Natan Sharansky, Jewish Ukrainian; Russian Refusenik: Israeli

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Anatol Natan Sharansky, b: January 20, 1948, a Ukranian  computer scientist by profession, was refused permission to emigrate to Israel in 1973 by Russia.  He was then arrested in 1977.  Anatol was kept in solitary confinement for 18 months and then sentenced in 1978 to 13 more years imprisonment.  Finally, he was released in 1986.  Israeli politician today, age 74 born3 months before Israel's birth, was 32 when my Hebrew teacher wrote to him in Russia's prison.   

I made aliyah in September 1980 and lived in Haifa in an ulpan for the required 10 months required for teachers from other countries to become teachers in Israel.  We attended a school program there learning conversational Hebrew and passing a 3 hour test in it, and also taking history classes about Israel, teaching Hebrew speakers, and visiting schools and how they fared teaching English as a foreign language which was an important requirement to master by high school.  

My Hebrew teacher was Sarah, who spoke English very well.  In fact, quite often she's stop and discuss things with us.  At the time, my husband and I were just a few Americans in a class well over 40 with the majority being Russian teachers who spoke a modicum of English and had been English teachers in Russia.  A few were from Canada and England.  Any Americans were from the East Coast, and we were the only ones from the West.

Sarah had a pen-pal in Russia who was in prison, a Jew put there who was caught studying Hebrew.  Sarah continued writing to him and somehow managed to teach Hebrew that way.  His name was Natan Sharansky.                 

Avital's wife, who fought to get him out of prison is   Natalia Stieglitz (Ukrainian: Наталія Стігліц, Russian: Наталья Штиглиц) in Ukraine, 1950; married name also Shcharansky) is a former activist and public figure in the Soviet Jewry Movement who fought for the release of her husband from Soviet imprisonment.

Natan Sharansky (Hebrew: נתן שרנסקי; Russian: Ната́н Щара́нский; Ukrainian: Натан Щаранський), born Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky, is an Israeli politician, human rights activist, and author who, as a refusenik in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s, spent nine years in Soviet prisons. He served as Chairman of the Executive for the Jewish Agency from June 2009 to August 2018. Sharansky currently serves as chairman for the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), an American non-partisan organization.  He took the name, Natan, after arriving in Israel.  

I had forgotten much about Natan until one day, a lawyer friend of mine said to me, "Oh, I hate that Natan Sharansky!"  Why, I asked?  What do you know about him?  Why should you hate him so much?  He never could give me an answer, but I wondered about the sanity of some of my Americans.  This lawyer knew absolutely nothing about Israel or Jews, but he hated Netanyahu and Sharansky, that I learned.  

Sharansky was born into a Jewish family on 20 January 1948 in the city of Stalino (now Donetsk) in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union.

His father, Boris Sharansky, a journalist from a Zionist background who worked for an industrial journal, died in 1980, before Natan was freed.

February 11, 1986, when he arrived in Israel, celebrating with his mother 6 months later.   

His mother, Ida Milgrom, visited him in prison and stubbornly waged a nine-year battle for her son's release from Soviet prison and labor camps. She was permitted to follow her son to Israel six months after he left the Soviet Union.

                                        

Chess master Boris Gelfand (left) plays a game of chess against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (far right) and Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky in 2010 (photo credit: Alex Kolomoisky/Flash90)  Boris Gelfand is a Soviet-born Israeli chess player. A six-time World Championship candidate, he won the Chess World Cup 2009 and the 2011 Candidates Tournament, making him challenger for the World Chess Championship 2012.

He had been a special child.  As a child, he was a chess prodigy. He performed in simultaneous and blindfold exhibitions, usually against adults. At the age of 15, he won the championship in his native Donetsk. Sharansky graduated with a degree in applied mathematics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. When incarcerated in solitary confinement, he claims to have maintained his sanity by playing chess against himself in his mind. Sharansky beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a simultaneous exhibition in Israel in 1996.

Natan Sharansky and Avital Sharansky have two daughters, Rachel and Hannah. In the Soviet Union, his application to marry Avital was denied by the authorities. They were married in a friend's apartment, in a ceremony not recognized by the government, as the USSR only recognized civil marriage and not religious marriage.

 This means that all Jewish marriages were denied in Russia 

during this period.  

Sharansky was denied an exit visa to Israel in 1973. The reason given for denial of the visa was that he had been given access, at some point in his career, to information vital to Soviet national security and could not now be allowed to leave. After becoming a refusenik, Sharansky became a human rights activist, working as a translator for dissident and nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, and spokesman for the Moscow Helsinki Group and a leader for the rights of refuseniks.

