“Jewish children have to be reminded how much strength the Jewish people have; you will not find anything like the story of the Jewish people,” Natan Sharansky told The Jerusalem Post on Monday in a conversation about Jewish education, Jewish pride, and rising antisemitism.
Sharansky is an Israeli politician, author, and former chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency. He was born in 1948 in what is now Donetsk, Ukraine, to a Jewish family.
After unsuccessfully attempting to obtain a visa to Israel in 1973, he became a refusenik and activist, a move which led to his arrest and imprisonment by the KGB in 1977. In 1978, he was sentenced to 13 years of forced labor.
After nine years in prison under harsh conditions, Sharansky became the first political prisoner to be released by Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986. He then moved to Israel.
“To succeed as a Jew is to survive,” he told the Post.
“I grew up in the Soviet Union when we had no freedom and no identity. So I couldn’t risk my freedom because I didn’t have my freedom. And I couldn’t hide my identity because I had no identity.
“In my childhood, in the first 20 years of my life, the only Jewish thing I had was antisemitism. So no tradition, no holidays, no books, no language, no brit mila [“circumcision”], no bar mitzvah, but a lot of antisemitism.
“And the message from your parents was that because you’re a Jew, you must be the best in physics, mathematics, whatever, because only professional success can somehow weaken the pressure.”
Sharansky discovers freedom before entering Israeli politics
This, Sharansky said, changed after the Six-Day War, when Jews in the Soviet Union began to connect to Israel and learn about their identity – albeit underground.
“You discover that there is a great history that you want to be a part of. There are great people, there is a great country.
Then, there suddenly appear values in your life which are bigger than survival, than political career, professional career, and then you have enough strength to say publicly that you want to go to Israel; that you want to be Jewish.”
Freedom, for Sharansky, means speaking your thoughts without self-censorship, and it is something he discovered in Israel.
However, it is also while working as the state’s interior minister that he realized that the “free world” was not as free as he thought.
“In 2003, I had my trip as a minister of Israel to certain different universities; it was the time of the Second Intifada. I discovered that there are more and more Jews in the best universities in America – at Harvard, in Columbia, in Berkeley – who want very much to express their solidarity with Israel, but they’re afraid that it will condemn their careers.
“I thought, my God, it’s not 30 years ago in Moscow University!”
Sharansky then wrote an article published in Maariv called “Traveling to Occupied Territory,” in which the “occupied territory” he referred to was the American universities. He recalled telling then-Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon that this was “the most important battle for the future of Jewish people, because our survival depends on whether we have a proud, strong Jewish identity.”
This battle front has changed significantly over the past two decades, he said. Sharansky said at the time that it was purely a metaphoric battle; however, post-October 7, the occupation of campuses became physical, real.
“It certainly became much worse, because it became open, legitimate.”
Sharansky said this increasing hostility has been particularly shocking to progressive Jews, who spent so much money and time on developing relations with progressive organizations they believed to be allies. “And it was all wrong.”
“We started losing this battle when Jews started being afraid to speak openly,” Sharansky said. “I hope we are now turning the tide, because more and more students are not afraid to speak their mind.”
“The fact that the leading minds of the American Jewish community are coming to this conclusion is a source of optimism. But it is very difficult for people in the free world who want to be accepted.”
Sharansky told the Post that the focus must now be shifted to Jewish education. More specifically, bringing up the next generation of Jews to be proud of their identity and to know their history.
Yael Foundation aims to promote Diaspora education
He served last week as a judge for the Yael Foundation’s awards ceremony. The foundation aims to improve Jewish schools worldwide and provide Jews in the Diaspora with a rich and varied Jewish education.
Sharansky praised the Yael Foundation for doing what is important: teaching children about modern Jewish victories, and not just those of the past, such as in the times of King David.
“We have to speak all the time about the optimistic side of our state. That we are on the winning side of history. Yes, there were pogroms, there were crusades, there were massacres, there was the Holocaust. Yet still we survive, and we continue living in accordance with our values for thousands of years.”
Speaking at an event two days ago, Sharansky told US Jewish students to speak to their parents and grandparents about how they fought for the freedom of Soviet Jews.
“I was saying to them, go to your parents and ask them how they were fighting for their brothers and the Soviet Jews.
“For 25 years, hundreds of thousands of American Jews, wanted to travel to the Soviet Union to demonstrate to admit Jews [to the US], to demonstrate for them, to lobby in the Senate. And they defeated the Soviet Union.”
“The KGB would ask me: ‘Who is supporting you? A bunch of students and housewives?’ And yes, it was Jewish students and Jewish housewives, and Jewish lawyers, and of course, the people of Israel. They defeated the most powerful party in the world. And as a result, there was the modern-day Exodus: One and a half million Jews left the Soviet Union.”
“So [Jewish children] have to be reminded how much strength the Jewish people have, and not only in biblical times.”
Sharansky considers himself an optimist, but he is especially optimistic about the Jewish future.
“I believe that our history, our very tragic history, is very optimistic. You will not find anything like this. Not in terms of survival of a people, not in terms of rebuilding after thousands of years and gathering in exiles and rebuilding the state.”
“So yes, I am optimistic,” he concluded.