The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, also known by its acronym SSSJ, was founded in 1964 by Jacob Birnbaum

Yaakov (Jacob) Birnbaum

Yaakov Birnbaum is the founder of Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and many other human rights organizations. Because SSSJ was the first initiative to address the plight of Soviet Jewry, he is regarded as to be the father of the Movement to Free Soviet Jewry. He is a son of Solomon Birnbaum...

 to be a spearhead of the US movement for rights of the Soviet Jewry.

“Let My People Go” foundation period in 1960s

The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (often referred to simply as "Student
Struggle" or "SSSJ" or "Triple-S-J") was created in 1964 by Jacob Birnbaum from the U.K. to spearhead an American grassroots movement to liberate the Jews of the Soviet Union. After Birnbaum founded an adult arm two years later, in order to obtain charitable status and adult support, SSSJ's official name became “Center for Russian Jewry with Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry” but continued to be known as SSSJ. It was also known as the Center for Russian and East European Jewry in the latter 1970s and the 1980s.

Birnbaum’s father and grandfather were recognized authorities on East European Jewry. He himself had extensive experience in assisting survivors of Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism after World War II, and later mobilized British students to assist distressed Jews of North Africa.

A citizen of the U. K., he arrived in New York City in the latter part of 1963 where he noted increasing expressions of public concern for the plight of Soviet Jews but encountered only one grassroots activist, Morris Brafman, who had just put together a small group, soon to be known as the American League for Russian Jews, in Brooklyn's Mill Basin area. (At the time Birnbaum did not hear of a 1962 one-time Matzoh demonstration by a small group of Yeshiva University High School students led by Columbia University student Bernard Kabak.) By January 1964 he was settled in Washington Heights near Yeshiva University where he began to build a teacher-student core and also contacted other metropolitan campuses. In the same month, he persuaded Bernard Kaplan, the Social Action Chairman of the national student organization Yavneh to set up a Soviet Jewry committee and by April he was ready to go national and issued a Manifesto titled "College Students Struggle for Soviet Jewry" convening a founding meeting at Columbia University for April 27, 1964. His use of the term “struggle” was ironically designed as a spinoff of the Marxist term “class struggle”.

After the Eichmann trial in 1961 (witnessed by Birnbaum in Jerusalem) people had become increasingly aware of the horrors of the Holocaust so the Columbia meeting proved emotional and there was a call for action. Birnbaum proposed a protest rally outside the Soviet U.N. Mission on the Soviet May Day holiday, only 4 days later. He mobilized his Yeshiva University core, contacted other campuses, and some 1,000 students showed up, getting excellent media publicity. According to the Center for Jewish History, this May Day rally marked the commencement of public confrontation with the Kremlin and the initiation of the national movement for Soviet Jewry. Thereafter, four other Soviet Jewry pioneers, Dr. Moshe Decter, Professor Abraham J. Heschel, Israeli diplomat Dr. Meir Rosenne, and Dr. Louis Rosenblum of Cleveland (later founding Chairman of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews), were delighted to support Birnbaum’s initiatives.

Ten days later, Birnbaum formed SSSJ's first steering committee and initiated a series of groundbreaking public events which in the course of two years resulted in a surge of public consciousness which pushed the hesitant U.S. Jewish establishment from a policy of quiet diplomacy toward a more activist mode. In 1964, this commenced with the dispatch of information kits to student summer camps nationally in May, a week-long interfaith fast in June, and a massive rally in October with the participation of President Johnson’s representative Mayer Feldman, New York Senators Jacob Javits and Kenneth Keating, and Mayor John Lindsay on the Lower East Side, the original area of East European Jewish settlement.

One unique characteristic of Birnbaum's mobilization of public opinion was to draw on ancient Jewish redemptive themes, for example, the intensification of activities around Passover time, with its themes of liberation and exodus. SSSJ's first student button portrayed a Shofar with the wording "Save Soviet Jewry". The years 1964-1966 served as the early “Shofar period” of the Soviet Jewry movement -- a call to conscience and a call to action.

In 1965 Birnbaum led SSSJ in a Biblical-style challenge to the wall of separation cutting off Soviet Jewry. He organized two Jericho Marches around Soviet diplomatic buildings in New York (April) and Washington, DC (May) to the accompaniment of the soaring sounds of the shofar

Shofar

A shofar is a horn, traditionally that of a ram, used for Jewish religious purposes. Shofar-blowing is incorporated in synagogue services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.Shofar come in a variety of sizes.- Bible and rabbinic literature :...

