A rally for Soviet Jewry on Simchat Torah in 1983. (Center for Jewish History)

This May 1 will mark the 50-year anniversary of the first Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) demonstration on behalf of Soviet Jews. The man who inspired that demonstration and became the father of the movement, Jacob (Yaakov) Birnbaum, died at the age of 87 on April 9.

Birnbaum founded the SSSJ and, together with others including Glenn Richter, developed the first national grassroots Soviet Jewry movement. But Birnbaum’s legacy was much greater than any organizational affiliation.

Birnbaum was a heroic, legendary figure. In certain ways, his life paralleled the biblical story of Jacob the very Jacob about whom the Passover Haggadah declares, arami oved avi – “my father (Jacob) was a wandering Aramean.”

Jacob Birnbaum was also a wanderer. Born in Germany, his family escaped to England when he was a young boy. After World War II, he became involved in resettling the remnants of Eastern European Jewry. Having seen the horrors of the Shoah firsthand, he resolved to do all he could to save Soviet Jewry.

And so, in the early ‘60s, after coming to New York, he continued to wander — wandering from room to room in Yeshiva University dormitories, wandering the halls of Columbia University, searching, searching for students who would join him in a campaign to free the millions of Jews trapped behind the Iron Curtain. He was unyielding, uncompromising, relentless, stubborn, steadfast and tenacious – he persevered no matter the obstacles.

After wandering for years, the biblical Jacob proclaims, “I crossed the Jordan with my staff, and now I’m accompanied by two large camps.”

This, too, is the story of Jacob Birnbaum. When he came to these shores he had little. But today, as he leaves this world, one could proclaim loudly and clearly that the camps he accompanied were large, numbering well over a million Soviet Jews. And American Jews, too, are part of his camp, as Jacob Birnbaum inspired us in the West to stand up for our brethren in the East, and identify ourselves proudly and clearly as Jews.

Birnbaum was the first. Inspired by his grandfather, Nathan Birnbaum, who is known to have coined the term “Zionism,” Jacob Birnbaum was the first to sound the alarm in America. He was the first to insist that we must collectively cry out in order to save Soviet Jewry; the first to lead the masses into the streets in front of Soviet missions and embassies around the world; the first to understand the spiritual power of the movement and incorporate religious slogans and songs into it.

Indeed, Birnbaum was the first to recognize that not only did we have a responsibility to direct our protests against the Soviet Union, but, we also had the obligation to insist that our own government, the United States, do more, much more, to press the Soviets to let our people go.

Sadly, Birnbaum would often be peremptorily cut off by establishment figures who understood far less than he about the issue at hand. They eventually co-opted many of his original ideas but accorded him virtually no credit for his pioneering work.

In the early ‘60s, Birnbaum asked Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach to compose a Soviet Jewry theme song. The words go back to the biblical narrative, when Joseph, after 22 years of separation from his father, Jacob, asks his brothers, ha’od avi chai – “is my father still alive?”

And today, all of the Jews from the Soviet Union and all of their descendants can declare, yes, Jacob Birnbaum, our father, the father of the Soviet Jewry movement, lives on. On his shoulders we, his sons and daughters from the former Soviet Union and from the free world sing out as one, Am Yisrael Chai, the people of Israel live.

Avi Weiss is the senior rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale-The Bayit. He served as national chairman of the SSSJ from 1983-1991. His memoir on the Soviet Jewry movement, “Open Up the Iron Door,” is scheduled for publication this summer. 

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