After the October Revolution, the regime set out to destroy religious institutions. The new leaders permitted some token weak entities to remain, but those were constantly barraged by atheistic propaganda (without the right of reply) and were vigilantly monitored by the secret services. Every child knew that “religion is the opium of the masses” even before he understood what opium is.

Judaism shared the fate of other religions. The enchanting world of Hasidism disappeared and the Lithuanian centers of Talmud study were closed. The Jewish faith was subject to dual pressure: the criticism of Judaism was not only part of the general anti-religious trend but also it was an important component of the policy of state antisemitism. For those seeking a path to the Jewish religion, the obstacles seemed almost insurmountable: there was a catastrophic shortage of rabbis, mohelim (specialists in ritual circumcision), and shochtim (specialists in ritual slaughter of animals), and there was no place to study Hebrew.

It is therefore not surprising that the Jewish religious renaissance followed the Zionist one, which stimulated a search for roots, a return to national values, and the study of Hebrew. At first, for the great majority, attending synagogue, wearing a yarmulka (kippah), and celebrating religious holidays were perceived more as elements of national identification rather than of faith. Gradually, however, a group of people evolved for whom the study and teaching of religious knowledge became primary, and they formed the religious core of the refusenik community.

In fact, assimilated Jews’ gravitation toward their roots and the willingness of certain religious figures to instruct those Jews despite the personal risk began well before the formation of the refusenik community. Dr. Mikhail [Misha] Grinberg, the well-known Israeli publisher of Russian-language works, shares his recollections:

I remember being invited to a succah for the first time in 1969 when I was eighteen years old. About ten old men and eighty young men and women were sitting inside. That was in Saltykov near Moscow. Solik Pinskii, then the Habad treasurer, brought me there from Malakhovka in great secrecy.

Do your children study in a Habad yeshiva?

No, they did not follow that path, but I wouldn’t pin any labels on them. My youngest is a Zionist; both sons studied in a hesder yeshiva [that combines Torah study and army service]. The oldest was in a paratroop unit and the youngest also in a fighting unit.

Misha, you have a secular education in the humanities. Was there ever a conflict between your intellect and what is written in those ancient religious texts?

Back in my childhood, I was told that intellect can explain many things, but it has its limits, beyond which lies faith. I think that many hasidic and non-hasidic rabbis would sign under Tertullian’s word, “I believe because it’s absurd.”

Did you play any active role in Russia?

In the 1980s. I lived on the outskirts of Moscow in my own home. We loved to organize Habad gatherings, which are a central part of hasidic life with celebration, study, and discussions. In addition, I performed some tasks, delivered lectures, and then I was asked to head the Malakhovka community. I repaired the synagogue there and renewed Torah lessons. There was a lot to do. Zeev Shakhnovskii was also there. Grigorii Rosenshtein and Reb Geich were in charge but I was in contact with Geich. I was then instructed to restore the graves of the tsadikim [revered righteous men]. I visited twenty-five places and restored many things; thus, when I arrived in Israel, I became a hero of the hasidic population.

Were you also in contact with Zionists?

I didn’t engage in politics and tried not to associate with Zionists, only with Yuli Edelstein, whom I inherited, as I was friendly with his father. Sometimes Yuli would drag me to some place.

I remember that; I was at your house several times.

Yes, and Edelstein’s wedding was at my house. He was arrested a few months after the wedding, in 1984.

 

One of the first refuseniks to teach Torah was the Hebrew teacher Sergei Gurvits.

Gurvits, an old friend of Lenia Yoffe, mastered Hebrew very well, recalls Zeev Shakhnovski,[1] but he quickly became interested in religion. Some books that he read in Russian made a strong impression on him and he began to seek a way to become observant. There were people who kept the commandments all their life. David Kazhdan, for example, went his own way but on this basis he later joined with us.

Do you mean the famous Professor Kazhdan, who wore a yarmulka at MGU?

Yes, he sought out and learned Torah from religious people.

