HIDDEN HEROES- Book Review

Here's Pamela Braun Cohen at the book launch
 talking about her book. Next to her is
Ilan Greenfield of Gefen Publishing House.

Hidden Heroes: One Woman's Story of Resistance and Rescue in the Soviet Union by Pamela Braun Cohen, Gefen Publishing House is an amazing and inspiring story. Pamela Braun Cohen had been an ordinary suburban Jewish wife and mother in 1970 when by chance she heard a newscast about Soviet Jews unsuccessfully trying to escape the USSR...

For Cohen this news was lifechanging. Blessed with a supportive husband, Pamela Braun Cohen became more than just a Soviet Jewry activist. She visited the USSR meeting the refuseniks, becoming their friends and supplying them with everything from jeans to be sold on the black market to the support of US President Ronald Reagan and other powerful American politicians.

Natan Sharansky

Before long she was National President of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews UCSJ, and by the time she was ready to retire from that position, decades later, she and her family had become Torah observant (Orthodox) Jews. In HIDDEN HEROES Cohen tells how the Soviet Jews' interest in Torah brought it also to her and her family. Also following the the aliyah to Israel of many former refuseniks,  Pamela and her husband Lenny now live in Jerusalem.

My husband and I at the 
book launch

It's no secret that my husband and I met for the first time at a SSSJ Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry demonstration. We were activists until our wedding and subsequent aliyah that same summer of 1970 when Pamela Cohen first got involved. So, obviously, I felt very connected to her story.

HIDDEN HEROES is a real eye-opener, even for me who had been following the struggle of Soviet Jews from the middle 1960s and then welcomed those who made it to Israel, especially Shiloh, over two decades later. I had no firsthand knowledge of the multitude of issues Cohen and her fellow activists dealt with. She and her fellow workers/volunteers/activists were busy on three fronts simultaneously, not just the totalitarian antisemitic USSR but the governments of the United States and Israel, too.

The best I can do is to wholeheartedly recommend HIDDEN HEROES. Buy it. Read it. Give it as gifts to everyone, from teens to retirees.

Dozens of people attended the book launch, so it had to be held outdoors.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gefen Publishing House (July 18, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 965702336X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9657023365

Memories, Soviet Aliyah to Shiloh

Way back when almost everything done in Shiloh was done by volunteers, I spent some amazing years on the Vaadat Klita, the committee that accepted and rejected and recruited new residents for Shiloh. I was truly privileged to have been on that committee when Soviet Aliyah was at its peak, and the masses of olim chadashim from the USSR were looking for new homes and lives in Israel.

This week I was reminded of those exciting days; I was very moved to hear how some of those now veteran immigrants remember me.

When I realized that I'd be home at the time of an Azkara, memorial ceremony at the grave of a neighbor who died a couple of years ago, it was obvious to me that I had to attend. The first of that clan came to Shiloh as a young married expectant couple looking for a clean, unpolluted healthy Jewish environment to raise their family. I was on the committee at the time, and we welcomed them joyfully. Soon they were joined by a newborn plus two more older generations and siblings.

As time went on, the young families left, and the older ones stayed on in Shiloh. At the cemetery, surrounded by young children, they talked about how much Shiloh means to their family and how glad and grateful they are to have been welcomed here.

We reminisced about the time when they first came to Shiloh. According to the normative criteria aka our standard instructions, almost none of the Soviet olim, immigrants "fit in," but we just couldn't turn them away. It felt wrong. So we consulted with the community rabbi who gave the perfect psak, answer according to Jewish Law and human nature:

"Accept all who want to live in Shiloh. Those who should be here will stay, and the others will leave when they're ready. It's important to show them full acceptance in their difficult adjustment period."

And that's what happened. Some stayed and some left. And quite a few of the elderly will be here until Redemption, since they are buried in our cemetery.

Later that evening I paid a shiva call to the family of another family of Soviet olim. Here too the first to come to Shiloh was a young family, followed by the older generation who have been the only ones living here for years already. The mourner was very happy to see me and told the now adult children that if it hadn't been for my support they most probably would never have been accepted to live in Shiloh. Again I told the story of what the rabbi had instructed us.

I was so touched. It had never occured to me that anyone found my efforts unforgettable and worthy of praise and thanks.

In my teenage years I had been very active in SSJ Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, and my helping the olim settle in Shiloh was a miraculous way to continue the dream. In the 1960s if someone had told me that hundreds of thousands Soviet Jews would be in Israel, and I'd be helping them in Shiloh, I'd have trouble believing it possible. But miracles happen.

Castle of Concrete, Book Review

Castle of Concrete by Katia Raina is an amazing and well-written novel about life in the late twentieth 20th century during the fall of the USSR and how it affected a Jewish teenage girl and her family. To be honest, I think it's a mistake to market it as Young Adult fiction. The genre of Castle of Concrete is really much broader.

I'm far from a young teenager in age, and I found Castle of Concrete fascinating. During that very same era, we had hosted and "adopted" a number of Soviet Jewish immigrants to Israel, not that much older than the characters depicted in the book. The young men who spent a lot of time with our family had finished military service in the USSR, and some had even begun university studies before making their homes in Israel. Not all were happy about their family's decision, but staying alone in the deteriorating and collapsing Soviet Union wasn't an option. I could see similarities with Sonya, Katia Raina's main character.

We meet Sonya as she reconnects with her rebellious mother, after spending most of her childhood in the care of her Jewish grandmother in Siberia. Sonya has to make a new life for herself, and in the process she tries to reinvent herself from the quiet nerdy, always good girl, to a daring, rebellious attention-grabbing teenager. Sonya is Jewish from her mother, though she inherited her non-Jewish father's looks. Soon she'll have the option of choosing which nationality to put on her identity card.

