Israel had been a source and instrument of aid for Soviet Jewry since 1948. As a part of this work, in the early 1950s it established Lishkat Hakesher, a covert government agency to surreptitiously maintain ties with Jews in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Code named Nativ, the organization’s leaders had established a relationship with the Rebbe in New York many years earlier and knew of the Chabad activists spread throughout the Soviet Union.
Following the Six Day War, the Soviet Union cut off diplomatic ties with Israel, making work in the USSR even more difficult. Without an embassy, and therefore lacking an open base of operations in Russia, Nativ began organizing American and European Jews to protest against the Soviet Union’s treatment of its Jews, a project that birthed the Soviet Jewry movement. Based on the Rebbe’s own contacts and sources, as well as his keen and in-depth understanding of the Soviet mindset, he discouraged the public demonstrations that ensued, arguing that it would harm Soviet Jews rather than help.
When Nativ was in the process of organizing demonstrations in 1969, the Rebbe asked its leader Nechemia Levanon to postpone them until at least after Passover. At the time, small numbers of Jews were quietly being allowed to emigrate, and the Rebbe had knowledge that 5,000 Jews were set to leave Russia soon. After a back and forth, the Israelis went ahead with it anyway.
Two years later, in 1971, the Rebbe spoke about this event, saying that because of those protests “hundreds of families who had emigration permits in their hands are until today in the Soviet Union.” He continued:
The situation has deteriorated even more, some lost their jobs, some had to leave their homes, because the Russian government thought they were connected to the demonstrations. The organizers of the demonstrations are playing with the lives of 3,000,000 Jews!
The Rebbe had long been a prominent and vocal opponent of the Western Soviet Jewry movement’s loud and often bombastic protests in support of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union. Basing his position on his deep knowledge of the Soviet Union and the Russian mind, as well as his contacts within the U.S. and Israeli security establishments, he argued that only quiet diplomacy would have the desired effect on the Russians, who bristled at being commanded to release their Jews in loud confrontations. The goal, the Rebbe would stress in public and even more forcefully in private, was to help the Jews in the Soviet Union both materially and spiritually—both those attempting to leave and those remaining—and not score political points and in this way place the Jews of Russia in harm’s way.
The Rebbe communicated with a wide array of people regarding the Soviet Union, both in private audiences and correspondences, and his realist point of view was shared by many of the leading scholars of international relations of the day, among them Hans J. Morgenthau. “History has shown that the Soviet Union may yield under certain conditions to private pressure … ,” he wrote in Politics Among Nations,
But it is inconceivable on general grounds that such pressure should be effective when exerted publicly. More particularly, in view of the nature of the Soviet Union’s government—which uses every sign of external pressure to justify repression at home—American agitation for human rights has no chance of being effective.
As Lishkas Ezras Achim continued its work, the early 1970s saw the establishment in Israel of the Shamir organization, a group that provided material and spiritual needs for Jews still in Russia and recent Russian immigrants in Israel. It was led by the English philanthropist Peter Kalms and Soviet Jewish emigre scientist Herman Branover, who had become an observant Chabad Chassid while still behind the Iron Curtain. Indeed, Branover had obtained the Rebbe’s blessing in order to depart from Russia.
Over the years, the Rebbe gave Shamir specific instructions on how to organize and best assist Soviet Jewry. For example, the Rebbe instructed them that books printed by Shamir should be in the Russian language, but should not include any anti-Soviet content. In numerous conversations during those years, the Rebbe stressed the importance of concrete Jewish study over loud statements and complex intellectualism.
Commenting on the famed Simchat Torah dancing which took place every year outside of the Moscow Choral Synagogue, the Rebbe told Kalms: “But what will be the next morning? They must be taught Modeh Ani, not high philosophy.” (Modeh Ani being the first prayer a Jew says upon awakening, i.e. foundational knowledge.)
Even after the bulk of Samarkand’s Chabad community had emigrated, the last of whom left in 1973, Chassidim remained in Russia who kept the flame of traditional Judaism alive, including Reb Getche Vilensky and Reb Mottel Lifshitz of Moscow, who served as spiritual mentors to countless young Jewish refuseniks.
Reb Getche was an especially influential figure, almost solely responsible for the baal teshuvah movement (a return to traditional Judaism) in Moscow. Almost every person who became a teacher in the Jewish underground had been a student of Reb Getche. He also spearheaded the brit milahs (ritual circumcisions) and chuppahs (Jewish weddings) performed in Moscow.
Thanks to the similar influence of old Chassidim who had survived the worst of the Soviet epoch, a young man with Chabad roots named Yitzchak Kogan became a leader of religious life in Leningrad.
Handfuls of older-generation Lubavitchers who had been sent to their locations by the Sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, remained alive and active. Hillel Liberow, the shochet of Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, passed away in that city in the early 1980s, never having left the city where he felt responsible for its Jews.
In the 1980s, working though Lishkas Ezras Achim, more and more people visited the Soviet Union laden with religious items such as tefillin, mezuzahs and publications. As Professor Ron Rubin of the City University New York recalled:
The parameters of my third trip were clearly supply and inspiration. Sponsored by the Chabad Lubavitch organization, Lishkas Ezras Achim, two young rabbis and I spent two weeks there. We brought few personal effects, but at a warehouse in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights our suitcases were stuffed with Jewish books and sundry ritual items ranging from shechitah (kosher slaughter) knives, kosher yeast and burial shrouds. On the plane, we spoke seriously of the possibility that our goods would be confiscated at Soviet customs and that we could be either thrown out of the country or arrested. On that trip I saw one of the young rabbis secretly circumcise an adult male who was lying on a simple table.
When Senator Chic (Jacob) Hecht was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1982, the Rebbe told him that his “top priority should be to get the Jews out of Russia,” adding that the key was “quiet diplomacy.”
Before leaving for his first appointment with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, President Ronald Reagan’s last appointment was with Senator Hecht. Hecht gave Reagan a list of 1,200 names of Jews who wished to leave the Soviet Union. Reagan brought up the issue directly with Gorbachev, and months later the floodgates would open, seeing the mass exodus of Jews from the Soviet Union.
Beginning in the 1970s, the Rebbe consistently anticipated the eventual exodus of Soviet Jewry and urged Israel and Jewish organizations to confront the emerging issues of housing, social services, and most importantly, Jewish education.
During those years, Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union were processed by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in Austria and then Ladispoli, a city on the outskirts of Rome. Starting in the 1980s until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Chabad Center in Ladispoli cared for thousands of Jewish immigrants who passed through its doors.