 

A popular Hebrew teacher, Zeev Shakhnovskii, by the beginning of the 1970s, also turned to teaching Torah. Many Hebrew teachers included excerpts from the Bible in their lessons. This material made it possible to become familiar with the most ancient sources of the language and to hear the voice of one’s distant ancestors. Shakhnovskii’s Torah studies became his primary preoccupation. He mastered the special Rashi script and included Rashi’s commentaries in his lessons.

How did this happen, Zeev?[2]

First, the influence of Serezha Gurvits and second, I myself was drawn to religion. There were people who helped…. Yisroel Pinskii was active in this direction. So step by step….

How did you wind up in the Habad camp?

Pinskii had a role in that.

You not only delved deeper into the Torah but also began to teach.

All the initial Hebrew teachers, even without becoming religious, introduced the Torah into their lessons, considering that one ought to read from it.

Yes, they did it because of an interest in the language, but in your case, it became a way of life.

Correct. Then it was, at least, part of everybody’s culture, but now it’s not that way. Then many wanted to read the Torah.

We proceeded from total ignorance, exploring our national “I,” trying everything…. It fit some people and others not.

Yes, and it’s hard to say why it fit. I have been observing this phenomenon for many years but have not found a clear cut answer. Apparently, some people have a predisposition toward this.

How did the Habad circle begin to form?

For some reason, it is characteristic of Habad to be active in approaching others. If you travel to Nepal, you can be ninety percent sure that you will meet a Habadnik there. Take, for example, 1970-72, when all religious people in Russia were very intimidated. I knew only one of our Habadniks who had not been in prison. Do you remember Motel the mohel? He was imprisoned for fourteen years because he performed circumcisions. They were all very intimidated.

According to a legend, the Lubavicher Rebbe [head of the Habad movement] said that they should stop being afraid and reach out to people, and they were the first to do that. At that time, when a rabbi would arrive from abroad, there was no particular private home to direct him to, but it was already possible to visit a Habadnik at his apartment. A few ─ Minskii and Geich ─ were not afraid to invite even young people. I remember, for instance, sitting in Geich’s home on some holiday with Lev Gorodetskii. When I married Lena in1975 ina religious marriage ceremony, I was permitted to invite to the huppah only Misha (Mikhai)l Goldblat in addition to the old men.

Inna and I had our huppah in September 1976. An American rabbi Haskel Lookstein from New York conducted the ceremony and there were a lot of people.

Yes, because already in August1975, ahuppah ceremony was held directly in the synagogue in Marina Roshcha and there were about sixty people attending. In 1975, Grisha Rosenshtein became heavily involved. He turned to religion and quietly studied Hebrew. I don’t like administrative work whereas he organized everything, including meetings with foreign guests. He left his mark in these matters; he was a strong organizer.

Did Zeev [Volodia]Kuravskii remain in Russia because the Rebbe ordered him to?

It wasn’t that the Rebbe insisted that someone remain; he himself decided to do so. At first he studied with one person, then with me; he became active, began to teach, and quickly moved toward religion. Yes, people somehow came out of hiding. At approximately the same time, Ilia Essas became active. He has a good head and is a good organizer.

Indeed, he began as an activist: he signed letters and was part of the central circle of activists.

But he didn’t go to the barricades. He arranged to study Talmud and Torah with an old man, one on one; he went there quietly and studied. They set it up for him from Riga. He studied with a man who served time for ten years because of that activity.

 

Ilia Essas was born and grew up in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, into a Zionist family. Even before Ilia’s birth, before World War II, his father planned to leave for Mandate Palestine but the Soviet invasion of the Baltic countries prevented that. “The family did not observe the Jewish traditions,” recalls Ilia, [3] but they always remembered that Israel is our homeland and the Jewish people are our people. I never had non-Jewish friends; I associated only with Jews.”

