metro » o n the cover

Mission Possible!

JFS to bring Sharansky to mark the 25th anniversary of Operation Exodus.

Barbara Lewis | Contributing Writer

Soviet Jewish immigrants settled in Detroit
anxiously await the arrival of other family
members at the airport.

A

lla Shapiro remembers the day she
arrived in Detroit in June of 1991.
She and her family — husband,
Eugene, daughter, Zoya, her sister and her
husband and their two daughters, plus her
parents and her grandmothers — had all
left the small town of Tiraspol in Moldova as
part of Operation Exodus, the emigration of
Jews from the Soviet Union to Israel and the
United States.
“The Soviet Union was breaking up; there
was a lot of fighting,” said Shapiro of Oak
Park. “Jewish Family Service (JFS) had some-
one to meet us as the airport. They had three
apartments for our families that were com-
pletely furnished. We opened the refrigerator
and it was full of groceries.”
Over the next few days, their case-
worker took them to the Secretary of State’s
office, the Social Security office and the
Department of Human Services, and also
arranged for everyone to have physicals at
Sinai Hospital.
“We had no idea how to manage a bank
account or what credit cards were because
everything in the Soviet Union was done in
cash,” she said. “We would have been com-
pletely lost without our social worker.”
Now Shapiro is herself a social worker at
JFS, working mainly with Russian-speaking
Holocaust survivors. “It’s a remarkable privi-
lege,” she said.
On May 17 at Congregation Shaarey
Zedek, Shapiro will join her JFS colleagues
and supporters at the agency’s annual meet-
ing, headlined “Mission Possible” to celebrate
the 25th anniversary of Operation Exodus,

Soviet Jewish families who settled in Detroit were welcomed into furnished apartments
provided by local Jewish agencies and donors. The Family to Family programs matched
Soviet families with local Jewish families to make the transition easier.

as the release and resettlement of Soviet Jews
came to be known.
Natan Sharansky, chair of the executive
of the Jewish Agency in Israel, who became
famous as a “refusenik” jailed in Russia
because of his efforts on behalf of Soviet
Jews, will be the guest speaker.
Speaking from his office in Jerusalem,
Sharansky said he’s looking forward to his
visit because the Detroit Jewish community
provided such strong support for Soviet Jews.
The Jewish Agency continues to rescue
Jews from endangered Jewish communities.
Last year, the largest numbers came from

France, Ukraine and Russia.
The Jewish Agency also supports youth
villages in Israel, programs that bring young
people to Israel for a year of study and
shlichim, Israelis who serve as emissaries to
Jewish communities in the diaspora.
In early April, the Jewish Agency coordi-
nated the rescue of 19 Jews from Yemen and
declared an end to its programs there. About
50 Jews, who have indicated no desire to
move, remain in Yemen.

OPERATION EXODUS
Operation Exodus brought more than 1.2

million Jews out of the former Soviet Union
between 1990 and 1994. More than 1 mil-
lion went to Israel. About 200,000 came to
the United States and Canada, with 7,000
resettling in Detroit.
The JFS expects a good number of those
resettled here to attend the annual meeting.
Joel Tauber, a local business and philan-
thropic leader who is chairing the JFS event,
says Operation Exodus is a remarkable
story.
“1.2 million is just a number, but think
of it as moving twice
the entire population
of Detroit in just a few
years,” he said.
In 1989, Tauber trav-
eled to the U.S.S.R. with
the late David Hermelin
and Marvin Lender
of New Haven, Conn.,
Joel Tauber
national chair of the
United Jewish Appeal’s
Operation Exodus cam-
paign, to try to get some idea of the number
of Jews who would leave if they could.
Because many Soviet Jews hid their
Jewish identities, they underestimated,
reporting that about 750,000 people would
emigrate.
“When they were finally able to leave, we
found an awful lot of Jews,” he said.
Tauber feels the 25th anniversary may
be the last opportunity for those who expe-

continued on page 12

10 April 28 • 2016

