Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

October 3, 2019

How Secret Hebrew Lessons Turned a Soviet Jew into a Leader of the Refusenik Movement

With the help of an “Esperanto” club.

Beginning in 1971, the Soviet police repeatedly arrested Yosef Begun for his involvement in teaching Hebrew, his connections with other Jewish dissidents, and his application to emigrate to Israel. Thanks to American pressure, he was released from his final imprisonment at the beginning of 1988 and since then has lived in Israel. In an interview with David Samuels, he tells how he was first drawn to the underground Jewish revival in the USSR, a process that began when he met an older man who offered to teach him Hebrew:

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