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UP FRONT

Soviet Jewry Activists
Retool Their Approach

Street protests have been replaced by aid to those
left behind in the wake of the Kremlin meltdown.

JAMES D. BESSER

Washington Correspondent

T

he implosion of the
Soviet empire has
provided the interna-
tional movement to aid
Soviet Jewry with unex-
pected successes, while also
handing it unprecedented
new challenges.
At the same time, it may
make it harder for move-
ment leaders to hold the in-
terest of American Jews,
who seem eager to believe
that the Soviet Jewry saga
has been satisfactorily con-
cluded.
Movement leaders are
anxiously trying to shift
gears to meet rapidly chang-
ing conditions. But there are
no guidelines; like
policymakers in Washing-
ton, they are simply trying
to keep up with develop-
ments.
On the most obvious level,
the Soviet Jewry movement
is trying to adjust to several
new realities.
The first is one that the
movement could never have
predicted — the need to con-

vince reluctant Soviet Jews
to leave their homeland
while they still have the
chance.
"People are literally sit-
ting on their suitcases," said
Micah Naftalin, national di-
rector for the Union of Coun-
cils of Soviet Jews. "In the
absence of an actual
emergency, in the absence of

American Jews
seem eager to
believe that the
Soviet Jewry saga
has been
satisfactorily
concluded.

pogroms, they're not leav-
ing. That's one of our major
jobs now — to convince them
to go, now that they have the
chance."
But that process is not an
easy one. With Israel facing
staggering housing and job
problems, many Soviet Jews
are now waiting for the dust
to clear before making the
leap. Those who were eager
to leave have already

departed; those who have
not are more ambivalent
about Israel, more rooted in
Soviet society.
As a result, the flow to
Israel has been well below
the inflated projections of a
year ago. To the surprise of
many, the failed August
coup did not ignite a new
wave of emigration. Even
the current prospect of all-
out civil war has yet to spark
an increase in numbers.
"What we're going to need
is a more sophisticated ap-
proach, in terms of luring
people out of dangerous
places while they still have
time to leave," said Pamela
Cohen, UCSJ's longtime
president. "I realize this
does not sound clear to many
people. But when you're
dealing with the mindset in
places like this, you have to
take new approaches. People
don't want to see what's
coming."
Ms. Cohen suggested that
strong efforts to convince
Soviet Jews to get out while
the getting is good should be
tempered by compassion for
the frame of mind that

Anwork from Newsday by Non. Cow, Copyright. 1993. New. ,Dam.. by UN AngN. Tows Sync...

causes their reluctance to
flee.
"That could be the hardest
part of it," she said. "There's
a tendency to say, if these
people aren't smart enough
to realize that they're in
danger, it's their fault. I'm
tremendously opposed to
that kind of reaction. It's
very easy to tell people from
the safety of the United
States what they should do
to save their skins."
Movement leaders have
also had a rude awakening
in the matter of the Soviet
Jewish renaissance that
some predicted would forge a
strong, self-aware Jewish
community.
Many have reluctantly
come to the conclusion that
the Soviet Jewish commun
ity has already been too

.

decimated by seven decades
of communist repression and
the overwhelming exodus to
Israel of its best minds to be
the home of a new and
vibrant Jewish culture.
One symptom of that real-
ity is the experience of B'nai
B'rith International. The
group's Moscow unit, once
considered the vanguard of
the Soviet Jewish
renaissance, has fallen on
hard times.
"The reality is that of 100
initial members, maybe 90
have left the USSR," said
Dan Mariaschin, B'nai
B'rith's international and
public affairs director. "So
what we're discovering,
after working with this pro-
gram, is that we need to be
addressing other needs."

ROUND UP

AJCommittee Book
Details David Duke
New York — The Nazi af,
filiations . and beliefs, both
past and present, of presi-
dential candidate David
Duke are the subject of a
new booklet, David Duke: A
Nazi in Politics, published
by the American Jewish
Committee.
Written by Kenneth Stern,
AJC program specialist on
anti-Semitism and ex-
tremism, the 19-page
publication disputes Duke's
public claim that he is no
longer the same man he was
when he served in the 1970s
as grand wizard of the
Knights of the Ku Klux
Klan.
Mr. Stern cites hundreds of
Duke's comments and
writings to trace the Loui-
siana representative's Nazi
sentiments during the past
20 years. Two years ago, Mr.
Stern notes, Duke was
caught selling Mein Kampf
from his legislative office.
"The David Duke of the

1980s may have shed his
Klan costume in favor of
three-piece suits," Mr. Stern
writes, "but his message is
the same.
"David Duke is a Nazi.
Ask him about Nazism on
television, he says he is
against totalitarianism of
any kind. But ask him pri-
vately, his eyes light up.
Tichmann got a raw deal,'
he says.
"Ask Duke on television
about the Holocaust, he says
that there were atrocities on
all sides. Ask him privately,
he says that 'there were no
extermination camps,' that
Auschwitz was a 'rubber fac-
tory,' that Jews who 'control
Hollywood' made up a col-
ossal hoax.
"Through cosmetic
surgery, three-piece suits, a
sophisticated understanding
of the media and use of
sugar-coated code words that
combine racial and economic
fears, Duke has made
himself into a national fig-
ure."

For information, contact
David Saltman, c/o the
American Jewish Com-
mittee, 165 E. 56th St., New
York, N.Y. 10022.

`Maus' Drawings
Shown In New York
New York — Cartoons by
Art Spiegelman, creator of
Maus: A Survivor's Tale,
opened this week at the New
York Museum of Modern
Art, in conjunction with the
publication of Mr.
Spiegelman's new book,
Maus II: Here My Troubles
Began.
On view through Jan. 28,
the exhibition includes all
the original pages for both
parts of Maus as well as an-
cillary sketches, preparatory
drawings and layouts of in-
dividual sections.
Mr. Spiegelman spent
more than a decade working
on Maus I and II, which
follow the tribulations of the
artist's father, Vladek, from
the ghetto to Auschwitz to
the Catskills. In the works,

Artist Art Spiegelman.

Jews are depicted as mice,
Germans as cats and Poles
as pigs.
Born in 1948, Mr.
Spiegelman is co-founder
and editor of Raw, a maga-
zine of avant-garde comics
and graphics. A recipient of
a Guggenheim Fellowship,
Mr. Spiegelman also worked
from 1966-1988 for Topps
Gum Inc., where he created
Wacky Packages and Gar-
bage Pail Kids.

Where The Rambam
Meets The IBM
Chicago — A Chicago-
based business recently pro-
duced a collection of some of
Judaism's greatest works —
including the Torah and the
Talmud — on compact disk.
Davka Corporation, in co-
operation with the Institute
for Computers in Jewish
Life, created the single com-
pact disk, which features not
only the Torah and Talmud
but the Mishnah Torah, the
Aggadic midrashim and
Rashi's commentary on the
Pentateuch and Talmud. For
use with standard IBM com-
puters equipped with a CD-
ROM drive, it is the first in a
series of compact disks
covering the basic works of
Jewish law and literature.
For information, contact
Davka at 7074 N. Western
Ave., Chicago, IL 60645, or
call (312) 465-4070.

Compiled by
Elizabeth Applebaum.

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

11