Castle of Concrete follows Sonya as she experiments with different identities and behaviors in her new life in Moscow with her mother. Instead of being the conscientious student, Sonya begins to rebel and get interested in boys. She has to decide whether or not to identify as a Jew, especially since her boyfriend is a Russian nationalist and antisemitic. In the background to the usual teenage angst we are made aware that her mother is hoping to be able to move with Sonya to New York, where they can have a better life.

I enjoyed reading Castle of Concrete, which is very nicely written and sincerely hope that Raina's writing a sequel in which we'll follow Sonya and her mother in their next new life, this time in New York.

• Publisher: Young Europe Books (June 11, 2019)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0999541633
• ISBN-13: 978-0999541630

The Ukrainian- Russian Template and the Dangers of a "Palestinian State" for Israel

I'll be perfectly honest with you.  Most probably because my mind is focused on Israel, I'm not a great expert in the present dangerously chaotic situation in the Ukraine.

There's a background we shouldn't ignore.  During the long decades, over half a century when there was a massive world power called the USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, those leaders played around with people's lives forcing them to move far from their traditional hometowns and regions, which are now separate countries. Citizens needed permission to move if the government hadn't ordered a move.  So there are various "ethnic" groups foreign to their locations.  Don't forget that the USSR was one of, if not the, largest countries in the world.

maps source

CNN

Now that the USSR has collapsed and separated into separate countries, there's chaos.  The  Russian President Vladimir Putin claim that there are Russian nationalists in the Crimea, Ukraine who want it to be part of Russia is a long-term result of that USSR policy.  BBC has a clearly written time-line that explains how the recent crises developed.

Now for the point of this post.  I'm not all that concerned with what's happening there, and I'm glad that United States President Barack Hussein Obama is distracted by it.  I suggest he tell his Secretary of State John Kerry to leave the Middle East and use his hyper-energy there.

Mahmoud Abbas

Gaza’s Hamas Prime Minister
Ismail Haniyeh (photo credit: AP/Adel Hana)

What does concern me and should concern every Israeli and pro-Israeli is the reminder that a similar situation could develop if we're ever forced into a "two state solution."  The so-called Palestinians sic in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley, could end up being co-opted in/invaded by the Gazan Terrorists and their Hamas leaders.

If that happens, we won't have your western dressed, photo-friendly Mahmoud Abbas ruling in our midst but Gaza’s Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Actually, I have no doubt that such a situation will happen if a Palestinian State is G-d forbid established. 

Let's take this lesson/warning very seriously and unequivocally cease all negotiations for a Two State Solution!

View From The Sukkah: Can We Count on The USA?

The Succot Holiday is a real challenge of faith.  We're supposed to move out of our sturdy homes of wood, brick etc. and their solid roof and move into a hut covered by something holey enough to let in some light.  And yes, if it rains or storms, we are permitted to escape to more permanent buildings, because G-d doesn't demand death to prove our faith and observance. 

We, the Jewish People are still in the process of reaching the required height of faith and connection to G-d in order to recognize and follow the true Moshiach, Messiah. Foreign countries, including the United States, are not the Savior.  We shouldn't trust in any foreign, non-Jewish leader or politician.  G-d wrote His instructions to us in the Torah thousands of years ago.  Not even Israeli politicians or professors or courts or media personalities have the authority to change, amend or delete these instructions.

The United States has a long history of deserting its allies.  These diplomatic "love affairs" are terribly one-sided.  Davka, the Russians and before them, the USSR communists were much more loyal to those who followed them.  Many countries tried aligning with the USA before realizing that their loyalty was being rebuffed and they'd be safer on the other side of the international political spectrum.

Many countries in the world compare the behavior of the bloc under Russian leadership to the conduct of the West under United States’ leadership and conclude: The United States betrays her friends and abandons them, while Russia is faithful to her friends and defends them. When the world analyzes what the United States has done for states and rulers in recent years it finds Mubarak, who was abandoned by President Obama with the start of demonstrations against him; the president of Tunisia – bin Ali – who was forced to flee from the demonstrations without even one of his European friends  to rescue him; the United States abandons its friends in the Gulf and in Saudi Arabia in the face of Iran’s threatening buildup; the West does not back Israel in its efforts to maintain its security and its strategic assets, and urges it to establish another Palestinian terror country in the mountains of Judea and Samaria, overlooking most of the territory of the State of Israel. (from Dr. Mordechai Kedar's article in the Jewish Press)

When will the Israeli movers and shakers admit that their loyalty and worship of the United States is totally misplaced?

I'm tired of our Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's good statements, sound-bytes being contradicted by his actions and policies.

The world must not be deceived by the moderate statements made by Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday night, in response to an NBC interview with Rouhani broadcast Wednesday. 

He always ends up retreating to the "Center," the hole in the bagel as I call it.  Blah, blah and blah. Israel and the United States have lost their deterrent decades ago.

"There is an opportunity here
 for diplomacy."
U.S. President Barack Obama
                                         

                                                

|

Photo credit: AP

Is there anyone who actually believed that Obama would act against Iran?  He just reads his scripts or recites/repeats what he hears from his mini-earphones.

Obama says ready to 'test' Iran's willingness to talk

U.S. president tells Spanish network that Iran's new president seems to want to pursue dialogue over country's controversial nuclear program • Iranian supreme leader: Iran's objection to nuclear weapons stems from our faith and our principles.

Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

We're now celebrating the Jewish Holiday of Succot, the holiday of joy and faith in G-d. If you have faith in the words of United States President Barack Hussein Obama, you probably believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa, too.