opinion
Jonathan Feldstein
W hen I read about the arrest of American
Jewish Wall Street Journal reporter Evan
Gershkovich, in Russia on March 29, my
mind went back to the 1980s.

In July 1985, I went to visit Abe Stolar. Stolar was
well into his 70s. We bonded immediately, two
American Jews, me listening to his stories intently,
in his native Chicago accent. The strange thing is
that I was not visiting Stolar and his wife, Gita, in
Chicago, the place of his birth, or in New Jersey, the
place of my birth. I was visiting Stolar in Moscow, the
Soviet Union.

Like many Russian Jews, Stolar’s parents fl ed
Czarist Russia. They arrived in Chicago, a year before
Stolar was born. In 1931, with the U.S. still suff ering
from the Depression, exacerbating a degree of
communist revolutionary fervor, Stolar’s parents
decided to go back to the USSR. Within fi ve years,
Stolar’s father was taken from their home by Stalin’s
police (NKVD) during the infamous purges in which
many Jews became victims. Stolar’s father was never
seen again. Despite being an American citizen,
Stolar saw no way back to Chicago.

In 1975, Stolar, his wife and their son applied for
exit visas. They received permission to leave, and
sold all their belongings. On July 19, 1975, their
permission was revoked. The Stolars were detained
just before boarding the plane, forced to return to
their empty Moscow apartment, hopeless.

I met Stolar a decade later, almost to the day. He
was clearly frustrated and desperate to leave, but he
was jovial, friendly and welcoming. Two years later,
I went back to Moscow and visited Stolar again. He
was more hopeful as he saw signs that things in the
USSR were changing, but he was still an American
citizen forcibly detained in Moscow.

As soon as I heard of Gershkovich’s arrest, I
thought of Stolar. Gershkovich was arrested on
charges of espionage by Russia’s Federal Security
Bureau, the successor to the KGB, and Stalin’s
NKVD. It’s the fi rst time Russia has accused a
foreign journalist of espionage since the
Cold War.

There are many parallels between Abe Stolar and
Evan Gershkovich. Both are American Jews, both
detained in Russia, both children of Russian-born
Jews who emigrated to the U.S., and both went
back to Russia as young men, albeit Gershkovich
went of his own accord in a professional capacity.

14 MAY 4, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
He probably didn’t know about Stolar, and
that there was a precedent for Russia
detaining American-born Jews.

Shortly after Gershkovich’s
arrest, Jews around the world
were asked to set an extra
seat for him symbolically at
their Passover seder table.

Leaving seats empty
at the seder table was
done at the height of the
movement to free Soviet
Jews, the time when
Stolar fi rst tried to leave
and when Gershkovich’s
parents actually left the
USSR. Setting empty seats at a
seder table is meaningful
because Passover is the
holiday during which we
celebrate our freedom. Jews
detained, arrested, imprisoned
as Jews (on trumped-up charges)
is evocative of the enslavement of
Jews in Egypt. This creates awareness,
and is meaningful especially when the
person for whom that seat is set is a Jew being
forcefully detained. It builds solidarity, but is unlikely
to do anything on its own to eff ect a change in
Russian policies, or free someone who has been
arrested. It’s clear that Russia is using Gershkovich to retaliate
or as leverage against the U.S., or both. Gershkovich’s
arrest will intimidate other Western journalists still
reporting in Russia, making a black hole of already
limited information coming out of Russia even deeper
and darker. Perhaps Gershkovich was not targeted
as a Jew, but it’s now no longer unusual for Jews in
Russia to be in the Kremlin’s crosshairs.

Stolar’s case became very personal to me.

Especially after my adopted Soviet Jewish family
was permitted to leave in 1987, I stepped up my
activism on his behalf, one of many doing so. When
I read about Gershkovich, something additional
and personal struck me. Albeit some years after
I graduated, Gershkovich also graduated from
Princeton High School, in the suburban New Jersey
community in which I grew up and where my Soviet
Jewry activities began.

Espionage was one of the trumped-up charges
the Soviets used against Jews. It seems that
it’s in Russia’s playbook as well under Putin,
a former KGB agent.

As much as things have changed in the past decades,
it’s astounding to see how much they have stayed the
same. The pin and bumper sticker I still have from my
Soviet Jewry activism days, “Russia is Not Healthy
for Jews and Other Living Things,” are more than just
nostalgic collectors’ items, but still a sad truth.

The Soviets then, and Russia today, need motivation
to change. Optics matter. In the 1980s, I initiated
protests at the Russian Embassy in Washington,
participated in other massive protests and called
Soviet embassies all over the world to make my
protest heard in their offi ces, to frustrate and
embarrass them, and make it no longer worthwhile to
use Jews or others as pawns. The Russian Embassy
can be reached at 202-298-5700. ■
Jonathan Feldstein is president of the Genesis 123
Foundation and RunforZion.com, building bridges
between Jews and Christians. He is host of the
“Inspiration from Zion” podcast. He and his family
made aliyah in 2004.

Image courtesy of Jonathan Feldstein
Russia is Not Healthy for Jews
and Other Living Things