{"id":1242,"date":"2017-10-17T13:44:06","date_gmt":"2017-10-17T13:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjhblog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2017\/10\/17\/civil-disobedience-of-the-american-clergy-on\/"},"modified":"2017-10-17T13:44:06","modified_gmt":"2017-10-17T13:44:06","slug":"civil-disobedience-of-the-american-clergy-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2017\/10\/17\/civil-disobedience-of-the-american-clergy-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Civil Disobedience of the American Clergy on Behalf of Soviet Jews"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Andrey Filimonov, Archival Services Manager at
\nthe Center for Jewish History<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/figure>\n

Screenshots from \u201c<\/i>Civil Disobedience\u2014Demonstration and Clergy Arrest
\nat Soviet Consulate, November 18, 1985.<\/i>\u201d Original archival material found <\/i>in
\nthe <\/i>Records
\nof the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews and Bay Area Council for Jewish Rescue
\nand Renewal, I-505<\/i><\/a>; box 100; VHS tape 69; American Jewish Historical Society, New York, NY;
\n<\/i>http:\/\/digital.cjh.org\/<\/a><\/i>4633168 <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

One of the VHS tapes in the American Jewish Historical
\nSociety\u2019s (AJHS) Archive of the American Soviet Jewry Movement<\/a>,
\nrecently digitized at the Center for Jewish History with a grant from the Blavatnik Family
\nFoundation, documents a protest rally in front of the Soviet Consulate
\nin San Francisco on November 18, 1985. The footage shows a group of over 20 rabbis
\nfrom the Bay Area, wearing placards with the names of Soviet Jewish Prisoners
\nof Conscience\u2014including Ida Nudel, the subject of a previous post
\non the 16th<\/sup> Street Blog<\/a>\u2014chaining themselves to the consulate’s fence
\nto protest the oppression of Jews in the USSR. The camera follows the group of
\nrabbis as they are approached by the police, asked to leave, refuse to do so,
\nare arrested and led away by the police officers. <\/p>\n

Picketing of
\nthe Soviet consulates in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and New York was a
\nfrequently-used tactic of American Soviet Jewry movement activists during the
\n1970s and 1980s as one of the very few ways to directly approach
\nrepresentatives of the Soviet government and to raise public awareness of the
\nstate-sanctioned oppression of Jews in the USSR. Some of the most vocal
\nparticipants in such demonstration were religious leaders, who would often
\ndeliberately get themselves arrested by the police to amplify their message. <\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/figure>\n

\u201cNational rabbinic leaders being arrested for
\ndemonstrating in front of the Soviet Embassy in <\/i>Washington, DC,
\nMarch 27, 1986.<\/i>\u201d Original archival material found <\/i>in the <\/i> American Soviet Jewry Movement Photographs
\nI-495<\/i>; box
\n1; folder 4; photo 060; American Jewish Historical Society, New York, NY; <\/i>http:\/\/digital.cjh.org\/<\/a><\/i>409476<\/i><\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The American
\nJewish Historical Society holds the papers of Rabbi Leonard Cahan<\/a>, an American Soviet Jewry Movement
\nactivist who deliberately planned his own arrest and jail sentence for
\ndemonstrating on behalf of Soviet Jews in front of the Soviet embassy in
\nWashington, D.C., on May 1, 1985. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Rabbi Cahan
\nof Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac, Maryland, served as president of the
\nWashington Board of Rabbis, which sponsored many demonstrations aimed to raise
\npublic awareness of Soviet Jewry\u2019s plight. During one such event on May 1, 1985,
\nCahan, with a group of over 20 rabbis and a Lutheran minister, was arrested by the
\nWashington, D.C., police for violating the city code by demonstrating within
\n500 feet of the embassy and ignoring police warnings to disperse. Rabbi Cahan was
\namong the eight rabbis sentenced to six months probation, a $50 fine, and a
\nsuspended jail term. Five of the rabbis, including Cahan, Steven Bayar, Bruce
\nKhan, David Oler and Mark Levine chose to serve their 15-day sentences in jail,
\nto show solidarity with the Jews in the USSR, oppressed by the Soviet
\ngovernment. The rabbis were released after spending 12 days in the Federal
\nCorrectional Institute in Petersburg, Virginia.<\/p>\n

