‘The book you are about to read,” writes Natan Sharansky in his foreword to Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide, “draws on the strategies of the movement I was privileged to be part of – the refusenik movement – to offer young American Jews a path forward as they face an unprecedented surge of antisemitism and assaults on their identity.”
The term refusenik refers to Soviet Jews denied exit permits, primarily in the 1970s through 1987. In the context of this book, it refers instead to the refuseniks’ bold refusal to accept Soviet ideology, bureaucracy, censorship, and coercion and their refusal to reject their Jewish heritage, history, culture, language, and tradition.
Izabella Tabarovsky, who was 19 when her family emigrated from the USSR to the USA in 1989, draws parallels between Jewish student leaders responding to the current surge of hatred and past champions of the refusenik movement, offering “a playbook for resistance.”
Because the anti-Israel voices on college campuses did not invent the language of demonizing Jews but rather inherited it from Moscow, she writes, today’s activists must emulate yesterday’s activists in countering the poisonous propaganda.
“The hostility you face from those who call themselves anti-Zionists may feel unprecedented, so much so that some even call it ‘new antisemitism.’ But in fact, there is nothing new about it, and you are not the first generation of Jews to face it,” Tabarovsky writes. “You may not think your life has much in common with those Soviet Jews. After all, you live in a democracy, not a post-totalitarian one-party dictatorship. But the similarities are too striking to ignore.”
The central six chapters offer a powerful analysis of activist pairs categorized according to their shared approach.
Chapter 1, “Reclaim Your Zionism,” profiles Kyiv refusenik Boris Kochubiyevsky and Elisha (Lishi) Baker, co-author of the pivotal Jewish student letter “In Our Name” that shook things up at Columbia University.
Chapter 2, “Educate Yourself – and Others,” finds commonalities among the 18 Georgian Jews who courageously appealed to the United Nations and the Israeli government to help them reach the Jewish homeland; Hebrew teacher-turned-cultural activist and refusenik icon Yosef Begun; and George Washington University alumnus, rapper, and educator Noah Shufutinsky.
Chapter 3, “Find Your Comrades in Arms,” pairs Alexander Smukler, who helped coordinate the refusenik underground press, with Eyal Yakoby, who sued the University of Pennsylvania and became a leading online voice debunking anti-Zionist propaganda.
Chapter 4, “Do the Unexpected,” recounts the 1970 airplane hijacking attempt by Leningrad and Riga Jews, their trial, and the global campaign it sparked, followed by the story of Adela Cojab, who sued New York University and became a prominent legal advocate against antisemitism.
Chapter 5, “Reject Victimhood,” compares Marina Furman, who survived nearly two decades of KGB harassment, with Alissa Bernstein, who singlehandedly exposed antisemitic hypocrisy at Occidental College.
Chapter 6, “Lead with Jewish,” pairs Sharansky, “the world’s most famous refusenik” and overall Jewish-Israeli role model, with Harvard Divinity School graduate Shabbos Kestenbaum, “who fearlessly confronted the ideological rot at his alma mater.”
'Separated by decades, borders, and ideologies'
“What unites these stories – separated by decades, borders, and ideologies – is not only the risks their protagonists took, but also what they refused: silence, passivity, compliance, and fear of stepping beyond prescribed lines of behavior. Whether in a Soviet courtroom or an American university, their choice to speak, to act, and to do the unexpected became the beginning of change,” Tabarovsky writes.
Helpful appendices provide chronologies and documents to better acquaint the reader with “the Soviet regime’s century-long assault on Jewish identity” and how refuseniks responded.
Tabarovsky, a Harvard graduate, is a senior fellow at the Z3 Institute for Jewish Priorities and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Comper Center for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism at the University of Haifa, and the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.
This masterful book, not Tabarovsky’s first, should firmly cement her place as a skilled navigator through the wilderness of hatred confronting American Jewish college students. Doing double duty, Be a Refusenik also perpetuates the heroic stories of refuseniks in a significant episode of world Jewish history that is fading in our collective memory.
“Many of the refuseniks didn’t set out to be revolutionaries,” she reminds readers. “They were pushed into activism by the injustice, hypocrisy, and anti-Jewish hate they saw around them. They tried to follow established processes but found themselves ignored, blocked, stonewalled, and silenced. Like them, you will need to think creatively beyond the norms and the judgments of the establishment. Take bold steps and do the unexpected. You have many examples to follow.”
This well-written book is chock full of practical advice of the best sort because it’s based on inspirational examples of those who came before – albeit in another world and a different reality. Yet the author makes us confident these examples can empower today’s beleaguered American Jewish college students.
“Campus antisemitism is designed to make you feel isolated and therefore powerless. You must work intentionally to overcome that. You’ll need to find your people. And if you can’t find them, you’ll need to become visible so they can find you,” she writes.
Aside from its obvious value to the intended readership, Be a Refusenik deserves to be widely read because of Tabarovsky’s captivating profiles in courage.
BE A REFUSENIK
A JEWISH STUDENT’S
SURVIVAL GUIDE
By Izabella Tabarovsky
Wicked Son/
Post Hill Books
256 pages, $19.99