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.

The Jewish Community Relations Council served as an umbrella for local Jewish communities and synagogues in the Bay Area, and centralized and coordinated Soviet Jewry movement efforts made by individual local organizations. Its primary activity was to aid in the development of Soviet Jewry related programs by local organizations and to represent the entire Jewish community in regards to public policy.

Ackerman served as Vice-Chairman and then Chairman for the Northern California Lawyers Committee for Soviet Jews, a group of attorneys, judges, professors and law students concerned with the Soviet government's legal treatment of Soviet Jews. The Committee's work included monitoring criminal cases involving Refuseniks, violations of Soviet and/or international law, and general principles of human rights. In addition the Committee provided legal support to Refuseniks through letters, legal briefs and other means, and presented seminars and published articles related to Soviet criminal law. The committee's newsletter, "Soviet Jews under Soviet Law," contained articles on Soviet law and information on recent cases. The Committee was affiliated with, among other organizations, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry.

The Soviet Jewry Movement felt a need, as it broadened in the early 1970s, to augment its public demonstrations and campaigning within the American Jewish community with legislative lobbying that focused on exposing violations of international law. As a signer of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Soviet Union pledged to respect and uphold the rights and freedoms of an individual. The Soviet Jewry Legal Advocacy Center, a liaison for the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, a leading Soviet Jewry Movement organization, was created by a group of lawyers based in Boston, MA. The SJLAC informed and lobbied the American government and Congress on restrictions imposed by the Soviet Union on Soviet Jews and urged action against Soviet authorities. A SJLAC became an information clearinghouse with specialists able to analyze the questions related to the legal aspects of the Soviet regime and prepared briefings and policy analyses memoranda for the use of the Soviet Jewry Movement as well as Congress and the administration.

From the guide to the Joel G. Ackerman Soviet Jewry collection, undated, 1948, 1965, 1967, 1975-1988, (American Jewish Historical Society)