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www.jewishnews.co.uk
Jewish News 23 November 2017
Special report / Limmud FSU San Francisco
by Jenni Frazer in San Francisco jenni@jennifrazer.com @Jennifrazer
The co-founder of Limmud FSU, the groundbreaking body aimed at re-establishing Russian Jewish identity, has complained directly to an Israeli government minister about lack of funding for the 11-year-old organisation. Chaim Chesler, who co-founded Limmud FSU (former Soviet Union) with New Yorkbased Sandra Cahn in 2006, told Israel’s Science and Technology Minister that he had repeatedly tried to get government support for Limmud FSU’s programming, with no success. Ofir Akunis and Chesler clashed at a session addressed by the minister at this week’s San Francisco conference, attended by more than 800 Russian-speaking Jews. Chesler told the Israeli politician: “We regularly have 800 to 1,000 participants at every event, and we operate in the former Soviet Union, Israel, Europe, North America and even Australia. Wherever there are Russian Jews, we go there. But we do not get one dollar from the Israeli government – and we are reaching out to diaspora Jews and effectively doing the government’s job for it. We need more support to continue our work.” Akunis did not respond directly but it was clear that, as a presenter in the conference, he could see for himself the effect of a Limmud FSU event on the participants. The demographics ranged from tiny children and feisty teens to adults, who included former refuseniks who had
fought bitterly to leave the Soviet Union. But the Russian speakers who have made new lives for themselves in America – many now working in Silicon Valley or hi-tech – still have a strong sense of Russian-ness while exploring their Jewish identity. Almost every one of the more than 80 sessions attracted packed audiences; and the sessions – under the generic title of ‘Inspire’ – reflected the concerns of the participants, with a hefty input of speakers from the social media and technology worlds, including software engineer Eugene Fooksman, who has worked for Facebook and WhatsApp and Jewish founder of WhatsApp Jan Koum, who gave a candid – though off the record – presentation. There was a panel on Silicon Valley start-ups and a close-up examination of the implications of AI (artificial intelligence) on the human race. Garrett Reisman, the first Jewish astronaut on the International Space Station, was on hand, while an Israeli who asked to be known only as Engineer X untangled the mysteries of American and Israeli missile defence systems. Judaism was part of the overall mix, and its offerings with a twist included presentations from former Chasid Abby Stein, who left her community and transitioned from male to female, and “Hollywood Rabbi” Benzion Klatzko, who gave a barnstorming lecture. And there was, of course, politics, as Zionist Union Knesset Member Yosef Yonah, who belongs to the peace camp, and Hebron settler Yishai Fleisher, went head-to-head over the twostate solution.
Photo by Kate Fim
Returning to their roots
Above: Deborah Lipstadt, left, with former US politician George Shultz and Natan Sharansky
The closing words should go to Natan Sharansky, who was separated for 12 years from his wife Avital after their wedding. What had sustained him was the knowledge world Jewry was campaigning for him and other Soviet Jews. Part of Limmud FSU’s success are the children and grandchildren of refuseniks, who have remade their lives in the west, and now flock to the charity to rebuild their Jewish identity.
Refugees talk social action CHESLER’S REFORM CHALLENGE The children and grandchildren of those whom former US Secretary of State George Shultz helped leave the Soviet Union paid emotional tribute to him at a ceremony on Friday on the eve of the Limmud conference for Russian-speaking Jews on the West Coast of the United States. Shultz, in partnership with President Ronald Reagan, is widely admired as the face of the US administration that repeatedly made it clear to the Soviet leadership the issue of Soviet Jewry would remain on the agenda in private as well as in public until Jews were allowed to leave freely. Among those he helped directly was leading ‘prisoner of Zion’ Natan Sharansky, who was freed under Shultz’s watch. But as Shultz, almost 97, made clear, the admiration went two ways. The former Secretary of State recalled how Sharansky had rejected an initial deal to free him. “He said the structure of the deal suggested he was a spy, and he was not a spy. I even tried to get his mother to persuade him, but no way. And I thought to myself, the integrity of the man is overpowering.” He joked: “I remember when President Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire, and some people went nuts. But Sharansky said, ‘Finally, somebody gets it’.” Shultz said his many encounters over the years with Soviet Jews had been “such an inspiration” and were an illustration of “the importance of the human spirit and of never giving up”. Two presentations were made to Shultz – one by Julius Berman, president of the Claims Conference, and another on behalf of Limmud FSU. The first presentation, a leather-bound Book of Psalms, prompted Sharansky to suggest Shultz
George Shultz with his gifted Book of Psalms
now had time to learn Hebrew. But then Sharansky, referring fondly to Shultz as his “accomplice” in “the crime of bringing down the Iron Curtain and freeing Soviet Jews”, spoke warmly of the US politician, referring particularly to how he supported his wife Avital on her many visits to lobby publicly on his behalf. Sharansky said Shultz had made it clear to nervous Jewish communal leaders both he and President Reagan were fully in favour of a march on Washington – the 30th anniversary of which will be marked shortly. “People were worried it would undermine the improving relationship between the US and the USSR,” but Sharansky said he was able to state with confidence: “Reagan and Shultz want us to march!”
The co-founder of Limmud FSU, Chaim Chesler, issued a sharp challenge this week to Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky about the role of Israel’s Reform and Conservative Jews. Sharansky was speaking at one of the last of more than 80 sessions of a Limmud conference for Jews from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) in San Francisco. At a panel examining the “untold story of Soviet Jewry”, Sharansky, arguably the world’s most famous refusenik, paid tribute to the diaspora Jewish activists who had demonstrated and visited and agitated for Soviet Jews, making it clear “we were all one family and the Jewish world cared about us”, contrary to what the KGB repeatedly told refusniks.
When asked about the many different groups that worked for Soviet Jewry, Sharansky said: “If the students and housewives wouldn’t have started pushing, the establishment wouldn’t have done anything... We can learn a lot from the Soviet Jewry struggle, how the diaspora strengthened each other and strengthened Israel.” Chesler, himself a former director of the Israel Public Council for Soviet Jewry, pointed out that in America the bulk of the campaigners are of Reform and Conservative backgrounds. “They did their job,” he told the Jewish Agency chairman, “and now they are treated as second-class citizens in Israel. How can you live with it?”
Israeli minister honours singer Israel’s Science and Technology minister, Ofir Akunis, was a well-received guest of honour at a special Los Angeles event held to commemorate the first anniversary of the death of poet and singer Leonard Cohen. Akunis’ reception at the exhibition Leonard Cohen and Judaism, held at the UCLA campus, was in marked contrast to a furious row the previous week when Princeton University’s Hillel House cancelled an appearance by Israeli Deputy Foreign
Minister Tzipi Hotovely. Hillel blamed the cancellation on pressure from the Alliance for Jewish Progressives and BDS activists. The UCLA exhibit and tribute was initiated by Chaim Chesler, cofounder of Limmud FSU, which held a major conference in San Francisco this week. Akunis told the audience: “Leonard Cohen was very attached to Judaism and Israel, a bond that became stronger, especially after the great tragedy of the Yom Kippur War.”