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permission was revoked.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



Can Israel Defy History —
Again? L
effectively ended when it was split into
the two competing kingdoms of Judea
and Israel. The Hasmonean kingdom
ast week
marked Yom
began to fall apart due to infighting
Haatzmaut, our
beloved between the sons of Alexander and
Israel’s 75th birthday — the
Shlomtzion, the rulers of Judea in the first
day on the Hebrew calendar when
century BCE.

David Ben-Gurion proclaimed “the
Sovereign Jewish history tells us that
natural right of the Jewish people
at around the 75th year, experiments in
to be masters of their own fate” by
Jewish self-determination faced the most
establishing a Jewish state in the land
dangerous threat of all: self-destruction.

of Israel.

On its 75th birthday, Israel and its
Together with countless Jews
supporters face the internal tensions of
around the world, we express our
sovereignty: What does it mean for Israel
gratitude to be alive at this moment
A coin
minted during
the rule
of Mattathias
Antigonos (40-37
B.C.E.) toward
to be both a Jewish and democratic
in history when the Jewish people
the end of the last period of Jewish independence in the land of Israel
state and a home to all its citizens? How
have sovereignty and a nation to call
can Israel be both at home in the Middle
their own.

East while
modeled on Western democracies? How
to demand
passivity by
Jews as
they waited
for But on this anniversary, Yom Haatzmaut’s special
should its leaders balance majority Jewish culture
prayers and festive afternoon barbecues failed divine deliverance.

For two millennia, Jewish existence was one of with minority rights?
to capture the fraught feelings many of us are
The concerns of the old Zionism certainly still exist:
experiencing. Jews across the globe in all our vulnerability and victimhood — most often either
how to pursue peace even as Jewish vulnerability
hiding who
we are
or suffering
for it.

The Zionism
different peculiarities and particularities — from
all political orientations, religious and secular, of 1948 defied diasporic Jewish history by giving and safety continue to be threatened. But they take
progressive and conservative, for and against the Jews power, self-determination and sovereignty on a new character in this day and age, forcing us
judicial overhaul being proposed by the current to respond to external threats and establish a to ask how we can manage and embrace conflicting
visions of Jewishness and Israeliness while nurturing
Jewish state.

government — are reeling.

Understandably, most of the work of early Zionism social solidarity and cooperation across deep and
The past few months of terrible turmoil in Israel
surrounding the judicial overhaul proposal have was focused on mere survival — establishing a painful divides.

This Yom Haatzmaut came at a moment of
shown us how fragile our singular and precious state, providing safe refuge to the millions of Jews
rupture. But the current crisis in Israel represents
fleeing inhospitable
lands and
contending with
Jewish state is. While Israel’s history is replete
with instances when external forces threatened its enemy countries sworn to destroy the new nation. It an opportunity – a moment for our generation to
people, this moment is unique in revealing internal succeeded beyond any of the wildest imaginations ensure this rupture defies the pattern of sovereign
threats to its democracy and social cohesion. We of its founders. The first 75 years of Israel, in which Jewish history. The generations before us proved
have seen toxic hatred rising among Israeli Jews, it has become a powerful and thriving state, are that we can rewrite diasporic history, turning a tale of
a testament to the success of Zionism in defying vulnerability and weakness into one of strength and
with fears of a civil war at an all-time high.

power. Our generation and those that follow must
How, then, are we supposed to celebrate Israel on diasporic Jewish history.

But the next 75 years of Zionism present and likewise defy sovereign Jewish history and prove
its 75th birthday?
The answer to this question lies at the heart of impose on us a different task: To be Zionists today that we can protect our Jewish state from the internal
Jewish history and reveals that now is the moment means we must defy a different chapter of Jewish threats it faces. Our generation’s task is to overcome
for a new Zionist revolution led by both Israeli and history — one that might be called sovereign our divisions and not let fraternal hatred destroy our
shared home.

Jewish history.

Diaspora Jews.

On this 75th birthday, then, let us learn from our
Historians and educators have pointed out a
Zionism was never just about establishing a
Jewish state. It was about defying Jewish history. critically important pattern in the history of Jewish past and look forward toward a new future. Let us
In 1948, when Ben-Gurion and his fellow Zionist self-rule. There are two pre-modern eras in which continue to celebrate the incredible success by
leaders declared Israeli independence, it was nothing the Jewish nation enjoyed sovereignty in the land writing a new chapter in the magnificent story of
less than a radical assault on diasporic Jewish of Israel: at the end of the 11th century BCE with the Israel and Zionism. ■
history. It defied the thousands of years of Davidic Kingdom and the first Temple in Jerusalem,
Jews being a minority in other countries, subject and in 140 BCE when the Hasmonean dynasty Mijal Bitton is the rosh kehillah of the Downtown
to the whims and caprice of other rulers. It defied reestablished Jewish independence in Judea. But Minyan and a sociologist of American Jews. Masua
the image of the weak and defenseless Jew. as each approached its 75th year of existence, each Sagiv is the Koret visiting assistant professor of
It even defied Jewish tradition itself, which for started to disintegrate because of internal strife and Jewish law and Israel studies at UC Berkeley
centuries was understood by many of its adherents infighting. The Davidic reign over a united Israel School of Law.

JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 15
CNG coins / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
Mijal Bitton and Masua Sagiv