On 15 March 1977 Sharansky was arrested by the KGB, then headed by Yuri Andropov, on multiple charges, including high treason and spying for several Americans. The accusation stated that he passed to the West lists of over 1,300 refuseniks, many of whom were denied exit visas because of their knowledge of state secrets, which resulted in a publication by Robert C. Toth, "Russ Indirectly Reveal 'State Secrets': Clues in Denials of Jewish Visas". High treason carried the death penalty. The following year, in 1978, he was sentenced to 13 years of forced labor.That means he had this grueling punishment to bear until 1981.  

Alan Dershowitz became one of Sharansky's lawyers when he was imprisoned by the Soviets.  It was after his release that he made aliyah and eventually started his own political party, which won several seats in the 1996 election.  He wound up in Israel's cabinet by 1996.  I heard him speak at a synagogue in Portland, Oregon before 2009.  

Due to his age and poor health, he was exempted from the standard compulsory three years' IDF service, but had to undergo three weeks of military training and do a stint in the Civil-Guard.

  My husband was 42 when we entered Israel.  He had been in

the air force  in the states but had  developed a serious 

 physical condition, sarcoid.  We both  went through 3 days of 

training in shooting a gun he used in the air force, he said. 

 We also did something like Civil guard going out on patrol with

 others in a van.  I took my female German shepherd

 with me, as husband and wife did this separately.

Anatoly Sharansky meeting then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres after his release from the Soviet Union               

 Sharansky was appointed Minister of Jerusalem Affairs.

From March 2003 – May 2005, he was Israel's Minister without Portfolio, responsible for Jerusalem's social and Jewish diaspora affairs. 

Under this position, Sharansky chaired a secret committee that approved the confiscation of East Jerusalem property of West Bank Palestinians. This decision was reversed after an outcry from the Israeli left and the international community.  We're not a shy people.  When Israelis see a wrong, they speak out quickly.  Sharansky was learning. 

Sharansky and President Ronald Reagan, December 1986
 

One must remember that his Russian background denied him any Jewish education, all religious services, all his Jewish culture that his parents had had.  Even learning Hebrew with Sarah must have been extremely difficult under the condition he was under.  Luckily he was bright.  

Previously he served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, Minister of Housing and Construction since March 2001, Interior Minister of Israel (July 1999 – resigned in July 2000), Minister of Industry and Trade (1996–1999).

He resigned from the cabinet in April 2005 to protest plans to withdraw Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank.

Sharansky is congratulated by President George W. Bush after receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, December 2006

He was re-elected to the Knesset in March 2006 as a member of the Likud Party. On 20 November 2006, he resigned from the Knesset.

In June 2009, Sharansky was elected to the Chair of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel by the Jewish Agency Board of Governors. In September 2009 Sharansky secured $6 million from the Genesis Philanthropy Group for educational activities in the former Soviet Union.

He is a founding member of One Jerusalem.

                                            

I decided that he was hated  by my lawyer friend because he was connected to Likud and Netanyahu, and Netanyahu has been my idol;  a man who is the best speaker I've ever heard, and isn't even American with a vocabulary that beats most of us, and the ability to debate intelligently.  When we lived in Israel, Begin, Shamir and Peres were the Prime Ministers. 

Years after his release, Sharansky stressed the need he maintained throughout his imprisonment to remain emotionally independent. He attributed his survival of the lengthy incarceration and the brutal conditions to his resistance to any sort of emotional surrender. Hence Sharansky's expression of the paradox that while an ordinary Russian, he was in fact a slave to the system; but that once he discovered his Jewish roots and was restricted for his allegiance to them, he was in reality a free man. Sharansky's memoirs of his years as a prisoner of Zion are described in his book Fear No Evil.  By Becoming a Jew which he was born into, he was no longer a slave to the system of the USSR.   

  

Resource:

The Vanishing American Jew, by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natan_Sharansky

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://blog.nli.org.il/en/sharansky-seder/

   

The Return to Israel: Making Aliyah; Difficulties By Ship

Nadene Goldfoot                                   
                                                                       

Ending up after 10 months in Haifa in Safed, Israel.
Here's our apartment, car and Blintz, with us all the time.
I taught at the junior high across the street.    