. The walls did not tumble down but the media understood the symbolism. At the April event, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach

Shlomo Carlebach

Shlomo Carlebach , known as Reb Shlomo to his followers, was a Jewish rabbi, religious teacher, composer, and singer who was known as "The Singing Rabbi" during his lifetime...

 first sang his great Jewish solidarity anthem (sought from him by Birnbaum), “Am Yisroel Chai”, meaning “The Jewish people will survive and revive.” In December 1965 for the festival of Hanukah Birnbaum ordered a quantity of metal piping and personally supervised the all-night building of a huge candelabra for a Freedom Lights Menorah

Menorah

The menorah is described in the Bible as the seven-branched ancient lampstand made of gold and used in the portable sanctuary set up by Moses in the wilderness and later in the Temple in Jerusalem. Fresh olive oil of the purest quality was burned daily to light its lamps...

 March through Central Park. Nineteen months of intense street activity plus the distribution of much educational material resulted in a breakthrough, stirring a number of Jewish establishment organizations to greater activism, and they joined SSSJ's great Redemption (Geulah) March of Passover 1966 with a record turnout of some 12,000 people. The Exodus March of Passover 1970 drew some 20,000, as did a Madison Square Garden Hanukah event in 1971.

Yet the official American Conference on Soviet Jewry, established in April 1964, which barely functioned without an allocated budget or permanent staff till the Leningrad trial of December 1970 finally shocked the Jewish leadership into the establishment in September 1971 of two officially funded groups -- the National Conference on Soviet Jewry and the Greater New York Conference. The latter was built on the New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 infrastructure constructed by Birnbaum in the 1960s on the basis of a number of local and metropolitan groups instituted by him, a Bronx Council, an invigorated Queens Council, a Brooklyn Coalition, and a New York Youth Conference, a New York Coordinating Committee, followed by a New York Conference, now assisted by a staffer at the American Jewish Committee, more committed to the cause than most establishment organizations.

Malcolm Hoenlein

Malcolm Hoenlein

Malcolm Hoenlein is the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations since June 1986. He is the founding executive director of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.Born in...

, a Birnbaum disciple, was the founding director of the Greater New York Conference and initiated in 1972 the Solidarity Sunday marches and rallies modeled on SSSJ's 1960s events. By the 1980s, these great annual public events in New York drew attendances of over 100,000.

From 1964 to 1971, SSSJ was the only American organization engaged in a full-time campaign for Soviet Jewry, independently raising its meager funding from the grassroots without official assistance. Though from the beginning Birnbaum directed SSSJ on a strictly responsible non-violent policy of moderate activism, the Jewish establishment was intensely hostile. Fortunately, Birnbaum was able to attract a number of sympathizers in the Establishment, including major figures such as Rabbi Herschel Schacter, former Chairman of the Presidents Conference, the late Rabbi Israel Miller, the late Richard Maass and the late Stanley Lowell, first and second chairmen of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, Dr. Norman Lamm, later President of Yeshiva University. In the academic world, his founding supporters included Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

Shlomo Riskin

Shlomo Riskin is the founding rabbi of Lincoln Square Synagogue on the Upper West Side of New York City, which he led for 12 years; founding chief rabbi of the Israeli settlement of Efrat in the West Bank; dean of Manhattan Day School in New York City; and founder and dean of the Ohr Torah Stone...

, Chairman, Dr. Irving Greenberg

Irving Greenberg

Irving Greenberg, also known as Yitz Greenberg, is a Modern Orthodox rabbi, Jewish-American scholar and author. He is known as a strong supporter of Israel and a promoter of greater understanding between Judaism and Christianity....

, Vice Chairman, Rabbi Charles Sheer, Vice Chairman. Rabbi Avraham Weiss became an officer in 1971, accelerated SSSJ’s activist modes, and campaigned relentlessly for Anatoly Sharansky. Succeeding Rabbi Riskin as chairman, he served in that capacity 1984-1989.

Founding students included Sandy Frucher, Hillel Goldberg, Arthur Green, Dennis Prager, Glenn Richter, Benjamin Silverberg, James Torczyner, the late Sanford Zwickler. After some years, Richter gave up his law studies and joined Birnbaum full-time to become National Coordinator in which capacity he served until January 1990. Originally Birnbaum's fastest typist, he assumed the bulk of SSSJ's administrative routines, and became well known for his small "rapid response" demonstrations, his informative press releases, and together with Alan Miller, the compilation of massive lists of prisoners of conscience and refuseniks.

Economic pressure on the Kremlin in the 1970s

In the 1970s and 1980s, Birnbaum shifted his attention to new policy initiatives. In the early 1970s, SSSJ concentrated on the utilization of economic pressures on the Kremlin. He had in fact testified in Congress on this concept as early as May 1965, was in close contact with Senator Henry Jackson's office regarding the Jackson-Vanik Amendment signed into law almost ten years later in January 1975. He testified in Congress some eighteen times between 1976 and 1986 in relation to the Amendment's application to emigration from Romania and achieved the release of six long-time prisoners, a rescue which elicited a remarkably enthusiastic letter of congratulation from the State Department.

