The Russian Empire had the largest Jewish population in the world by the late 19th century. In the closing decades of the czars’ rule, however, waves of violent pogroms spurred massive emigration; more than 2 million Jews left, the vast majority going to the U.S. Under Soviet rule, the Jews who remained were forbidden to leave, even as they were routinely persecuted for practicing their religion, and denied educational and employment opportunities. Jewish kids learned early to hide their Jewish identity; some were never told they were Jewish. Individuals who dared to apply for exit visas were typically denied; known as refuseniks, their families were then subjected to additional prejudice, particularly in the workplace. More than 2 million Jews were still living in the Soviet Union when American Jews began organizing on their behalf in the 1960s—lobbying politicians and diplomats, but also building personal connections through letter-writing campaigns and “bar mitzvah twin” programs. Thanks in part to this international pressure, tens of thousands were allowed to emigrate in the 1970s, but by the time a quarter-million Americans rallied for Soviet Jewry on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 6, 1987, the numbers allowed to leave the USSR had slowed to a trickle. Under his policy of glasnost (openness), Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev relaxed restrictions in the late 1980s, and emigration skyrocketed, continuing in huge numbers in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union. Well over 1 million Jews went to Israel, but hundreds of thousands also came to the U.S. That might seem like the end of the story, but for those who immigrated, it was the beginning of a new one. For this discussion, we gathered a diverse group of Russian-speaking Jews who came to the U.S. from all over the former Soviet Union, and immigrated at various ages at different times over the past 50 years—some during the Soviet era, others after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. We wanted to find out how they experienced this move across the world—how they were welcomed initially, and how things have changed since then. What barriers remain to being full participants in the American Jewish community, how were their political views shaped by their memories of life under communism, and what customs are they trying to preserve in their new home? ...

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