I made Aliyah in September 1980 from Portland, Oregon and landed in Tel Aviv's large airport after our plane made an unscheduled landing in Holland.  We stayed overnight because our plans went askew.  Our destination of the Ulpan was closed due to being on strike.  We managed to be able to stay at a hostel in Tel Aviv where only a young man was on duty who spoke no English, and we spoke no Hebrew as yet.  Because we had been involved in Little Theater in Eastern Oregon at TVCC, we acted out the need for water.  (Oh why hadn't I learned that important word?)  We were given one cup for the 2 of us.  We went outside and found a grocery store, stocked up a basket of food, went to the counter only to find we could not buy a thing because we had no Israeli money.  The next morning I had an interview with the House Mother who gave me a cup of hot tea and cookies, my first food and drink!  I was so grateful.  I had cried that night and wanted to return to Oregon!  I was stuck, had to follow through.  Finally we got a sheroot with a Russian driver who did not know how to drive to Haifa, our destination.  Somehow, we got there.  All this time we had our female German shepherd with us, Blintz, as we wouldn't leave without our "baby." 
                                                  

 Making this decision for Aliyah was not easy.  We had faced my husband going to work at his high school where he taught in Adrian, Oregon, and having comic books distributed there by some anti-Semites.  These comic books were full of lies about Jews, of course.  To top it off, skinheads from Idaho were meeting in my husband's favorite coffee shop where he had attended town meetings, and these out-of-towners were carrying guns.  They were there on a Friday night.  We decided to make Aliyah.  It was time.  

In 70 CE, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans who had looted the 2nd Temple which had been rebuilt in 538 BCE and burned it and the city down; killing everyone or capturing them to become slaves.  Some people managed to escape.  Then from 132 to 135 CE,  the Jewish General Bar Kokhba took back Jerusalem  and held it for those 3 years, killed in battle in 135 CE.  Jews had been barred from entering their capital since that had been King David's capital (1010-970 BCE).  

By 1121 CE, some 300 Jews went to Palestine as it was then called, named by the Romans for Israel's most hated enemies.  They came from France and England.  This return to their land was called, making Aliyah, a "calling up" in which they looked forward to read the Scroll of the Law in a synagogue setting during Shabbat.  

In 1267 Nahmanides (Rambam-Moses Ben Nahman) went to Palestine.  He was followed by a group of disciples.  Rabbi of Gerona (Aragon) in Spain.
In 1488, Obadiah of Bertinoro was followed by groups of disciples, while as a result of the Spanish Inquisition of 1492, many Sephardi Jews, including an important kabbalistic circle, entered the country. Born in Italy.  His journey to Palestine lasted for 2 1/2 yrs., settled in Jerusalem and founded a Yeshiva.  His graphic letters to his father describing his journey and conditions in Palestine are among the classics of Hebrew travel-literature.   
By 1564, Joseph Nasi's resettlement attempt brought groups into the land from Italy. Born a Marrano in Portugal as Joao Miguel, went to Antwerp in 1536, in 1554 in Contantinople to embrace Judaism publicly as Joseph Nasi.  
In 1700, 1500 Jews arrived from Eastern Europe in response to Rabbi Judah Hasid's call.  A Kabbalist, born in Podolia, with 1,500 followers set out for Palestine.  Many lost their lives on the way, reached Jerusalem in 1700, but Judah died a few days after his arrival.  Followers were persecuted on suspicion of Sabbataianism and many returned to Europe.  

In the latter 18th century, there was a considerable influx of both Hasidim and followers of the Vilna Gaon. (Elijah Ben Solomon Zalman) Talmudist, from Lithuania. At age 60 he set out for Palestine but returned before reaching it.   

From 1850 to 1880, the 30 years preceding the BILU, it is estimated that 20,000 to 30,000 Jews settled in Palestine.  
1882-1903: The 1st Aliyah:   Zionism caused an influx who were organized to come in large groups mainly from Russia where Jews were experiencing many pogroms.  They were led by the BILU.  300 families and additional smaller groups arrived from Russia;  450 pioneers from Romania, and a few dozen from the Yemen.  

In 1884, an attempt by the HOVEVE ZION to coordinate immigration resulted in the KATTOWITZ CONFERENCE OF 1884.  The Turkish authorities, part of the Ottoman Empire, made many difficulties for the Jews, but an increasing number of agricultural settlement were founded.  

In 1890, further persecutions against Jews were continuing which sent thousands of Russian Jews to Palestine, but the number dwindled during the rest of the decade.                         

It is estimated that 25,000 Jews immigrated during this First Aliyah, but a number kept on immigrating.

