.   I imagine many of us in this community have done the same with their own Haggadot. But, there are still several hundred thousand Jews living in the former Soviet Union, and while there is an abiding move toward a more just and democratic society developing there, uncertainty bred by anti-semitism and suppressed religious freedom still linger in the community centers and homes of Jews there.

So, for me, when next week I will be joining a group of 30 North American rabbis on a Jewish Federation mission to Kiev, Ukraine, I go to bear witness to what remains. With the international support of organizations like the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and Jews Agency for Israel (JAFI), there is an unflinching commitment to protect and secure lives of Jews anywhere and everywhere in the world. I go as an emissary of this community and the greater Los Angeles community. Along with my colleague from Los Angeles, Rabbi Adam Kligfeld, we will meet various members of leadership in the Ukrainian government, the international Jewish organizations that work in the Ukraine, and the local Jewish community, bringing a message that we have not simply erased their presence from our collective memory as we retell the stories of the Jewish people at the Pesah Seder. Rather, we continue to ensure that they, along with all other Jews living in uncertainty, have the unanimous support of the Los Angeles Jewish Community and the North American Jewish Community. Our tentative itinerary is found below.

In preparing for this trip, I've been reading about the movement that emerged to speak out for Jews whose voices were muffled in Communist Russia and Eastern Europe. I learned that in the fall of 1965, Elie Wiesel, the acclaimed author of Night and the face of Jewish survival after the Shoah, made a visit to Moscow, Leningrad, Tbilisi, and Kiev. He was there to bear witness to the mounting concerns and threats to Jewish survival in Eastern Europe and the USSR. His experience was recorded in a book entitled, The Jews of Silence. He recalled walking on the streets of the city Moscow, of meeting a man tightly wrapped in a coat and hat to shield him from the bitter chill of the impending winter, who brushed past him and whispered in Yiddish, “Do you know what is happening to us?” and then quickly disappeared before he had a moment to respond. Wiesel found the Jews of the Soviet Union lurking in dark and cold apartments, fearful that their association would prompt harsh reprisals from the KGB. Of that visit, Wiesel pondered, “Why do they behave like a community of terrorized captives, on the brink of some awful abyss?”

When Wiesel returned home from his trip, he captured the essence of his experience by noting, “I returned from the Soviet Union disheartened and depressed. But what torments me the most is not the Jews of silence I met in Russia, but the silence of the Jews I live among today.” His memoirs, matched by a mounting an abiding effort of behalf of the American Jewish community to raise awareness of their brother's and sister's oppression, was a turning point in the decades of organized effort to protect and defend Jews in crisis in the Soviet Union.

We now know the end of the story. In 1988, the restrictions preventing Jews under the veil of the Iron Curtain eased, prompting the emigration of a staggering 1.3 million Jews from the crumbling Soviet Union, a government that formally dissolved in 1991. The Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry movement captured the hearts of the American Jewish community for decades, even mobilizing 250,000 activists to the Capitol in 1987, on the eve of an historic meeting between President Ronald Reagan and Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. If Wiesel was concerned that the Jews of America would remain silent to the oppression of Jews in the Soviet Union or anywhere in the world, this historic narrative should bring him comfort and inspiration.

We must not become Jews of silence, now that there is seemingly greater freedom for Jews in the former Soviet Union. We must not become Jews of silence because we live in a time where the immediate threat to our freedom isn't eminent. We must continue to be Jews who voice our concern and act with purpose to promote the safety of Jews and any other community who may be living with the fear that any day the tide could turn, and Jewish survival could be threatened once again.

For our, family, we now add words from Jewish World Watch and connect our unyielding commitment to protecting and defending freedom everywhere for people in Africa, Europe, and Asia at our Seder tables? What will you add to your haggadah to celebrate your freedom this year?

Rabbi Hoffman's Journey to Kiev 
(Tentative and Subject to Change)

Tuesday, February 5th

• Arrive Kiev
• Visit to the new World Union Synagogue building and briefing by the  Reform and Conservative leaders including Rabbi Alex Duchovny
• Meet with the Israeli Ambassador (JDC and JAFI Representatives to give greetings)

 
Wednesday, February 6th

• JDC Briefing  by Amir Ben Zvi, JDC Representative in Central and Western Ukraine  
• Depart for home visits to elderly clientsand children at risk or Warm Homes
• Visit programs at Hesed Bnei Azriel /Beitenu Jewish Family Center
• Jewish Agency briefing by: Roman Polansky, Director of the Russian speaking Unit of JAFI
• Reception: American Ambassadors Residence with invited guests

Thursday, February 7th

• Shacharit at Choral Synagogue - meeting with Rabbi Bleich
• Visit Babi Yar
• Depart for Jewish Simcha School  JAFI Program
• Meeting with Ukrainian Government officials. Briefing and discussion on the current situation in Ukraine (JFNA/JDC  to schedule)
• Kiev City Tour:  Chelminiski Monument, Beilus Trial Courthoue, Brodsky Synagogue, Shalom Aleichem Statue, Gold Meir's Home, Bessarabian Market
• Program: Interactive Jewish Learning with young adults
• Meeting with Parlimentarians

Friday, February 8th

• Depart for Israel

Tuesday, February 12th

• Return to Los Angeles