“Personal Reflections on Soviet Jewry Activity in the Greater Washington Area” by Daniel Mann Dec. 2008 (Transcribe

Personal Reflections on Soviet Jewry Activity in the Greater Washington Area Daniel Mann December 2008 I am a retired Jewish communal worker and educator as well as a veteran volunteer in the Jewish community. Our family moved from Long Island to Bethesda 35 years ago. I already had participated in a range of Soviet Jewry activity in my New York days, ranging from the annual “Exodus March” and other demonstrations in Manhattan to attending meetings of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, predecessor of the NCSJ, including its founding meeting and rally in DC in 1964 or 1965, well before the Six-Day War. I also spent a school year in Israel in 1950-1951 on the pioneering longterm Israel experience program sponsored by Habonim, and – if memory serves me correctly – recall David Ben-Gurion’s address at Kibbutz Afikim, founded by immigrants from the USSR, condemning Soviet treatment of its Jews and calling for their aliyah. I mention these events to demonstrate that, while American Jewish and Israeli activism on that front emerged only in the late 1960s and the 1970s, there was a pre-history of at least some activity. By the time we came to Washington in 1973, Soviet Jewry had of course become a major priority of the organized Jewish community, and the local one in the national capital was particularly active because it recognized that it was especially visible and well-connected. As Executive Director of the Jewish Community Council from 1973 to 1979, I was one of the people at the center of that program. I was always a fan of the Vigil and tried to attend as often as possible, even – perhaps I should say especially – when no big problem was taking place there that would attract a creditable crowd. Sometimes, when I was the only attendee, I wondered what happened when no one came. It was the opposite of the proverbial question about the tree that falls silently in the forest. If no one came to the vigil, could we really claim that it was the longest continuing demonstration in Jewish or American history? But we came close enough that the contention was acceptable. Often I would run into Reverend John Steinbruck there. We bonded further on an interfaith mission of local leadership to Israel, and I’m gratified that we are still in contact. Mann Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 1 Voices of the Vigil On one occasion Buddy [Sislen] was informed that at some synagogue somewhere in the USSR, prayer books were confiscated. Accordingly, Frank Ridge, then the Council’s Soviet Jewry chair, and I brought prayer books to the Soviet Embassy as a demonstrative replacement, and -- because the guards had no idea what we were delivering or in what language they were printed -- we gained entry to the embassy and were met by higher-level personnel, who recognized the language and perhaps the contents of our baggage. I recall one of them saying “Ivrei” (Russian for Hebrew or Jew). Later, when I told Isaac Franck the story, he commented that I was lucky they didn’t spit out the word “Zhid.” Anyway, we engaged in a pleasant but totally unsatisfactory dialogue. The Soviet official used us as a sounding board to criticize Arena Stage for its support of Soviet Jewry. We learned soon thereafter that the prayer books were returned to the synagogue in the USSR, one more indication that the KGB could not ignore protests from the West. We often had to remind our activists that when they wrote to refuseniks or even “Prisoners of Zion,” they were protecting those heroes from further punishment or disappearance altogether. I would only add that there was some friendly envy on the part of volunteer and professional colleagues that I, a newcomer to the community, managed to gain access to the Soviet Embassy when none of them had ever succeeded in doing so. The personal high point of my involvement in Soviet Jewry, and my wife Elaine’s as well (her background is similar to mine), was our trip to the USSR in the summer of 1978 to visit with refuseniks, particularly those engaged in Jewish education. One accomplishment that was correctly credited to the Council and is even mentioned in the annual article on Soviet Jewry in the American Jewish Year Book for 1980 (actually covering events in 1978): In an apartment in Moscow we were shown a “samizdat” (an unauthorized publication) on a topic not previously addressed in those documents, which until then dealt almost solely with Zionism and/or Soviet Jewry. This one was called (in translation) “Jews in the Modern World, Issue 1, June 1978.” i.e., covering events and issues significant to all of World Jewry. The range and variety of topics was remarkable in view of the fact that these Jews had been cut off from contact with the rest of the Jewish people for so many years and decades, yet managed to glean accurate information from all kinds of resources that had been