obituaries

Obituaries from page 84

Let My People Go!

An American

rally for Soviet
Jewry on

The unsung American hero of Soviet Jewry.

Rabbi Avi Weiss

M

I JTA

ay 1 will mark the 50th anniver-
sary of the first Student Struggle
for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) demonstra-
tion on behalf of Soviet Jews. The man who
inspired the demonstration and became the
father of the movement, Jacob Birnbaum,
died April 9, 2014, at age 87.
Birnbaum founded the SSSJ and, together
with others including Glenn Richter, devel-
oped the first national grassroots Soviet
Jewry organization. But Birnbaum's legacy
was much greater than any organizational
affiliation. He was a heroic, legendary figure.
In certain ways, his life paralleled the bibli-
cal story of Jacob, who was described in the
Passover story as a wanderer.
Jacob Birnbaum was a wanderer, too. Born
in Germany, his family escaped to England
when he was a young boy. After World War II,
he became involved in resettling the remnants
of Eastern European Jewry. Having seen first-
hand the horrors of the Shoah, he resolved to
do all he could to save Soviet Jewry.

So in the early 1960s, after coming to New
York, he roamed — from room to room in
Yeshiva University dormitories and in the
halls of Columbia University — searching for
students who would join him in a campaign
to free the millions of Jews trapped behind
the Iron Curtain. He was unyielding, uncom-
promising, relentless, stubborn, steadfast and
tenacious, persevering no matter the obstades.
After wandering for years, the biblical
Jacob had proclaimed, "I crossed the Jordan
with my staff, and now I'm accompanied by
two large camps:'
This, too, was the story of Jacob Birnbaum.
He had little when he arrived on these
shores. But with his departure from this
world, one could proclaim loudly and dearly
that the camps he accompanied were large,
numbering well over a million Soviet Jews.
American Jews are part of his camp, too, as
Birnbaum inspired us in the West to stand
up for our brethren in the East and identify
ourselves proudly and clearly as Jews.
Birnbaum was the first to sound the
alarm in America, having been inspired by

Simchat Torah

in 1983.

his grandfather, Nathan Birnbaum, who is
known to have coined the term "Zionism:'
Jacob Birnbaum was the first to insist that we
must cry out collectively to save Soviet Jewry;
the first to lead the masses onto the streets
in front of Soviet missions and embassies
around the world; the first to understand the
spiritual power of the movement and incor-
porate it with religious slogans and songs.
Indeed, Birnbaum was the first to recog-
nize that not only did we have a responsibil-
ity to direct our protests against the Soviet
Union, but we also had the obligation to
insist that our own U.S. government do
more, much more, to press the Soviets to let
our people go.

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86

iril 24 • 2014

JN

Obituaries

Sadly, Birnbaum often would be peremp-
torily cut off by establishment figures who
understood far less than he about the issue
at hand. They eventually co-opted many of
his original ideas but accorded him virtu-
ally no credit for his pioneering work.
In the early 1960s, Birnbaum asked Rabbi
Shlomo Carlebach to compose a Soviet
Jewry theme song. The words go back to
the biblical narrative, when Joseph, after 22
years of separation from his father, Jacob,
asks his brothers "ha'od avi chaff?" — "Is my
father still alive?"
And today, the Jews from the Soviet
Union and their descendants can declare,
yes, Jacob Birnbaum, our father, the father
of the Soviet Jewry movement, lives on. On
his shoulders we, his sons and daughters
from the former Soviet Union and from
the free world sing out as one, `Am Yisrael
Chai," "the people of Israel live:'

❑

Avi Weiss is senior rabbi of the Hebrew Institute

of Riverdale (N.Y.). He was national chairman of

the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, 1983-1991.