The
\ncollection contains letters and telegrams of support from Jewish organizations
\nand individuals to Rabbi Cahan, materials of the Washington Board of Rabbis,
\nbrochures with prison rules and regulations received by Cahan during his prison
\nterm, paperwork regarding his admission and service at the prison camp, and local
\nand national press coverage of his case.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/figure>\n

\u201cRabbinic Action for Soviet Jewry
\ndemonstration in front of the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco; May 1, 1985.\u201d <\/i>Original archival material
\nfound <\/i>in
\nthe <\/i> American Soviet Jewry Movement Photographs
\nI-495<\/i>;
\nbox 1; folder 4; photo 056; American Jewish Historical Society, New York, NY; <\/i>http:\/\/digital.cjh.org\/<\/a><\/i>409468<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

A previous 16th<\/sup> Street Blog posts, entitled \u201cWe must do our
\nshare in the community of mankind\u201d\u2014the voice of Bayard Rustin in the American
\nSoviet Jewry movement<\/a>, provides examples of non-Jewish civil rights
\nactivists participating in the American Soviet Jewry movement. Similarly, the
\nreligious leaders who chose to engage in acts of civil disobedience on behalf
\nof Soviet Jews were not exclusively Jewish. An example of this is well-documented
\nin another AASJM collection at the American Jewish Historical Society, the papers of an ordained Lutheran minister, Reverend
\nJohn Frederick Steinbruck (1930-2015)<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Rev. Steinbruck served for 28 years as the senior pastor of
\nLuther Place Memorial Church (Memorial Evangelical Lutheran Church) in
\nWashington, D.C., and became well known for his work confronting the effects of
\nracism, discrimination, homelessness, economic inequality, and other social
\ninjustices. Rev. Steinbruck was a firm believer in interfaith solidarity. In
\n1968, he co-founded a Protestant-Jewish-Catholic interfaith coalition
\n“Project of Easton,” to cooperate in solving social problems of each
\ncommunity. The coalition marked the beginning of Rev. Steinbruck’s life-long
\npartnership with the Jewish community and involvement in Jewish causes,
\nincluding that of the Soviet Jewry. In the 1970s, at the initiative of Rev.
\nSteinbruck, the Luther Place Memorial Church adopted several Soviet Jewish
\nPrisoners of Conscience and managed to expedite the release of one of them and to
\nnegotiate for improved conditions for the others. On two occasions, in 1980 and
\n1985, Rev. Steinbruck visited Refuseniks in various regions of the Former Soviet
\nUnion. He was detained upon arrival in the Moscow airport and later harassed by
\nthe KGB for attempting to deliver materials on Judaism and Hebrew and other
\ngifts to the Refuseniks trapped in the USSR. From 1970 until 1990, Rev.
\nSteinbruck and his congregants participated in the Soviet Jewry Vigil, a daily
\ndemonstration across the street from the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C.,
\nprotesting the treatment of Soviet Jews. In the 1980s, Rev. Steinbruck was
\nrepeatedly arrested for demonstrating on behalf of Soviet Jewry in front of the
\nSoviet embassy in Washington, D.C. One of the arrests resulted in a 15-day
\nsuspended jail term. <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Andrey Filimonov, Archival Services Manager at the Center for Jewish History Screenshots from \u201cCivil Disobedience\u2014Demonstration and Clergy Arrest at Soviet Consulate, November 18, 1985.\u201d Original archival material found in the Records of the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews and Bay Area Council for Jewish Rescue and Renewal, I-505; box 100; VHS tape 69; American Jewish Historical Society, New York, NY; http:\/\/digital.cjh.org\/4633168 One…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[74,75,76,82,79,2,83,3,9,80,38,81,77,78],"class_list":["post-1242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post","tag-ajhs","tag-american-jewish-historical-society","tag-american-soviet-jewry-movement","tag-andrey-filimonov","tag-audiovisual","tag-digital-archives","tag-interfaithsolidarity","tag-jewish-archives","tag-jewish-history","tag-movement-to-free-soviet-jewry","tag-out-of-the-archives","tag-refuseniks","tag-soviet-jews","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}