| The life of Soviet Jews is a part of Jewish experience in the 20th century.
Generations of Jews in the former Soviet Union lived through pogroms, the
Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin's purges, the Holocaust, the postwar persecution,
and the collapse of Communism. And yet Jewishness had remained a central
part of their individual and collective consciousness.. The mass emigration
in the last decades vividly demonstrates their desire to live as Jews. Half
a million émigrés from the former Soviet Union now reside
in the United States, constituting the largest new immigrant Jewish community
in this country. Sharing the experience of cultural transition of Jews from
the former Soviet Union means contributing to the ongoing epic of immigration
so central to American life. |
