Bet Israel Zagreb - Seeing Visions, Dreaming Dreams

Seeing Visions, Dreaming Dreams

"Seeing Visions, Dreaming Dreams"

David Harris
AJC Executive Director
December 6, 2009

Today marks two special anniversaries for me.

Thirty-five years ago, I was expelled from the USSR. Sorry, officially, I left "at my own request," or so said Soviet authorities when asked by the American Embassy in Moscow why I was headed out before my exchange program ended.
I had arrived in Moscow in September 1974 to participate in one of the early fruits of détente – a government-to-government program to place six American teachers in Soviet schools and six Soviet teachers in American schools.

Having studied Soviet and Russian topics in college and graduate school, and having moonlighted as a teacher of English as a Second Language, I applied. To my pleasant surprise, I was accepted.

My mother, born in Moscow, wasn't exactly eager to see me visit a place from which she and her family had fled in 1929, but youthful wanderlust can be hard to restrain. Other than the Intourist-organized tours of Soviet sanitized space, there weren't many chances to see the country from the bottom up. This was one such opportunity.
Placed in a nondescript hotel in Moscow occupied primarily by refugees from the Spanish Civil War and Pinochet's seizure of power from Allende in Chile, I was off and running.

Two early experiences, however, reminded me I was in a different world.
One of the only other Western non-communist hotel guests was a Swedish businessman. He represented a printing press company back home. The company had sold equipment to TASS, the Soviet news agency, and had been paid. A year later, a frantic message from Moscow to Stockholm demanded to know where the equipment was. The Swedes said it had been sent at the time of payment, but the Soviets disputed the claim. The businessman was sent to find out what happened. After days of searching, he had the answer. The equipment had indeed been sent, and spent a year in an open field near the airport of delivery. Give the harshness of the Russian winter, it was damaged beyond repair.

Welcome to the Soviet economy, where supply and distribution were rarely straightforward!
One morning, I went to the hotel cafeteria and ordered two fried eggs. After a few minutes, I was given two plates of two fried eggs each. I took one and tried to send the other back, but was told this is what I had ordered and this is what I would eat – or at least pay for. Turns out that ordering "fried eggs" meant two eggs, so my request was obviously for four. No one ever taught me that in Russian class!
Welcome to Soviet service, where the customer was never right!
More importantly, I met many Soviet Jews in the course of my months in Moscow and, later, Leningrad. I met them in their homes, at the few open synagogues, and, as it turned out, in the schools where I taught.

I learned a lot. The experiences were transformative.

I learned about oppression, persecution, and discrimination. I learned about courage, yearning, and perseverance. I learned about schizophrenia – public faces and private lives. And I learned about danger, threat, and risk.
My learning landed me in trouble. Detained by the Soviet police, I was confined to my hotel for a couple of days and put on a plane to Helsinki.
Though it was the middle of winter, when daylight is scarce, never before or since has a city looked as light and bright to me as Helsinki did when I arrived.

And never could I have dared imagine, thirty-five years ago, all that would transpire in the ensuing years.
Which brings me to December 6, 1987.
That was the day, twenty years ago, when more than 250,000 people gathered in Washington, on the eve of Soviet President Gorbachev's first visit to the nation's capital, to demonstrate for the freedom of Soviet Jews.
I was asked to organize the rally. Together with a large team of dedicated volunteers, we had only five weeks from the moment the Soviet leader's visit was confirmed to put it together.
There were countless challenges. The biggest was ensuring a massive turnout, insofar as the largest previous Jewish gathering in Washington only numbered about 12,000. Moreover, the size of the speaker's list threatened to outpace the attendance, with VIPs galore seeking a place on the program. Dealing with weather issues in December was, of course, the great unknown. And the daunting task of putting all the nuts-and-bolts together – the thousand logistical details – was rather time-consuming.
In the end, miracle of miracles, it worked. The attendance exceeded our wildest expectations, we somehow made it through the speaker's list, the weather cooperated, and we got most of the logistics right.
But the demonstration wasn't an end in itself. Rather, it was meant to highlight the plight of Jews trapped in the Soviet Union and contribute to their liberation.
Well, we happily learned that President Reagan mentioned the rally to President Gorbachev. And we knew that the rally was broadcast to the Soviet Union through Western radio services.
But, as in 1974, it was still impossible to foresee the dramatic events to come, even if they were to begin unfolding less than two years hence.
And unfold they did.

The destruction of the Berlin Wall. The end of Soviet occupation in Eastern Europe. The mass exodus of Jews from the USSR. The implosion of the Soviet Union. The renewal of Jewish life in what became known as the Former Soviet Union. The onset of a new diplomatic era between Eastern Europe and Israel. And the list goes on, all testament to the indomitability of the human spirit.
The moral of the story?
Perhaps it's best summed up in these excerpted lyrics by the singer-songwriter Debbie Friedman:

Childhood was for fantasies, for nursery rhymes and toys.
The world was much too busy to understand small girls and boys.
As I grew up, I came to learn that life was not a game,
That heroes were just people that we called another name.
And the old shall dream dreams, and the youth shall see visions,
And our hopes shall rise up to the sky.
We must live for today; we must build for tomorrow.
Give us time, give us strength, give us life.
Today's the day I take my stand, the future's mine to hold.
Commitments that I make today are dreams from days of old.
I have to make the way for generations come and go.
I'll have to teach them what I've learned so they will come to know.

The challenges today facing the Jewish people are no less daunting than they were in 1974 or 1987.

But if we have the capacity to see visions and dream dreams, and if we’re blessed with time, strength, and life, then most assuredly we can build for tomorrow – and our best days will still await us. Our recent history proves the point.

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