HIDDEN HEROES- Book Review

Here's Pamela Braun Cohen at the book launch
 talking about her book. Next to her is
Ilan Greenfield of Gefen Publishing House.

Hidden Heroes: One Woman's Story of Resistance and Rescue in the Soviet Union by Pamela Braun Cohen, Gefen Publishing House is an amazing and inspiring story. Pamela Braun Cohen had been an ordinary suburban Jewish wife and mother in 1970 when by chance she heard a newscast about Soviet Jews unsuccessfully trying to escape the USSR...

For Cohen this news was lifechanging. Blessed with a supportive husband, Pamela Braun Cohen became more than just a Soviet Jewry activist. She visited the USSR meeting the refuseniks, becoming their friends and supplying them with everything from jeans to be sold on the black market to the support of US President Ronald Reagan and other powerful American politicians.

Natan Sharansky

Before long she was National President of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews UCSJ, and by the time she was ready to retire from that position, decades later, she and her family had become Torah observant (Orthodox) Jews. In HIDDEN HEROES Cohen tells how the Soviet Jews' interest in Torah brought it also to her and her family. Also following the the aliyah to Israel of many former refuseniks,  Pamela and her husband Lenny now live in Jerusalem.

My husband and I at the 
book launch

It's no secret that my husband and I met for the first time at a SSSJ Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry demonstration. We were activists until our wedding and subsequent aliyah that same summer of 1970 when Pamela Cohen first got involved. So, obviously, I felt very connected to her story.

HIDDEN HEROES is a real eye-opener, even for me who had been following the struggle of Soviet Jews from the middle 1960s and then welcomed those who made it to Israel, especially Shiloh, over two decades later. I had no firsthand knowledge of the multitude of issues Cohen and her fellow activists dealt with. She and her fellow workers/volunteers/activists were busy on three fronts simultaneously, not just the totalitarian antisemitic USSR but the governments of the United States and Israel, too.

The best I can do is to wholeheartedly recommend HIDDEN HEROES. Buy it. Read it. Give it as gifts to everyone, from teens to retirees.

Dozens of people attended the book launch, so it had to be held outdoors.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gefen Publishing House (July 18, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 965702336X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9657023365

Celebrating Fifty 50 Years in Israel, Part 1

I've chosen this photo to head my celebratory post, because it's "dreamy," and for me life in Israel, the Holy Land is definitely living a dream.     

next to the ship

                                                                                          

Some of you may have read my husband's post about our aliyah, move to Israel,  Fifty Years to Our Aliyah.   I promised friends and family my version of the story. My "version" isn't to disparage my husband's. It's just that everyone knows that we all remember things slightly, or sometimes not quite "slightly," differently. Each perspective adds to the richness and accuracy.

Neither my husband nor I come from  a Zionist family. Not only wasn't the idea of moving to Israel an ideal we were raised with, but the idea was never even mentioned. My Uncle Izzy had been one of the American volunteers on the pre-state ships defying the British bringing Holocaust survivors to the Holy Land, but he didn't talk about it at all. 

It was only after a few years of my being a member and office holder in NCSY-National Conference of Synagogue Youth and a prominent activist in SSSJ-Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry that a high school friend, Dennis Avi Lipkin, introduced me to the concept/ideology of "aliyah-moving to Israel, the Holy Land, the Land of Israel." Dennis brought me to a Betar Zionist Youth Movement meeting, and I was hooked. 

The more I had learned about American History, the more I was convinced that the United States was a Christian country. I wanted to live as a true Jew in the Jewish State. Aliyah was the perfect solution. My time during my final high school year was split between becoming more Torah Observant, campaigning to rescue Soviet Jewry from the communists and preparing myself for life in Israel. As you may well imagine, that left little time for studies. I even skipped my GNN'67 graduation, because it was interfered with NCSY National Convention. Priorities!

Betar prides itself on being welcoming to all Jewish youth, regardless of their religious observance or not. I quickly imagined that a religious Betari would be just perfect for me, although during that first year as a member, nobody seemed to fit the bill. The following summer, between high school graduation and the beginning of my studies in YU's Stern College for Women, I attended SSSJ's "Fast-In for Soviet Jewry" on the Tisha B'Av fast. That's where I met  "Winkie" who is today known officially as Yisrael Medad and is now my husband. He had just returned from a year in Israel.

