It has now been 38 years since President Ford signed the historic Jackson-Vanik Amendment, a piece of legislation that will soon expire. At this moment, as the future of the amendment is under debate in Congress, it is important to look back at the role it served as one of the most potent weapons for…
Year to year there isn’t much change when it comes to my Passover Seder. Wine, matzo, and politics are always the dominant features. But this year I want to be conscious of the message the Haggadah provides and what it means to me. Searching for that meaning forces me to look back on the vastly…
On March 8th, mothers, daughters, wives, and girlfriends around the world will be showered with tokens of adoration in celebration of International Women’s Day. Although this holiday has become something of a Valentine’s/Mother’s Day hybrid in many regions, it originated as a Socialist political event in countries of the former Soviet bloc. In honor of…
Living in a home where one parent is Russian and the other American creates an unpredictable cultural, political and religious dynamic. Every year, it is the December holiday season that creates somewhat of a clash. My father, an émigré from the former Soviet Union, has had instilled in him the secular Russian tradition of having…
For decades, readers of the Forverts have been delighted by Miriam Hoffman’s wry, literary vignettes. Fresh and personal, historic yet contemporary, Hoffman tells stories of family lives as they intersect with history. Beginning with this story, first published in 1987, her vignettes with be translated into English and published on the forward.com web site. Translated…
They make up about 10% of the American Jewish community, but no one is entirely sure how many Russian-speaking Jews there are in the United States. At a recent conference at Harvard University, the answer fluctuated from as high as 750,000 people to fewer than 500,000, depending on which expert took the podium. Sam Kliger…
On May 9, 1995 — 50 years after the end of World War II — I stood among a celebratory crowd in a provincial Russian town and glanced over to see a war veteran pointedly scoop a palmful of water out of a puddle. The veteran drank as if it were the finest water he…
In the five years leading up to the deal freeing Gilad Shalit, the Israeli nation adopted his family as its own, sharing its pain and campaigning for its cause. Meanwhile, the family of Pavel Slotzker was all but forgotten. Shalit’s comrade, Slotzker was a victim of the same cross-border raid in which militants abducted Shalit,…
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