From the early 1960s until beginning of the 1990s, the American public opinion mobilized in favor of the Jews living in the Soviet Union, requesting in various ways the authorities in Moscow to ´let them go´. Jews from the Soviet Union represented the noble cause of many politicians - Jewish or not - cultural and religious personalities, in the US and abroad.
In October 1963, wrote professor Shaul Kelner in his forthcoming A Cold War Exodus. How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews, the members of a synagogue club in Cleveland, Ohio, established a Committee on Soviet Anti-Semitism. This will be the first American organization dedicated to aiding Soviet Jews. In addition to the efforts of the state of Israel herself to offer a smooth passage through Nativ and other initiatives more or less public, a whole network of organisations and movements operated in the US on behalf of them, both from the right and from the left.
What the book extensively analyses is the extent of the network and the strategies, including by tracing the specific alliances between some of those organisations with stake holders and non-Jewish organisations and initiatives. ´For a generation, this social movement shaped Jewish Amerians´ civic and religious culture´, mentions Kelner and his efforts are aimed at revealing important aspects for the general history of social and cultural movements during the Cold War.
Kelner´s book is an important contribution that tries to extract the lessons learned of the mobilization on behalf of the Soviet Jews in the US for the overall history of social movements. It uses fine anthropological and sociological approaches and sources of very diverse nature. A recommended book for historians of the Cold War as well as researchers in the field of Soviet Jewish studies.
Rating: 5 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
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