Ackerman, Joel G.

The American Soviet Jewry Movement was the effort of thousands of American Jews of all denominations and political orientations to stop the persecution and discrimination of Soviet Jews. It was initiated in the early 1960s and triumphed at the end of the Soviet era, when approximately 1.5 million of Soviet Jews left the USSR for Israel, United States and other democratic countries. The Movement, though not a formal structure but rather a network of loosely connected structures, unified various Jewish organizations and Jewish people from all walks of life, and was instrumental in influencing the U.S. government to pressure the Soviet authorities in order to assure freedom of emigration for Soviet Jews. It was perhaps the most influential movement within the American Jewish community in the 20 th century.

As a lawyer active in the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, Marin and the Peninsula and chairman of its Soviet Jewry Commission, Joel Ackerman also took an active part in the work of the Northern California Lawyers Committee for Soviet Jews and the Soviet Jewry Legal Advocacy Center.

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