12 | SEPTEMBER 16 • 2021 

OUR COMMUNITY

continued from page 11

R

ae Sharfman of West Bloomfield calls 
herself “just a small soldier in a big 
movement.”
She started volunteering to help save 
Soviet Jewry shortly after the first Leningrad 
Trial, which happened on Dec. 15, 1970. In 
it, a group of Soviet Jews was charged with 
attempting to hijack a small Soviet commercial 
plane. Their aim was to reroute it to Sweden 
from where they would 
make their way to Israel.
On the planned day, the 
group knew the author-
ities had been alerted, 
but went through with 
it anyway, prepared to 
be arrested and inspire 
a movement to free all 
Soviet Jewry. As they 
walked toward the plane, 
they were beaten and 
arrested.
The sentences the par-
ticipants received were 
harsh, even according 
to Soviet standards. Two 
were sentenced to death, 
and two others were 
handed long prison terms. 
Soon after the trial, “A woman came to West 
Bloomfield and was speaking at one of the 
synagogues. Her daughter had been arrest-
ed,” Sharfman recalled. “She stuck her finger 
at the audience and said, ‘Your grandparents 
left, your parents split, or you could be stand-
ing here begging for the life of your child.’ 
That hit me right in the heart. And I said, ‘OK, 
we have to get involved.’”
Sharfman, whose parents were from the 
Soviet Union, began looking for people to 
work with and got in touch with Glenn Richter 
at the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, 
which had been founded by Jacob Birnbaum 
in 1964 and was among the first grassroots 
movements for the liberation of Jews from 
the USSR. “He became my mentor,” Sharfman 
said. “Then we formed a group in the 
Michigan area.”
Armed with a telephone and a list of Soviet 
Jews who had been arrested, harassed or 
refused exit, Sharfman made calls. “There was 
a whole network of people like me making 
calls. We were a part of the Union of Councils 

for Soviet Jewry. Whatever news we found, 
we could send to prominent Soviet Jewry 
activist Michael Sherbourne, who became the 
center of information in London. We became 
very good friends.”
Sharfman remains friends with many of the 
people she met in the 1970s in the move-
ment. “We get together and we’re in touch all 
the time, whether we’re in Israel or not,” said 
Sharfman, who moved 
back to Michigan from 
Israel two years ago but 
hopes to return soon. 
One of those friends 
was Pam Cohen, whose 
book, Hidden Heroes: 
One Woman’s Story of 
Resistance and Rescue
in the Soviet Union, was 
published in July.
During her years as a 
volunteer, Sharfman went 
to the Soviet Union twice 
and constantly lobbied 
people in Congress. 
“People in Congress were 
absolutely fabulous.”
She recalls a trip to 
the Soviet Union in 1989 with the Union of 
Councils for Soviet Jewry. “The Soviets were 
not too happy we were there,” she said. 
“People came from all over the Soviet Union 
to speak. It was amazing.”
Once the Soviet Union began to break up 
in the late 1980s, Soviet Jews were finally free 
to go. “Until then, it was a big struggle, but, 
thank God, we made it,” Sharfman said.
Sharfman said she knows of someone in 
Israel working on a curriculum for high school 
students to learn more about the history of 
the Soviet Jews and what a “miracle it was 
that we won.” 
Sharfman is uncomfortable getting acco-
lades for her volunteer work that helped make 
that miracle happen. “It’s not me. It was a 
whole group of us doing the same thing,” she 
said.
Sharfman said a majority of the Jews who 
fled the Soviet Union came to Israel, where 
more than a million of them live now. “They 
have made an amazing contribution to Israel. 
They’re just fabulous people,” she said. 

A Telephone Soldier

JACKIE HEADAPOHL DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL

Council like 
Yost, was 
alarmed by the 
censorship. She 
pushed hard for 
awareness and 
quickly became 
one of the lead-
ing voices of the 
cause.
Between 1984-1989, 
Weiner served on the board 
of the National Conference 
on Soviet Jewry. She, along 
with hundreds of others, 
wore bracelets bearing the 
name of a Soviet Jewish 
refusenik. They marched, 
protested and continued 
to write letters to the gov-
ernment. “Most of it was 
to bring attention to the 
issues so that every single 
congressperson, every sin-
gle senator or person in 
the State Department, and 
certainly the president, was 
aware of it,” Weiner says.
At Passover, many 
American Jewish families 
also left out extra matzah 
on the table in honor of 
fellow Soviet Jews unable 
to celebrate the holiday. As 
more Soviet Jewish families 
resettled in Metro Detroit 
and the rest of the country, 
knowledge about the wide-
spread issues they faced in 
getting approval to emi-
grate continued to grow.
“There was a lot of red 
tape,” Yost recalls. Some 
Soviet Jews waited upwards 
of years for approval, often 
losing their jobs in the 
meantime. Others, like the 
refuseniks, waited years and 
were still denied, becoming 
ostracized from society 
and pushed into a state of 
limbo.
In 1983, Weiner and a 
group of volunteers decided 

Rae Sharfman, on the far right, with a group 
of Soviet Jewry activists in Israel three years 
ago. 

SHARFMAN

Jeannie 
Weiner

