
A Letter to Golda
Fifty years ago, a group of daring Georgian Jews openly asked for freedom. Their ‘Letter of the Eighteen’ remains one of the most consequential moments in the history of European Jewry, paving the way for the exodus of 1.5 million Soviet Jews.

The Letters of the Eighteen
The full English text of the letters that spawned the exodus of Soviet Jewry

Q&A With Yosef Begun
The great Soviet dissident and refusenik talks about discovering Hebrew, foiling the KGB, and surviving the ‘banya’

Ilya Kaminsky’s ‘Deaf Republic’
National Poetry Month: A long-anticipated new collection infuses beauty and irony into a dystopian war epic

A Soviet Jewish Front in the War on Christmas
Russian Jews used Christmas trees as weapons to fight back against the Kremlin’s war on religion

Recipes for Survival
Whether they’re the hand-bound sheets my mother took when we emigrated from the Soviet Union, or the synagogue sisterhood collection I still use to make latkes, cookbooks contain more than ingredients—they contain whole Jewish lives

In the Vernadsky Library
Newly digitized recordings offer an unprecedented glimpse of the Ukrainian-Jewish past

Can Officially Sanctioned Soviet Yiddish Culture Be Cool? Where Are the Queers? And Other Tablet Soviet Week Questions
Rokhl’s Golden City: Jewish Bolsheviks, Yiddish songs, ‘Comrade Stalin,’ and the year that changed the world

From Radiohead to Klezmer
My winding journey through music mirrored my journey of Jewish discovery

John V. Lindsay Builds a Sukkah
How a liberal mayor learned to embrace Jews’ international and cultural concerns to court their vote, and changed New York City politics

Morris Abram and the Perversion of Equality in America
As the Civil Rights activist and former Brandeis president nears his centennial, are we any closer to his goals for liberty and justice for all within the law?

New Doc Details 1970 Refusenik-led Escape Attempt to Israel
‘Operation Wedding’ is directed by Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov, whose parents led the Leningrad plane hijacking that was ultimately foiled by the KGB

My Struggle for Soviet Jewry, and Kate Shtein
The epic story of how one American Jew became ‘twinned’ with a coreligionist in Soviet Russia he eventually helped bring to freedom—and why it taught him so much about true resistance and activism

A Graphic Account of a Soviet Daughter
Julia Alekseyeva’s moving tale of her great-grandmother, a Russian refugee, and the perils and promises of idealism

Reality Bites, for Immigrants With Smartphones
Lara Vapnyar’s ‘timely’ and ‘insightful’ new novel, ‘Still Here,’ wonders what the American dream looks like to former Russians

How an American Jewish Opera Star Accidentally Launched the Soviet Jewish Movement
The 60th anniversary of Jan Peerce’s landmark Cold War Moscow show, where a final encore pointed the way to deliverance

A Fourth of July Story
Independence Day is doubly special for the legendary refusenik Natan Sharansky and his family. He sits down for a wide-ranging interview about his wife Avital, love among Jewish people, and the promise of freedom.

The Matzo Cover That Made ‘Next Year in Jerusalem’ More Than a Mantra
My father smuggled Jewish artifacts into the Soviet Union. He took back to Israel a matzo cover signed by Soviet Jews who hoped against hope one day to join him–and did.

Woo! Woo! Statue of Liberty in Sheepshead Bay!
A Jewish refugee from Uzbekistan had an American Dream

Am I Like Rachel Dolezal?
‘I performed Jewish. I lived Jewish. And nobody owns the right to tell me if I am Jewish or not.’

Arthur Miller’s Forgotten Masterpiece
‘Incident at Vichy,’ a play about rounding up Jews and Roma, held lessons for Soviet Refuseniks

‘Tzena Tzena’ Composer Issachar Miron Dies
Acclaimed Israeli writer and poet brought Jewish music to the masses

Remembering Ralph Goldman, Lifelong Champion of the Jewish State
The ardent Zionist and devoted Jewish civil servant died last week at age 100

David Bezmozgis’ Brilliant Alt-History of an Adulterous Sharansky Who Never Was
New novel ‘The Betrayers’ boldly places at its center the most famous refusenik and all he represents for Soviet Jewry

Technology Helps U.S. Jews Track Gaza Conflict From Afar
The latest in a long tradition of creatively supporting embattled Jews abroad

Criminal Attachments: Immigration, Family, and Fraud in Soviet Brooklyn
Boris Fishman’s dark new novel explores the tensions between a grandson and his elders as he evolves into an American

The Head of the Jewish Community of Ukraine Speaks Out Against Putin
Soviet dissident and Freedom Prize winner Josef Zissels becomes a Ukrainian Jew