Just under three years after we had met for the first time, we got married and two months later we boarded the Greek Lines Anna Maria along with over five hundred others making aliyah to Israel, the Jewish Holy Land. We were all set to live the dream.

our bon voyage party, with family

Family and friends accompanied us onto the ship for a rousing bon voyage party. We were full of smiles, though not all the family felt the same. We had made the arrangements, and even had a job lined up. It was a fait accompli for sure. Fifty years down the road we are still in Israel, as are our children and grandchildren.

We weren't the only ones traveling on the Anna Marie to begin new lives as Israelis in Israel. Over five hundred other Jews were with us. Besides friends and family wishing all of us a bon voyage, there were news crews. I was interviewed for a television news show. I remember explaining that as a Jew I needed to live in a Jewish country not a Christian one. Our families reported that they featured me and my answer on TV.

For close to two weeks we enjoyed the vacation facilities, three meals a day, movies and entertainment on the ship. They provided lots of kosher food. Not only was there a separate kosher dining room, but a sizable section of the main dining room had been roped off for kosher food only. We were assigned to a table in the main dining room which we shared with a family moving to Jerusalem. 

There were a few other newlywed couples, pre-children, like ourselves, and we enjoyed their company. Towards the end of the "cruise" there were two stops, Lisbon and Piraeus, so we got to tour a bit. Finally we docked in Haifa Port after Shabbat, September 5, 1970.

Jewish Agency and government Aliyah clerks boarded the ship to register us as "Israelis." There were also journalists excited to write write up the historical unprecedentedly large aliyah from the USA. In addition we were greeted by a young New York Betari, Barry Liben, who was on the program my husband had been on four years earlier. Barry had been entrusted with the responsibility of finding us accommodations for our first night together in Israel. He joined us on the special bus to Jerusalem and then snuck us into the dormitories of Machon Limadrechei Chutz L'Aretz, where he was studying. Barry had convinced one the of the girls to give me a bed and my husband was in his room. A few years later, Barry married my husband's cousin and built a thriving travel business. 

hanging laundry in Maon Betar

The job we had was actually in my husband's name. He was the dorm counselor/director of the Maon Betar in the Old City of Jerusalem. Residents were university students, singles and special cases... 

We were given a one bedroom apartment with minimal kitchen and furnishings. It didn't have a washing machine, and I'd fill the bathtub with laundry, which I washed by hand. Then I'd hang it on the unfinished terrace. After a few months the terrace was closed off and roofed. So my husband began hanging it on the domed roof of the building, which puzzled the Arab women who hung their wet laundry on the neighboring roof tops. 

I think this post is long enough as an "introduction" or part 1. Gd willing, I'll write more in the future about our first year in Israel as Israelis.

Memories, Soviet Aliyah to Shiloh

Way back when almost everything done in Shiloh was done by volunteers, I spent some amazing years on the Vaadat Klita, the committee that accepted and rejected and recruited new residents for Shiloh. I was truly privileged to have been on that committee when Soviet Aliyah was at its peak, and the masses of olim chadashim from the USSR were looking for new homes and lives in Israel.

This week I was reminded of those exciting days; I was very moved to hear how some of those now veteran immigrants remember me.

When I realized that I'd be home at the time of an Azkara, memorial ceremony at the grave of a neighbor who died a couple of years ago, it was obvious to me that I had to attend. The first of that clan came to Shiloh as a young married expectant couple looking for a clean, unpolluted healthy Jewish environment to raise their family. I was on the committee at the time, and we welcomed them joyfully. Soon they were joined by a newborn plus two more older generations and siblings.

As time went on, the young families left, and the older ones stayed on in Shiloh. At the cemetery, surrounded by young children, they talked about how much Shiloh means to their family and how glad and grateful they are to have been welcomed here.

We reminisced about the time when they first came to Shiloh. According to the normative criteria aka our standard instructions, almost none of the Soviet olim, immigrants "fit in," but we just couldn't turn them away. It felt wrong. So we consulted with the community rabbi who gave the perfect psak, answer according to Jewish Law and human nature:

"Accept all who want to live in Shiloh. Those who should be here will stay, and the others will leave when they're ready. It's important to show them full acceptance in their difficult adjustment period."

And that's what happened. Some stayed and some left. And quite a few of the elderly will be here until Redemption, since they are buried in our cemetery.