In 1970, Ilia married a Muscovite and moved to Moscow. In 1973, the family applied for an exit visa, and Ilia was immediately fired from work. He went to study in a yeshiva attached to the Moscow synagogue and stayed there for almost a year. He was expelled from there because of his participation in a refusenik demonstration. We regarded Essas as a refusenik rabbi; he did, indeed, have smicha (certification as a rabbi) but he did not tell that to anyone. He began to teach Torah in 1977 after many years of study.

“I thought up the teaching method myself,” Ilia recalls, “so that people would feel cozy and good, intelligent and joyful, and so that people would start to live as Jews. This was somewhat successful. All this was in parallel to the struggle to leave. There were searches, arrests, and interrogations on various matters.”[4]

I recall that you had many groups, I noted to Ilia.[5]

Yes, mainly young people.

But with all that you found time for individual lessons. Do you remember that you studied with me individually?

It was different with you. After all, you were a friend and peer, but in the study room I was older than everyone else except for Semyen Abramovich Yantovskii, who was twice as old as I was.

Did he also teach?

No, he was a pupil and studied very seriously. All the rest were younger, and in 1978 I was thirty-two years old.

How many times a week were the lessons given?

In my system every day. I myself gave lessons three times a week. In 1977 I had fifteen students; in 1980—fifty; and when I left in 1986, those who studied with me in one way or another numbered around two hundred.

How did you supply them with textbooks?

One of my students made books of photos of pages. As you know, I respected the criminal code and therefore did not make Xerox copies. We copied excerpts from the siddur (prayer book) and Chumash (five books of Moses). Then, gradually, I got to know the old men who had books. Some were the descendants of religious Jews who either gave us or sold us those books. They no longer needed them but were embarrassed to burn or discard them.

What was the difference in principle between the religious direction that you adhered to and that of Vlad Dashevskii’s group?

It will be easier to discuss if we clarify the terminology. Let’s start by saying that they all, without exception, were my students.

And Dashevskii?

Dashevskii is older than I and he was my friend since 1972. We had a common friend, Natan Faingold, who introduced us. Faingold began to take a deep interest in religion around the same time that I did. At Dashevskii’s request, his daughter Ira and her husband Mikhail Kara-Ivanov and the latter’s friend, Petia Polonskii, began coming to me to study. Dashevskii wanted me to take them under my wing because they became interested in religion at that time and were following other paths. I don’t want to talk about that now.

Do you mean Father Aleksandr Men?[6]

Close to that. It was a different person but similar. And Vlad simply asked me to take them under my wing. That was in 1977; they were very capable pupils. When Petia got married, we began to hold study sessions at his home. We all became friendly, but then at the end of 1981, there was a split related to a disagreement about whether we should look to anyone as our standard bearer. We parted, but Petia was my student and at that time he still was unable to do anything on his own.

 

In the free multicultural West, nationality was defined by citizenship and Jewish identity was associated with a religious confession. In the social fabric of Western Jewish life, the synagogue played a central role independent of the extent of one’s actual religious belief. In the West, Jewish life pulsated around the synagogue. It is therefore not surprising that Western Jews were deeply affected by the destruction of Jewish national life in the Soviet Union and were moved by the first shoots of the national revival.

In the West, however, several branches of Judaism exist. While welcoming the religious revival in the USSR in general, each branch preferred to support its own group. Here in Israel, I asked Ilia Essas about his orientation.

I have no affiliation ─ neither then nor now, but I am willing to support any positive initiatives. I therefore am friendly with Hasidim, Litvaks [also referred to as mitnagdim], and with Sephardim. I am officially invited to Mizrachi Party [religious Zionist party] congresses; I am on their lists. I am friendly with everyone.

When you were in refusal, you were defined as the leader of Aguda, Dashevskii as the leader of Mizrachi, and Rosenshtein as the leader of Habad. How accurate is it to define you as a person adhering to the Aguda party’s world view?

Insofar as not one of the above-mentioned organizations can say that I am an adherent of their political ideas, that is simply untrue. If you consider the rabbis who came to give lessons to my group, I would say that four out of five were associated with Aguda and one of five with Mizrachi. You understand, however, that I didn’t invite those foreign guests. They were people sent by the Liaison Bureau or friends from England or America.

