Soviet Jewry

Fighting for belonging: A Jewish boxer's extraordinary journey through poverty, faith, and tragedy

Within a decade, Yuri Foreman became a world champion, representing a country where he had once struggled to feel accepted and carving out a place in the long history of Jewish boxing.

CELEBRATING HIS VICTORY over Daniel Santos in Las Vegas on Nov. 14, 2009, alongside legendary promoter Bob Arum, after becoming Israel’s first major professional boxing world champion. Arum had told Foreman that promoting a Jewish world champion was one of his ambitions.
Alex Silnitsky addresses a gathering of former Prisoners of Zion and aliyah activists at the Heritage Ministry in Jerusalem on October 5.

Former Prisoners of Zion, aliyah activists, discuss plans for new Soviet Jewry heritage center

 Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy takes part in a commemoration ceremony for the victims of Babyn Yar (Babiy Yar), one of the biggest single massacres of Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv Ukraine September 29, 2022.

85 years later: Babyn Yar and the fight against deliberate erasure - opinion

FIVE JEWISH couples get married in Brazil on Lag Ba'omer.

Five Jewish couples marry in Brazil in front of 900 young Jews from former Soviet Union


How Israel risks distancing the Russian Jewish community - opinion

After years of harmful rhetoric, Israel risks losing some major supporters in Russian Jewish businessmen.

Olim attend an event marking 25 years of the great aliyah from the former Soviet Union,  in Jerusalem in 2015. Do we no longer have the resolve to save Jews?

'Your Presence Is Mandatory': Connecting Ukraine’s past and present

Traversing time and geography through literature.

 UKRAINIAN WAR prisoner, guarded by serviceman of the separatist self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic army, awaits the next round of prisoner exchange, in Alexandrovka village

Remarkable Soviet Jewish women and their struggle for freedom

Not free to live as Jews, these women risked their lives to escape the Soviet Union, where they faced imprisonment for engaging in Zionist activity

 ‘OPERATION WEDDING’ poster. Designed for Hillel by shnorkels.com

Soviet Jewry's unsung heroes - opinion

Rabbi Jonathan Porath is well-known within his activist and conservative circles. For most of us, however, he is an unsung hero of the movement to liberate Soviet Jewry.

 JEWS IMMIGRATING from the former Soviet Union, 1990.

What historical events occurred due to hijacking of Soviet Plane in 1970?

As history has shown, the position of informal organizations actually met the interests of the whole world.

 Aeroflot's An-2, the same plane Dymshits-Kuznetsov group tried to hijack

'The Dissident': A tale of a Jewish refusenik's deal with the KGB - review

The Dissident illuminates the human rights movement and the struggle of Soviet Jews to get permission to move to Israel,

 RUSSIAN PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin (R) meets with former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger at the Kremlin in Moscow, 2017.

'The History of Birobidzhan': The Jewish land on the Russia-China border - review

The history of Brobidzhan, a town established in the Soviet Union almost 100 years ago, reminds us of the many other ideological rivals to a Hebrew republic in the Land of Israel.

 SIGNS OF Jews in Birobidzhan in 2012.

The Jewish story behind ‘Oppenheimer,’ explained

“To the outside world, he was always known as a German Jew, and he always insisted that he was neither German nor Jewish,” said author Ray Monk.

 The mushroom cloud of the first test of a hydrogen bomb, "Ivy Mike", as photographed on Enewetak, an atoll in the Pacific Ocean, in 1952, by a member of the United States Air Force's Lookout Mountain.

Estonia set to become first ex-Soviet state to back gay marriage

A vote is due early next week. LGBTQ+ activists hope Estonia's parliament will back a government bill that would allow gay and lesbian couples to marry and win the same rights as heterosexual couples

Tartu, Estonia.

American Jews need a Soviet-style activist defense org. - opinion

In using public protests and street demonstrations to attract notice, Soviet Jewish activists changed Jewish history.

 AVITAL AND Natan Sharansky, reunited after 12 years, smile during an airport news conference upon his arrival in Israel, in 1986. The dynamic for Soviet Jewry changed with the founding of SSSJ, says the writer.