This Thursday night, the award-winning documentary “Refusenik” will be shown at Congregation Anshey Sphard (1500 Clement Street near 16th Avenue) from 6pm until 9:30pm.
The 2008 film chronicles the struggle of Jews to emigrate from the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 70s. The Refusenik movement helped free over 2 million oppressed Jews from the Former Soviet Union, thousands of which now make the Bay Area their home.
Refusenik was an unofficial term for individuals, typically but not exclusively Soviet Jews, who were denied permission to emigrate abroad by the authorities of the former Soviet Union and other countries of the Eastern bloc. The term refusenik is derived from the “refusal” handed down to a prospective emigrant from the Soviet authorities. [Wikipedia]
Present at the screening will be key leaders of the Refusenik movement who will discuss the impact of the next generation of Russian Jews on the Bay Area who moved here, as they become more established and innovative in today’s business and civic arenas.
The following activists and experts will participate in a discussion after the screening:
– Gina Waldman, the former director of the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jewry and the individual who personally smuggled Andrei Sakharov’s Nobel acceptance speech out of the former USSR
– Gennady Farber, a former Refusenik and current Jewish community activist
– Philip Spiegel, the author of Triumph Over Tyranny: The Heroic Campaigns that Saved Over 2,000,000 Jews
The event is presented by the Jewish Community Federation. The cost to attend is $10 for adults and $5 for students and seniors.
Sarah B.