The 2nd Aliyah from 1904-1914 also was made up of Russians when, during this period,  the Kishinev and Homel pogroms and the failure of the 1905 Revolution had been happening.  Many of these newcomers were motivated by socialist idealism.  35,000 to 40,000 Jews entered Palestine during this period, many from Eastern Europe and oriental countries.  A number left the country after a time, but in 1914, the Jewish population was 90,000, falling to 50,000 by the end of World War I.  

The Balfour Declaration gave the impetus to the 3rd Aliyah  from 1919-1923 in which the youthful element predominated.  Members of the HE-HALUTZ took the lead.  By 1920, free immigration was permitted to people with the means of subsistence, craftsmen, those joining their families, and Talmud students whose upkeep was assured, in addition, a quota was fixed for immigrants whose maintenance was guaranteed by the Zionist Organization.  These regulations were modified the next year but the principle didn't change.  Annual immigration figures for 1920 to 1923 averaged 8,000 and at the end of the period, the country's Jewish population was again about 90,000.  (My mother was born in 1913).  

The 4th Aliyah from 1924-1931 (The Great Majority from 1924-1925) brought in 80,000 more. They came from Poland where Jews suffered from fiscal restrictions.  Many of the newcomers were middle-class, some "capitalists"; owners of 500 lbs and later 1,000 lbs.  A number couldn't handle the challenge, especially during  the 1926 depression, but there were 190,000 Jews in Palestine in 1931.  

The 5th Aliyah from 1932-1940 fell into 2 periods: 
     1932-1935:  This was the beginning of the Nazi persecutions when 144,000 immigrants came
     1935:  62,000 immigrants came in this year alone and Palestine had economic prosperity.  YOUTH ALIYAH was founded.  
    1936-1940  was the period of Arab riots and economic depression, when aliyah was restricted by the Mandatory government, first for economic reasons and later for political reasons.  
        1936-1938, there were 53,000 immigrants that entered Palestine. 

1939:  MacDonald White Paper  was issued which recommended that only 75,000 further Jews be allowed admission during the next 5 years and then Aliyah would be dependent on Arab agreement.  
  During this year, 36,000 Jewish immigrants entered during this 2nd phase of the 5th Aliyah which included 15,000 "illlegal" immigrants who came in without government permits between 1939-1940.  

The 6th Aliyah from 1941-1947 was a period of struggle against restrictions on immigration.  Many tragic things happened, like the ship, EXODUS; PATRIA; STRUMA).  During the latter years, many intending immigrants were interned in Cyprus.  85,000 Jews arrived in this time, of whom 28,000 were "illegal immigrants."  
                                                   

June 1940 Patria, ship carried French Jews from France to Haifa.  Despite her new designation Patria remained laid up in Haifa until the beginning of November 1940. In that month the Royal Navy intercepted three chartered ships; the SS Pacific, SS Milos and SS Atlantic, that were carrying Jewish refugees from German-occupied Europe to Palestine. The refugees lacked permits to enter Palestine so the British authorities ordered their deportation to British Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Refugees from Pacific and Milos had been put aboard Patria, and embarkation of refugees from Atlantic had begun, when on 25 November a bomb planted by a Haganah agent blew a hole in the side of Patria's hull. She listed to that side and sank in 16 minutes, settling on the harbour bed with part of her hull and superstructure above water.

By the time of the attack almost 1,800 refugees had been embarked aboard Patria, along with a crew of 130 and numerous British guards. The majority of those aboard were rescued but 172 were injured and between 260 and 300 were killed. The majority of victims were Jewish refugees but about 50 were crew and British guards; 209 bodies were recovered and buried in Haifa.

1947:  Exodus, ship carried 4,500 Jews from France.  They were turned back to France by the British with the Mandate. The British concluded that the only option was send the Jews to camps in the British-controlled zone of post-war Germany, They realized that returning them to camps in Germany would elicit a public outcry, but Germany was the only territory under their control that could immediately accommodate so many people"Of the 4,500 would-be immigrants to Palestine.   There were only 1,800 remaining in the two Exodus camps by April 1948.  Within a year, over half of the original Exodus 1947 passengers had made other attempts at emigrating to Palestine, which ended in detention in Cyprus. Britain continued to hold the detainees of the Cyprus internment camps until it formally recognized the State of Israel in January 1949, when they were transferred to Israel.
The Struma disaster was the sinking on 24 February 1942 of a ship, MV Struma, that had been trying to take nearly 800 Jewish refugees from Axis-allied Romania to Mandatory Palestine.  It joined that of SS Patria – sunk after Haganah sabotage while laden with Jewish refugees 15 months earlier – as rallying points for the Irgun and Lehi revisionist Zionist clandestine movements, encouraging their violent revolt against the British presence in Palestine.  The deaths were 781 Jewish refugees, 10 crew members (5 Bulgarian, 3 or 4 Jewish, one Hungarian)
                                                       