Ilia, you were, after all, a serious activist in the aliya struggle and a Zionist.

Precisely.

Erets Yisrael is very serious for you.

Yes, more serious, I think, than for many others.

But Aguda, as far as I understand, still does not accept the State of Israel. Help me resolve this contradiction. The way I remember you and the way you are defined seem incompatible to me.

Jewish life is complex, Yulik. I consider that Jews ought to live in Israel, and through my own life I show this. I respect rabbis and teachers of the Torah without any connection to politics. Aguda people were living in Israel long before we came here. They were part of the government and the Knesset before we applied for exit visas.

Do you personally recognize the State of Israel?

What does it mean to recognize? I am a citizen of this state and possess its identity card. I regard it as a process that includes ideals, strivings, Jewish tonalities, and creative elements but this process also contained foolishness, subconscious antisemitic views, and destructive elements. Our people is indeed an exceptional people that can’t be compared with others just as one can’t compare Israel to other countries. I, for example, to this day wouldn’t think of celebrating Israel Independence Day. For me it is an ordinary working day. I only think seriously about whether to celebrate July Fourth as my independence day. And not because I feel that I am a part of the U.S., of which I am very critical, but because they control our country. Don’t worry; I’m not celebrating their independence day yet, but if someone put a gun to my head, saying that I must celebrate some independence day, I would then choose precisely the Fourth of July. At the same time, I live here, I like it here, and I think that I do more for our country and our state than many others.

Are you prepared to send your children to serve in the army of this state?

I don’t have to be prepared, my friend. My two sons ─ and I have only two ─ spent three years in the army. The older son, a tank commander, served in Lebanon.

What a coincidence. My son also served in a tank unit and also in Lebanon.

My younger son served in a tank unit in the Golan. But at the same time I am very critical of the Israeli army. I think only religious people should serve in the Israeli army. Solely! Because nonreligious people defend the country not as an ideal but as something incomprehensible. You see how things are mixed up in my head! And, my dear, you want to register me in some party. It’s impossible, Yulik.

The way I understand it, you are your own party.

Back in 1981, I wrote an article presenting my thoughts on this topic. I reread it recently and was amazed at how little has changed since then.[7]

 

The leader of the religious Zionist group in refusal was Vlad Dashevskii.

Vlad, when did you yourself become religious?[8]

It’s hard to specify an exact date. I recall that after the third grade, [equivalent to fifth grade in America] a friend and I somehow organized a seminar on the topic, “Is there a God? Our proofs were naïve but we came to the conclusion that God exists. That, of course, doesn’t count; I wasn’t at all religious. I developed an interest in our traditions and the Torah at the height of the Six-Day War. What had been a subconscious interest became a conscious one at that time. Subsequently, I continually pursued my searches, but I didn’t take a serious interest until much later ─ in 1979.

And when did you apply for an exit visa?

In 1977.

Did you receive a third degree (candidate of sciences in Russian)?

Yes.

In what field?

Theoretical physics.

How and when did the idea arise of setting up a second camp in Israel, Mahanaim [in Hebrew: two camps]?

It’s hard to pinpoint. When an idea grabs you, you share it with those around you. From the very start of the Six-Day War, I led a small circle of youth. When they grew up, they impelled me forward. We developed together.

Was it simply interesting for you and for them to be together or did you engage in some specific activity?

No, after all, we were a generation apart; the interest was focused. I introduced them to some Shlomo Carlebach songs, told them the little that I knew of Jewish history and ideology, and shared some of my Hebrew knowledge when I was still ahead of them. In short, these were purely Jewish interests.

Who was your Hebrew teacher?

I am embarrassed to say that I never had a teacher. I studied Hebrew on my own; therefore there were many gaps. My first textbook was that of Shlomo Kodish and the first 200-300 words came from there.

How did you study Torah? Didn’t you need a solid knowledge of Hebrew?

