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Soviet Jews

Avner Landes, author of 'The Delegation.' (Courtesy)
July 26, 2025, 7:40 am
The semi-true story of two Soviet Jews sent abroad by Stalin to fundraise during WWII
Avner Landes discusses his new book ‘The Delegation,’ an account of the adventures – and dark fates – of an actor and poet sent to raise money from coreligionists in the West
By Janice Weizman
Israel Barsuk poses in his Brighton Beach, New York, apartment, circa 2005-2015. Barsuk fought for the Red Army against the invading Germans and Axis allies. (Jonathan Alpeyrie)
May 8, 2025, 8:18 am
To mark 80 years to Germany’s surrender, a war photographer chronicles Jewish WWII veterans
As Victory in Europe Day is celebrated on May 8, the stories of those who fought in the Red Army for freedom are captured in photos and interviews on the battles against Axis forces
By Jonathan Alpeyrie
Beniamin Levishvili, 23, is the gabbai of the ancient synagogue in Akhaltsikhe, Georgia. His late father Simon and grandfather Ioseb Levishvili held the position before him. (Sofia Poznansky)
April 18, 2025, 8:23 am
In Georgia, a 23-year-old maintains a venerable synagogue, the last remnant of his community
Soviet repression caused most Georgian Jews to flee, leaving behind a 2,500-year-old history whose memory is beginning to fade. In his village, one young man seeks to preserve it
By Sofia Poznansky
'How the Soviet Jew Was Made' by Sasha Senderovich. (Courtesy)
February 11, 2023, 8:56 am
‘How the Soviet Jew Was Made’: A tale of wandering, oppression, language and lore
In his award-winning book, Prof. Sasha Senderovich mixes a rich, centuries-old body of Yiddish folklore with early 20th-century events to define a notoriously nebulous Jewish group
By JP O’ Malley
Supporters for the freedom of Soviet Jewry rally in front of the Soviet consulate in San Francisco in a undated photo. (Courtesy of American Jewish Historical Society)
February 7, 2023, 4:17 pm
FBI memo: Bay Area Soviet Jewry protest leaders secretly sought Jews for Jesus’ help
Freedom of information request yields stunning revelation that leadership recruited the well-organized but widely loathed proselytizing group to help organize and bolster crowds
By Asaf Elia-Shalev
Chinese censors did not allow a local company to print copies of 'The Queen of Cleveland' for American publisher Hasidic Archives. (Book cover image courtesy of Hasidic Archives/ via JTA)
October 9, 2022, 3:03 am
Chinese censors ban the printing of Hasidic woman’s memoir for a US publisher
Citing ‘anti-Communist’ content, authorities won’t let locals print ‘The Queen of Cleveland,’ Shula Kazen’s story of surviving the Iron Curtain, even though it would be sold abroad
By Asaf Elia-Shalev
Yelena Lembersky, author of 'Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour.' (Courtesy)
July 26, 2022, 1:43 am
Relics of a USSR both maddening and sweet emerge in blockbuster Jewish memoir
Yelena Lembersky’s ‘Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour’ is a surprisingly even-handed tale of escape from the Iron Curtain with her grandfather’s famous Babyn Yar massacre paintings
By Julie Masis
Vladimir Kritsman, left, the principal of Kyrgyzstan's only Jewish school, Pri Etz Haim, gives a tour to EU Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Eduard Auer on June 27, 2022. (EU in Kyrgyzstan)
July 6, 2022, 4:06 am
Inside the international campaign to save Kyrgyzstan’s only Jewish school
When Pri Etz Haim-Ort was served an eviction notice, a Jewish leader got Israel, the EU, US and others to pressure local authorities to come to the aid of the tiny community
By Judah Ari Gross
Illustrative: Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, and hospital chief Denis Protsenko, right, walk in the Kommunarka hospital on March 23, 2020. (Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)
March 26, 2022, 2:39 am
A brave voice from Russia: Dr. A on the national mood, his work, the loss of freedom
Speaking to ToI despite the threat of prison time for criticizing Russia, a Jewish physician discusses life, medicine, and the future, in a country yet to internalize its isolation
By David Stromberg
Immigrants fleeing from Ukraine arrive at the immigration and absorption office at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv on March 15, 2022. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)
March 18, 2022, 7:40 am
Israel has opened its arms to Ukrainian immigrants. But will they have equal rights?
Many new immigrants expected to join the ranks of those with ‘no religion,’ leaving them unable to be married in Israel; rabbinate suspicion of Jewish status will only grow sharper
By Amy Spiro
Rabbi Yosef Khersonsky cuts the ribbon at the grand opening of the Jewish Point congregation's new synagogue building in Tel Aviv. (Courtesy)
September 3, 2021, 10:49 am
Tel Aviv’s 1st Russian-speaking congregation says ‘da’ to young progressives
Cutting-edge and open-minded, Jewish Point challenges clichés that Israelis from former Soviet states don’t embrace spirituality, as it celebrates its ribbon cutting this week
By Alex Surin
Illustrative: Matzahs travel on the production line of the Tiferet HaMatzot factory in Dnepro, Ukraine, December 8, 2014. (Cnaan Liphshiz/JTA)
March 26, 2021, 11:18 pm
Why Jews in former Soviet Union eat most matzah per capita
In Azerbaijan people consume 2.7 pounds per person, in Russia 2.4 pounds — dwarfing the average consumption of unleavened bread cracker among most Jews
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Russian solders, left, take pictures with a tree decorated for Christmas and New Year celebrations in Moscow, Russia, December 21, 2018. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)
December 30, 2020, 6:16 am
For many Jews from FSU, New Year’s Eve always involves a Christmas-style tree
Many Jewish people who left the Soviet Union maintain the ‘yolka’ tree tradition, celebrating the secular symbol connected to Novy God, or the Russian New Year
By ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY
Left: Jewish-Soviet engineer Anatoliy Davidovich Daron was responsible for the rocket engine that put Sputnik I into space. (Courtesy); Top right: A replica of the Sputnik I satellite in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. (Public domain); Bottom right: This undated picture shows a Russian Vostok rocket on its launcher, the same type which propelled Yuri Gagarin to be the first human in space on April 12, 1961. (AP Photo/File)
December 18, 2020, 8:39 pm
USSR engineer made space flight possible despite facing virulent anti-Semitism
Anatoliy Daron, who recently died in US at 94, fled two Nazi massacres, lost his job in the Doctors’ Plot, then, while living in a cramped shared flat, invented Sputnik’s engine
By Julie Masis
Protesters with old Belarusian national flags march during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus, September 20, 2020. (AP Photo/TUT.by)
December 18, 2020, 6:16 am
Belarus Holocaust survivor won’t waver after hefty fine for flying protest flag
87-year-old Elizaveta Yakovlevna Bursova, who survived WWII hiding in the Urals and later became a sharpshooter for her country’s military: ‘This symbol unites our whole society’
By Joe Baur
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