April 14, 1948 DECLARATION OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL, 750,000 Jews
  Free Jewish immigration was declared.  The survivors of Nazi slaughter in Cetral Europe;  the internees in Cyprus, the Jews in countries behind the IRON CURTAIN, and Jewish communities under Arab Rule such as Yemen, Iraq were transferred to Israel under the auspices of the Jewish Agency's Immigration Department.  

 In 1970s and since 1989 with mass Aliyah from the USSR, Total immigration figures for the period 1948-1990 were as follows:

1948-101,819;                    1963-64.364;             1978-26,594;
1949-239,076;                    1964-54,716;             1979-37,222;
1950-170,215;                    1965-30,736;             1980-20,428; me
1951-175,129;                    1966-15,730;             1981-12,399;
1952- 24,369;                     1967-14,327;             1982-13,723;
1953- 11,326;                     1968-20,544;             1983-16,906;
1954- 18,370;                     1969-20,544;             1984-19,984;
1955- 37,348;                     1970-36,750;             1985-10,642;
1956- 36,324;                     1971-41,980;             1986- 9,505;
1957- 71,224;                     1972-55,888;             1987-12,965;
1958- 27,082;                     1973-54,886;             1988-13,304;
1959- 23,895;                     1974-31,979;             1989-24,050;
1960-24,510;                      1975-20,028;           1990-199,526;
1961-47,638;                      1976-19754;            1991-175,000;
1962-60,328;                      1977-21,429;   

From 1989 to 2006, 979,000 Russian Jews made Aliyah to Israel.  I had many in my Hebrew class in 1980, even then.  They could not go back to Russia.  Israel helped them financially.  They could not practice Judaism in Russia.  They were not allowed to learn Hebrew in Russia, either.  Many came with Gentile wives.  Many in my class were English teachers-with Russian accents, of course!    That wasn't the total number of Jews that left Gorbachev's USSR.  1.6 million left.  Others probably went to the USA. 
                                                       

 My teacher, Sarah,in Haifa,  had been writing letters to Natan Sharansky, who was in prison.  She tried to teach him Hebrew that way.  Her English was perfect, too. He made Aliyah, and became an Israeli politician, human rights activist and author who, as a refusenik in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s, spent nine years in Soviet prisons. He served as Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency from June 2009 to August 2018.    
                                                        

As of 2020, Israel's population is now 8,655,535 which is 0.11% of the total world population.  About 6 million of this number are Jews.  The others are Arabs and others.  The land of Israel had been pared down from the original size when the majority of it on the eastern side of the Jordan River was given to Abdullah from Saudi Arabia  for a state.  Out of this number, 6.8 million are Jews.  Israel's population is made up of 6.8 million Jews (74%), 1.93 million Arabs (21%), and 454,000 non-Arab Christians or adherents of other faiths (5%), the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) said on Sunday.  Israel's current population has reached 9.2 million, including over one-quarter Arabs and other non-Jews, according to official new statistics.
  
 As a reminder, Joshua entered Canaan with 603,730 Jews according to their 2nd census.  They had lost 3,820 along the way besides having many new-borns.  The trek took 40 years.     

Right now the world is experiencing another surge of anti-Semitism.  There are some rabbis who are urging Jews to make Aliyah now, with the advent of the Moshiach's arrival which they feel is very soon, under the circumstances happening and from reading information from their computer using the Bible Code.  
According to official statistics, 28,629 olim arrived in Israel between January and October 2019. Only a decade ago, the number of olim for roughly the same period stood at 17,179.

Yom HaAliyah is an Israeli national holiday celebrated annually according to the Jewish calendar on the tenth of the Hebrew month of Nisan to commemorate the Jewish people entering the Land of Israel as written in the Hebrew Bible, which happened on the tenth of the Hebrew month of Nisan. Wikipedia

Date: Sat, Oct 24, 2020 – Sun, Oct 25, 2020

Observed by: State of Israel

Resource;
The New Standard Jewish Ecyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_post-Soviet_aliyah
Letters From Israel, by Nadene Goldfoot; from 1980; letters  to my mother, children

,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Patria_(1913)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Exodus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struma_disaster