12 | APRIL 28 • 2022 

PURELY COMMENTARY

mitzvah in June. She thought 
he ought to “adopt” a Jewish 
boy in the USSR with whom 
to share the milestone. In the 
end he did, and he (and/or my 
mother) wrote to Mikhail in 
some distant Soviet province. 
Nobody ever heard back from 
Mikhail, but plans on our end 
in New Jersey went uninter-
rupted, just without the “ben-
efit” of Mikhail necessarily 
knowing that a Jewish boy in 
New Jersey had “twinned” his 
bar mitzvah, or what that even 
meant. 
I had a different takeaway. 
My bar mitzvah had been four 
years earlier. I never heard of 
the “adopt a Jewish refusenik” 
idea then. A refusenik was a 
Jewish person who formally 
applied through the tightly 
controlled Soviet bureaucracy 
(which just happened to be 
antisemitic) to leave the USSR 
and was refused. With refusal 
came a series of discriminato-
ry and even legal threats, leav-
ing Jews who stepped forward 
wishing to leave marked as 
traitors or worse.
Because in 1979 there had 
been a relatively large number 
of Jews given permission to 
leave (yes, they couldn’t just buy 
a ticket and go, they actually 
needed permission from the 
state), a larger number of Jews 
applied to leave, hopeful that 
they’
d also be given permission. 
But when the doors were shut 
again, that just left that many 
more Soviet Jews in the cross-
hairs of Soviet society, stuck and 
branded as refuseniks. 
The idea was that by “adopt-
ing” the Soviet Jewish teens, 
we were showing solidarity, 
we were calling the Soviet 
authorities to task, and we 
were keeping the families in 
the public eye so nothing bad 

would happen to them. 
So why was this Hadassah 
Magazine article so impactful 
to me? I honestly felt cheated, 
that nobody had given me the 
opportunity four years earlier 
to twin my bar mitzvah, much 
less really even know about 
the persecution of Soviet Jews. 
Not to be left out, I adopted 
a family of my own. Not to 
share or twin anything, just to 
help them, help raise aware-
ness and be part of a move-
ment that I understood then 
was important and historic. 

MY SOVIET ‘FAMILY’
My commitment to work to 
get my adopted family out 
spared no efforts. Though 
most were confiscated by the 
KGB, I wrote monthly letters 
and received a few replies. My 
college essay was about my 
commitment, basically enlist-
ing any university that would 
accept me to be partners in 
that. I attended countless 
Solidarity Sunday and other 
demonstrations. 
 I went to college, bringing 
with me my adopted family, 
and got Emory to admit the 
oldest daughter, Katya, as a 
student in special standing. I 
made phone calls to them (not 
an easy thing at all consider-
ing they didn’t have a phone 
and the KGB monitored all 
the phone lines) that were 
broadcast publicly, making 
her the most famous overseas 
student at Emory. I engaged 
many others in this cause so 
that it was not just me, but a 
team. Numerous students and 
faculty became involved. 
 We launched the most 
unique petition with each sig-
nature on a single link of what 
became a huge paper chain 
that I delivered to the Soviet 

embassy. 
I launched my first fund-
raising campaign ever, $2,000, 
to join an official Soviet tour 
in July 1985. I was 20, went 
to the USSR on my own with 
no cell phone (but the com-
puter I brought was another 
story). I taught myself to read 
Russian so I could get by on 
my own, as unnoticed as an 
American student could be. 
Without the benefit of cell 
phones, Google maps or any 
other such modern device, I 
was able to meet Katya at a 
metro station before going to 
her home where I gave her an 
application to Emory, which 
she filled out and brought to 
me the next day. Oh, and I 
proposed marriage within an 
hour of meeting her and her 
father, with the scheme (illegal 
as it is) to get her U.S. citizen-
ship, use that to get her out of 
the USSR, and use that to get 
her family out. I already said 
crazy, right? 
Who knew that two years 
later, when I planned my trip 
to begin a Soviet civil mar-
riage process, that because 
of my activism, they would 
already be out of the USSR, 
four out of fewer than 900 
Jews allowed to leave the 
Soviet Union in 1987. The 
story attracted attention from 
several local and national 
media. 
None of this is to do any-
thing other than illustrate 
how deeply I got involved, 
and how that one article was 
so transformative, not just 
then but still two generations 
later. It’s been a significant 
two generations because, in 
that time, all the Jews of the 
former Soviet Union who have 
wanted to leave have done 
so: another Exodus of no less 

significant proportions for the 
Jewish people. Also, it’s rare 
in this generation that people 
not alive then have any under-
standing of the significance 
of the persecution of Soviet 
Jews, the broad-based global 
movement to free them, and 
how successful we were. It’s 
critical that this history not be 
forgotten. 
Who knows, maybe some 
parent will read this article to 
his or her child and it will be 
so impactful that it will trans-
form that person to take on 
a commitment to Israel and 
the Jewish people, when the 
threat’s different but no less 
real. I look forward to reading 
that person’s story 40 years 
from now. 

Jonathan Feldstein was born and 
educated in the U.S. and immigrated 
to Israel in 2004. Throughout his 
life and career, he has worked to 
build bridges and relationships with 
Christian supporters of Israel and 
shares experiences of living as an 
Orthodox Jew in Israel, writing for 
many Christian websites, and as the 
host of the Inspiration from Zion pod-
cast. He can be reached at 
firstpersonisrael@gmail.com.

 
CORRECTION: 
• In “Three Jewish State 
Legislators Strive to be 
Effective in a Challenging 
Environment,” (April 21, 
page 26) some of the facts 
about State Rep. Samantha 
Steckloff were incorrect. 
Rep. Steckloff attended 
Purdue University, not 
Michigan State University. 
She worked at Hillel at the 
University of Kansas and 
the Hillel at the University of 
Michigan. Her mother, Vicki 
Barnett, is also the current 
mayor of Farmington Hills.

40 YEARS SINCE continued from page 4