Later that evening I paid a shiva call to the family of another family of Soviet olim. Here too the first to come to Shiloh was a young family, followed by the older generation who have been the only ones living here for years already. The mourner was very happy to see me and told the now adult children that if it hadn't been for my support they most probably would never have been accepted to live in Shiloh. Again I told the story of what the rabbi had instructed us.

I was so touched. It had never occured to me that anyone found my efforts unforgettable and worthy of praise and thanks.

In my teenage years I had been very active in SSJ Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, and my helping the olim settle in Shiloh was a miraculous way to continue the dream. In the 1960s if someone had told me that hundreds of thousands Soviet Jews would be in Israel, and I'd be helping them in Shiloh, I'd have trouble believing it possible. But miracles happen.

My Story on Beit Hatfutsot, Diaspora Museum Site

As part of the Senior Citizen program in the Ofra Girls High School, I told "my story" to the "harav dori," multi-generation site of The Museum of the Jewish People, Beit Hatfutsot, formerly called The Diaspora Museum.

ממחול בניו יורק לתפילה בתל שילה From Dancing in New York to Praying in Tel Shiloh

It's in Hebrew, as you can see if you click above. I know that they also have an English version of the site, and I have to find out how to redo my story in English.

There are two basic aims to this oral history program. Besides having the stories of thousands of Jews from all over the world on their site, the museum also wanted the younger generation to hear about the lives of us older ones. That's why we were matched up with high school students, who asked us questions and typed up the stories on the computer.

Since our program began last fall, we've participated in many activities in which we "veteran Israelis" got to tell the teens about ourselves. I went from feeling that I had either no story worth telling or too many to choose from. This isn't meant to be a full biography, just one small but important aspect of my life.

When I found a couple of pictures of my marching/dancing, while holding an Israeli flag, at the 1970 Salute to Israel Parade in New York, it seemed like the perfect example of my "old life" to contrast with my present one. In the mid-late 1960s I was one of the prominent Jewish student "activists" in New York, SSSJ, NCSY, Betar and more. Today we live in Shiloh, and over a decade ago I initiated women's Rosh Chodesh Prayers at Shiloh Hakeduma, Tel Shiloh.

Yesterday, as part of the program with The Museum of the Jewish People, Beit Hatfutsot, we went to the museum for a special tour. I hadn't been there since it had first opened forty years ago. They've changed it so much, not just the name.

To continue to build our connection with the students, we were told to walk around various exhibits with them and choose the items that we both felt connected to. By doing this we shared experiences and backgrounds. The students are the ages of our grandchildren, so they know very little about us. It was a very interesting exercise.

I definitely recommend visiting The Museum of the Jewish People, Beit Hatfutsot, and hope to go again, soon.

I couldn't resist a selfie next to this photo of olim chadashim, new immigrants leaving a ship, since we, too, made aliyah by boat, though about fifteen 15 years after this photo was taken.

"Foot Soldiers" For a Dream

I was sent the article, To the Foot Soldiers of the Soviet Jewry Movement by Connie and Joseph Smukler.

In some ways I can relate to it, but in other ways, not at all. The writer refers to what was done by what my peers called the "activists" but in the article "foot soldiers" twenty to thirty years ago. That's when Save Soviet Jewry demonstrations were mainstream, acceptable activities by the Jewish establishment.

Forty years ago, when we were very involved and active members of SSSJ, the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, it was something new, revolutionary, daring and unacceptable by most Jewish organizations. Now in retropsect, you can say that we were the vanguard, but then it was more a matter of being young and idealistic and looking for a cause which was Jewish, rather than American or international. It seemed wrong to concentrate our energies on Black civil rights, when our fellow Jews had neither civil rights nor religious freedom in the USSR.

The "Sixties" were a special time. We dreamed the impossible dream, and that's why just months after our aliyah to Israel we were joined by masses of Soviet Jews and then again, just twenty years later when even more, until the numbers totaled over a million. In the mid-1960's when the banging of Krushtchev's shoe still echoed in the news, who would have believed that thirty years later, the USSR would only be a very short chapter in World History and most of Soviet Jewry would have immigrated to freedom?




These pictures of our "Third Seder" Demonstration for Soviet Jewry are from Betarim in North America. Yes, I appear (as does my husband) in these pictures.