I am often invited to speak about the exodus of the Jews from the Soviet Union during the days of communist rule and the Iron Curtain. There is much to tell.
Usually, despite the festive occasions at which I am invited to speak, I do not refrain from speaking about the less beautiful side of the story of "Let my people go so they can serve me."
In the Exodus from Egypt it was simple - God brought us to Mount Sinai and gave us the Torah - our precious, holy guidance on how to serve God.
Following "Operation Wedding" (the 1970 hijacking of a Soviet plane in an attempt to go to Israel despite Russia's refusal to allow aliyah, a plan of which I was one of the initiators) and the harsh sentences handed out to us, there was heavy pressure from American Jewry, and the gates of aliyah opened in 1972. In fact, the hijacking and the Soviet overreaction to it “opened the first significant rip in the Iron Curtain," wrote The New York Times, after which 163,000 Russian Jews reached Israel over the next decade.
And instead of arriving at Mount Sinai and spending 40 years en route, they arrived straight to the Land of Israel.
The Jews of the USSR (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - as Russia and its satellitess were then called) needed a renewed giving of the Torah because the Soviet communist regime, including Jews in powerful positions- Leon Trotsky, Yakov Sverdlov and others, had kept the Torah from reaching us since the year 1917, the year of the overthrow of the Tsar (for countries occupied by the USSR after WWII it was from 1945 and there some Jews still remembered something...). Most were entirely estranged from Judaism, except for a small group of activists who studied Judaism underground and those who were part of Chabad.
I was released from prison only in 1981. There were already more than 100,000 immigrants from the USSR in Israel by then. But no one had founded some kind of spiritual school geared to their needs, to teach them basic concepts of Torah and mitzvot in a way they would relate to.
I blame no one. It was an overwhelming challenge. Freeing the Jews of Russia was no easier than releasing me from my 11 years in prison in the Gulag.
The struggle then was concentrated on one goal and it was formulated in English - “Let my people go." Short and sweet as a slogan, but lacking deeper content that would emphasize the meaning of our returning to the people of Israel.
Fortunately for me, I had decided to keep mitzvot even before being arrested at the airport in Russia in 1970, and so I continued to keep the mitzvot in the forced labor camp in the USSR for 11 years.
Therefore, when I immigrated to Israel (to be accurate, I was deported from prison straight to the Land of Israel), I had no problem with spiritual absorption.
The day after I immigrated, my cousin, Dr. Menachem Gordin (Rabbi Amichai Gordin's father) took me to study at the yeshiva of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein zt"l. I moved from yeshiva to yeshiva and eventually was ordained as a rabbi.
As a result of my experience, I tried to establish some kind of Torah framework for Russian-speakers.
But what can a new immigrant do in the face of a silent establishment?
I joined the NRP, the then religious Zionist party. The head of the absorption department was a Jew of Yemenite origin, a good Jew, but I had no idea of how to turn to him, no conception of budgets, finances, and how to build a school ...
I knew the Minister of Religious Affairs at the time, Zevulun Hammer Z"l. I told him - we have to talk about spiritual absorption. The Jews of the Soviet Union are being absorbed and acclimatized, but not in the spiritual sense. Those who came to Tel Aviv, Haifa, Rishon LeZion, etc. were successfully absorbed and became part of the Tel Aviv area landscape. If they happened to be brought to Bnei Brak, they were exposed to the rabbis there. Those who came to Judea and Samaria communities (which were then starting to grow) learned to wear knitted kippahs and identify with the settlement goals.
Absorption in chemistry is when the majority absorbs the minority. And it did.
In 1986, after I was ordained as a rabbi, I tried to save those who were left behind. I worked to establish a religious school for Russian youngsters, "Machanayim," with high-level secular studies as Russian parents expected. But due to lack of government support I was unable to get the project off the ground.
In those days, a Torah core of refuseniks was formed. Heroes of Torah came to Israel - Rabbi Ze'ev Mashkov, Rabbi Eliyahu Assas, Dr. Gregory Rubinstein (Chabad). It was possible to take these heroes to establish a Torah education network for Russian immigrants in the country. If they succeeded In the underground, they would all the more succeed in the Land of Israel. But that did not happen.
Nobody needed them. Nobody wanted their educational talents. They were outsiders. Former underground fighters remained unemployed.
As Nehemiah Levanon, then head of the "Nativ" conversion program said to David Chavkin, a former prisoner of Zion - "You were Herzl in the USSR, but here I will be Herzl." (the late David Chavkin ended up working as a sewage engineer in the Jerusalem municipality).
I only succeeded in one endeavor. Professor Carmi Horowitz and the late Mr. Matityahu Adler established a branch of Touro College in Jerusalem. They hired me to head their Russian-speaking department.
I established an ulpan within the framework of Touro, with the blessing of Dr. Ephraim Schach, who was appointed as the supervisor of ulpans on behalf of the Ministry of Education.
The immigrants poured in, I got excellent teachers, all university graduates.
But I quickly realized that students were not succeeding in learning Hebrew.
I then hired a Hebrew teacher who had taught in the underground In Moscow - Aryeh Sverdlov. "You hired him underground," the Ministry of Education objected, because he did not have an Israeli teachers certificate.
After a year, the inspector of the Ministry of Education admitted that Toro's ulpan had become the leader in teaching Hebrew to Russian immigrants. And this was thanks to the "underground" teacher - Aryeh Sverdlov. He worked very simply - taught people by means of Soviet Russia's academic methods, which the students, mostly doctors and engineers, were used to.
I established a program with Rochel Sylvetsky, who was then academic coordinator at Touro, to train Russian immigrant history teachers to teach Jewish history in Israeli schools.
I dreamed of expanding the ulpan method and our programs.
But alas - the Department for Aliya at Touro College was closed due to lack of funds.
To my joy, Rabbi Dov Begon hired me at Machon Meir, and along with my friend, Rabbi Avraham Adler, we established a department for Russian speakers. Through it we trained thousands of students.
"Let my people go" took place. "So that they will serve you" - will continue to take place together with Clal Yisrael in the Land of Israel.