Since October 7, 2023, the world has been host to a shocking rise in antisemitism. Because few of us, especially in the US, have experienced anything remotely similar in our lifetimes, it is tempting to label this current deluge the “new antisemitism.” Yet, there is little new here. Izabella Tabarovsky has “seen a version of this movie” in the Soviet Union of her youth: “‘Zionism is racism, colonialism, Nazism, apartheid, and genocide’ was not a student slogan, but state doctrine.” Tabarovsky thought she had left that doctrine behind when her family emigrated to the US in 1989, but she recently learned this was not the case: “The anti-Israel left, I realized, had not invented its demonizing language — it had inherited it … The Soviet Union is gone, but the poison it spread remains.”Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide is Tabarovsky’s fascinating account of how history repurposes its most damaging libels across time and place. It is, even more importantly, a handbook for current college students on how to both survive their toxic environments and fight against them. Fifty years ago, refuseniks — Soviet Jews unwilling to abide attacks on their identity — launched an incredibly successful resistance campaign that resulted in a mass exodus of Jews from the USSR and helped fuel the collapse of the Soviet empire. In Be a Refusenik, Tabarovsky presents several of the refuseniks’ winning strategies, showing how those same strategies can benefit Jewish youth today.
Be a Refusenik opens with a highly informative and inspiring foreword by Natan Sharansky, one of the most famous Soviet refuseniks and human rights activists. Sharansky provides a brief history of the movement and notes the similar challenges that young Jews in America are facing today. Tabarovsky takes it from there. Each of her six chapters is titled after one specific strategy; she places the stories of refuseniks beside those of Jewish American college students, who have put that same strategy to work on their campuses.
The chapter “Reclaim Your Zionism,” for example: the reader is introduced to Boris Kochubiyevsky, a refusenik whose essay “Why I Am a Zionist,” written in the wake of Israel’s Six-Day War, greatly inspired American Jewish activists early on as they advocated on behalf of Soviet Jewry. Tabarovsky offers another relevant instance of a public reclamation of Zionist identity: in 2024, Elisha Baker, along with three other Jewish Columbia students, wrote “In Our Name,” an open letter to the university, proudly stating their connection to both Judaism and Israel. The letter went viral, breaking through the loudest choruses of anti-Zionist voices.
“Lead with Jewish,” the last strategy highlighted in the book, returns to Natan Sharansky and his dramatic journey of resistance. The chapter also highlights Shabbos Kestenbaum, a former grad student at Harvard Divinity School, who first gained national attention by demanding entrance to aGaza encampment at MIT. His subsequent lawsuit against Harvard helped to expose the intense and systemic anti-Zionism at the university.
While refuseniks of the former Soviet Union generally faced dangers far greater than Jews in the US currently face, the similarities in their struggles are undeniable: “Today’s American Jewish students face a different system, but it has the same goal: to erase identity and connection to the Jewish people.” Offering strategies from an notably effective resistance movement of the past, Be A Refusenik is a wonderful resource for Jewish college students — and for anyone who needs guidance in fighting external pressure to denounce their Jewish identity. As Tabarovsky writes, “This is how to refuse.”
Below is a review focusing on the children’s perspective from Michal Hoschander Malen, editor of Jewish Book Council’s young adult and children’s book reviews.
The struggle to free Soviet Jewry from a system that did not allow them to express their Jewish identity and did not permit them to emigrate to Israel will be long remembered as a widespread endeavor that resulted in success. The author of this new handbook contends that the current generation of young people, who face increased antisemitism and harassment, can use this piece of history as a model and a template. They can learn from and emulate some of the tactics used a generation ago to improve the situation that too many of them face today. University campuses of the twenty-first century are hubs of antisemitic and anti-Israel activity and this book focuses on ways students can fight back.
In order to provide context, author Izabella Tabarovsky thoroughly examines the history of Soviet Jewry, including personal histories, dates, and events, all carefully footnoted. She explains that the word “refusenik” was coined to designate and identify those Jews who were denied permission to emigrate to Israel. A movement emerged in the United States and elsewhere, primarily on college campuses, to protest the Soviet policies, to advocate for the release of Soviet Jews, and to provide numerous types of support to the refuseniks.
Noah Shufutinsky, Eyal Yakoby, Adela Cojab, Shabbos Kestenbaum, and others have begun a present-day movement to stop antisemitism on campuses by using some of the same strategies that were successful against the Soviet regime. Using hip hop music, as well as networking, lawsuits, oratory, and written materials to present incisive arguments, they hope to ameliorate the current situation. They have absorbed the lessons taught by the Soviet Jewry activists and have adapted them to today’s world and to a new generation.
When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, young Jews found that their antagonists had ever more verbal ammunition at their disposal. Misinformation and skewed information were flooding the internet and the media. This book encourages young Jews to stand tall and defend their principles, providing ideas and historical background, as well as reminding us all that there is great support as well as a history of activism on which they can draw. The legacy of the refuseniks will not only inspire readers to act, but also can proffer concrete suggestions and solutions that will strengthen them and give them courage.
This handbook is a useful tool that will help students on campus and their supporters stay strong and effective.
Diane Gottlieb is the editor of Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture & Heritage, Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness, and Grieving Hope. She is the Special Projects Editor for ELJ Editions and the Prose/Creative Nonfiction Editor of Emerge Literary Journal. Her writing appears in Brevity, River Teeth, Witness, Florida Review, The Rumpus, and Huffington Post, among many other lovely places.