“Let My People Know” (their heritage): Defense of Jewish self-education groups in the 1980s

During the 1980s, Birnbaum deepened SSSJ's support of a remarkable Jewish awakening in the USSR. After 1917, the Soviets had systematically destroyed all aspects of Jewish communal, religious, cultural, and social life, resulting in a severely weakened sense of Jewish identity among Soviet Jews. The rise of a "Let My People Go" resistance movement was accompanied by the development of an underground Jewish renaissance movement, in the form of religious, cultural, and Hebrew language self-education groups. To publicize this, Birnbaum added the words "Let My People Know" (their heritage) to SSSJ's original "Let My People Go" slogan and marshaled the support of various Christian groups in annual spring campaigns in the early 1980s for the protection of these self-education groups under intense attack by the K.G.B. In September 1985, he organized and led a mixed delegation of Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis under the auspices of the inter-denominational Synagogue Council of America to meet with the Deputy Secretary of State.

Support of Post-Soviet Central Asian Jewish communities in the 1990s

In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet empire, Birnbaum became involved in the defense of Jewish communities in the Central Asian republics which had been part of the USSR. He worked in cooperation with the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, was frequently in contact with the Central Asian desk of the State Department, the US Embassy in Tashkent and, in the later 1990s, also with Malcolm Hoenlein, by now Executive Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, generally known as the Presidents Conference.

For the occasion of his 80th birthday, December 10, 2006 (Human Rights Day), the House of Representatives passed HR137 in 2007 “Honoring the life and six decades of public service of Jacob Birnbaum and especially his commitment to freeing Soviet Jews from religious, cultural, and communal extinction.”

Selected Bibliography

Yossi Klein Halevi joined SSSJ at the age of 12, led student delegations to confront Jewish establishment organizations in New York and eventually the Ovir (Soviet migrations office) in Moscow. Since the latter 1960s he has written extensively on SSSJ. His most important pieces are:

"Jacob Birnbaum and the Struggle for Soviet Jewry”, a profound survey in the magazine Azure of Spring 2004; available at
http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/043004Azure_Birnbaum.shtml

and “Glory” in The New Republic of December 2, 2010, now available as “Lessons of Struggle for Soviet Jewry Remain Relevant” at http://www.hartmaninstitute.com/Focus_View_Eng.asp?Article_Id=574.

In his autobiography of his early years, Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist: an American Story (Little, Brown, 1995) he describes his relationship with SSSJ and the JDL.

Jacob Birnbaum, “Chronicles of a Redemption”, compendium of essays and documents on SSSJ including some personal archives, covering

a) SSSJ foundation period in the 1960s, including listings of SSSJ “Let My People Go” events
b) economic leverage in the 1970s, especially the Jackson-Vanik legislation
c) supporting Soviet Jewish “self-education” groups – “Let My People Know” (their heritage) in the 1980s
d) interventions for Jewish communities of former Soviet Central Asia in the 1990s

The essays and documents include
- “Sound the Great Shofar of Redemption: Vision and Struggle in the Rescue of Soviet Jewry: The Role of Jacob Birnbaum in the Rise of a Contemporary Liberation Movement”
- “The Resonance of Jewish Redemption Rituals in Building a Critical Mass for Soviet Jewry in New York in the 1960s”
- “U.S. Jewish Student Activism for Soviet Jewry in the 1960s”
- “Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry Mobilizes a Critical Mass in New York: 1964-1966”
- “The Origin of Shlomo Carlebach’s Jewish Solidarity Anthem ‘Am Yisroel Chai’”
- “Jacob Birnbaum’s Sixty-Plus Years of Service to the Jewish People, 1946-on”
3 one-page summaries:

- History of the Soviet Jewry Movement

- Jacob Birnbaum’s Early Encounters with Nazi and Soviet Totalitarianism

- Key Developments in the Rise of the American Movement for Soviet Jewry in the 1960s
House Resolution 137, 110th Congress, 2007, honoring Jacob Birnbaum’s sixty years of public service.

William Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews, U. of Mass. Press, 1979

Paul Appelbaum, “The Soviet Jewry Movement in the United States”, in Michael Dobrowski’s American Voluntary Organizations, Greenwood Press, 1986

Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin -- Nine Questions People Ask about Judaism. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981 and subsequent re-issues

Ronald I. Rubin, The Unredeemed: Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, Quadrangle, 1968.

Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy. New York: William Morrow, 1991

Jonathan Mark, “Yaakov Birnbaum’s Freedom Ride”, New York Jewish Week, April 30, 2004: front-page article and lead editorial, on 40th anniversary of SSSJ

Critical Reviews by Jacob Birnbaum of Al Chernin’s lead chapter in A Second Exodus,
of Gal Beckerman’s When they Come for Us, We’ll be Gone

Massive archives of Center for Russian Jewry with Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry transferred by Jacob Birnbaum to Yeshiva University in 1993. An index to these archives may be found at www.yu.edu/libraries/index.aspx?id=34; follow the "archives" link to www.yu.edu/libraries/EAD/index.aspx?ID=27744. It is detailed with introductory material.