Not only of Hebrew. When we began to study Talmud, we also needed to know Aramaic [the language of the Talmud], but the question was how to learn it. I remember that it took me a week to read the first page of Gemara [the Talmud] and I wept copious tears; I couldn’t understand what was written. But when you really have to….

You began in 1979-80?

In 1979 we just started and in 1980 the structure was completely formed. Ten of us would meet once a week for about five hours and teach each other. During the week, each had his circle of Torah study that met once or twice a week. I decided to teach Talmud for the first time in 1984, when I myself was on a fairly low level. It is worth emphasizing that starting from a clear nationally-motivated decision to leave for Israel, we moved in the direction of religion, but there were groups that moved in the opposite direction. All the people I knew in our group started with a focus on Israel and moved toward religion; none went the other way.

Did your group have a name?

It had the underground name “the company.” We were all unemployed and earned some money tutoring graduate students.

Did you have some principled disagreements with Ilia Essas’ group?

Look, after all, we didn’t develop in a vacuum. America and Israel exerted a strong influence, and a significant part of the organizational structures were imported. Three trends thus developed rather quickly in the refuseniks’ milieu: Habad, the Lithuanian direction, and religious Zionism.

In Essas’ interview to Aba Taratuta, he stated, “I can say openly that I couldn’t care less about all religious parties without exception. I voted for them once in my life and won’t do it again.”[9] Could the ideological disagreements have stimulated the rise of differences between you?

I also was always dismayed by the religious parties. I didn’t want to see religion represented as a political party. I would have preferred that religion disseminate its values to the entire people through nonpolitical ways, but because everything here is politicized, one has to become reconciled to it. We always kept our distance from parties, including national religious ones, so saying that this could be a difference would be a misunderstanding.

In that case, could one say that the influence that came from Israel was not that of parties but of some social organizations?

Our circle formed without the direct influence of any Israeli forces. It was, first of all, the influence of ideas ─ those of Martin Buber and Rav Yosef Soloveitchik. Contacts with Israel occurred much later.

And with American religious organizations?

Contacts via books came earlier. Organizational contacts were rather weak insofar as Essas was in power and rather effectively blocked us, suppressing dissidence.

Did you deal with the organization of a kindergarten or school?

Yes. Slavik Uspenskii, Ania Chernobylskaia, and others studied with us. In the summer we organized a kindergarten at a dacha in Povarovo, then for several years in Ukhtomka. It was a religious school. In addition, we worked with the school of Liusik [Elazar] Yusefovich and supplied him with teachers. We established kindergartens up to 1990-91.

Vlad, how would you estimate the scale of religious activity in refusal and its influence on the aliya struggle?

Of course, the majority were far removed from religion, but I can hardly recall any refuseniks in our day who were anti-religious.

Yes, it was a time of searching for national identification.

For people of our generation of refuseniks ─ both religious and non-religious ─ the feeling that religion is a part of self-identification remains an important fact even today. I hope that I shall never lose it. The presence of a religious sector in refusal was absolutely necessary because without it, we would have been in some way like the dissidents, who, after the fall of the Soviet regime, had nothing left to do. I have in mind the middle stratum of dissidents, not people like Vladimir Bukovskii.

When did Mahanaim appear?

In 1987, when we decided to open a second center in Israel, to which many of our activists had already immigrated.

 

The religious renaissance was made possible by the numerous links with foreign religious communities and the help that they extended to refuseniks by supplying religious literature, religious objects, and kosher food. At the same time, the help came with the corresponding ideological influence on the newly religious (baalei tshuva in Hebrew). Thus the above-mentioned three religious trends were formed.

Habad activity in Moscow centered around Zeev Shakhnovskii, Mikhail Shneider, and Grigorii Rosenshtein and in Leningrad around Yitzhak Kogan. The Aguda activity in Moscow was concentrated around Mikhail Nudler and Eliahu Essas and in Leningrad around Grigorii Wasserman. The religious Zionist leaders in Moscow were Vlad Dashevskii, Mikhail Kara-Ivanov, Pinhas Polonskii, and Aleksandr Kholmianskii.