smuggled into the Soviet Union by visitors with a mission Mann Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 2 Voices of the Vigil (like us). This samizdat even reported on the 100th anniversary of a synagogue in Singapore. I confess that we did not know that there was such an institution in that location. When we got to Israel and were debriefed by the special office dealing with Soviet Jewry, we handed them the samizdat and said that they probably had it already, but it turned out that it was new to them. They retained the original and gave us both a copy and a translation, which I still have. Our main advance briefer and work assigner for our trip, Jerry Goodman, longtime executive of NCSJ, happened to be an old friend – a fellow participant in the 1950-1951 Habonim program in Israel mentioned above and a colleague of Elaine’s from the Bronx. Another personality of note also had a connection to our trip: Nehemiah (Niumka) Levanon, of Kibbutz Kfar Blum in the Upper Galilee. Our ties to that kibbutz derived mainly from its having been the first kibbutz where the founders and early leaders of North American Habonim made their home, as opposed to the previous strategy of scattering among all the kibbutzim throughout the country. Elaine spent a year there on the Habonim Workshop, and we continued over the years to work with a variety of their members on a range of programs and projects tying Israel to the diaspora. Niumka was often credited with leading the initiative that turned Israeli strategy on Soviet Jewry around from a more passive one to one based on public demonstrations and activism, both within the USSR and outside, designed to embarrass the Soviet government and thus open the possibility for aliyah. Because of his diplomatic and communal work in the United States, he became close to the Americans at his kibbutz. We were debriefed after our 1978 visit to the USSR by the special office in Tel Aviv dealing with Soviet Jewry. The people there were essentially Niumka’s staff, so by the time we got to Kfar Blum for our usual stay during our Israel trips, Niumka had received a full report on our debriefing, and one night while he was on guard duty he told us about our mission to the USSR and analyzed it for us. That was vintage Niumka. When we were preparing for our trip, Elaine’s colleagues at the JCC of Greater Washington, where she had begun working a few years earlier, said that if she was detained in the USSR they would storm the State Department until she was released. My colleagues at the Council wished me well but did not evince similar empathy toward their boss. Mann Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 3 Voices of the Vigil While at the Council I participated actively in meetings of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ) in both D.C. and New York and in related sectors of the NJCRAC (now JCPA) also in New York. There was an inevitable gap between the two agencies, because of personal and political conflicts, but also for reasons of principle: The NCSJ argued that the issue of Soviet Jewry was of such central significance to the American and indeed World Jewish community that it needed a separate organization devoted solely to that issue. The NJCRAC contended that our success in mobilizing American public opinion and ultimately governmental action in support of the Soviet Jews depended on the classic community-relations strategy of coalition, which required placing Soviet Jewry activity in the context of all the coalitions in which the Jewish community was active on many fronts. The problem was that both were right, but it was impossible to square that circle. One time I was part of a small taskforce of CRC executives from around the country who tried to bridge the gap between the two institutions, but of course failed. For the record, the colleagues with whom I worked on both fronts, in addition to Jerry Goodman, included Myrna Shinbaum at NCSJ in New York and June Rogul in DC, and Isaiah Minkoff, Al Chernin, and especially Abe Bayer at NJCRAC, although our Council tended to have stronger connections with NCSJ. (A somewhat comparable situation obtained during and after the Yom Kippur War, which descended on me the very first week of my service at the Council: We tended to work more closely with Si Kenen and his colleagues at AIPAC than with NJCRAC, which was still developing its identification with Israel, although I should add that having inherited all of Isaac Franck’s commission seats at NJCRAC, I was privileged to be one of the ten original members of the NJCRAC Israel Task Force, representing the Council.) As executive of the Council I regularly attended all the meetings of the “national reps,” the representatives of the national Jewish agencies working in Washington, who met frequently at AIPAC under Si Kenen’s and then Morrie Amitay’s leadership and sometimes separately to try to deal with other issues of concern.

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