Folksinger Peter Yarrow serenades Natan Sharansky at emotional Jewish Federation meeting

-First  in a series-

Photos and Story by Donad H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO — Folksinger Peter Yarrow, who once sang as part of the trio of Peter, Paul and Mary at rallies to free Soviet Jewry sang a pair of songs to former Soviet Refusenik and current Jewish Agency for Israel chair Natan Sharansky at an emotional meeting of the Jewish Federation of San Diego County on Thursday evening, Oct. 28.

With Sharansky in the front row, Yarrow told first of singing in behalf of the American Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King, and years later in the movement to free Soviet Jewry of which Sharansky was both a leader and a symbol.

Before an enchanted crowd of several hundred persons at an auditorium at  Liberty Station, Yarrow sang “Don’t Laugh At Me,” which  he wrote as a plea against bullying, drawing the audience in for the chorus.   He followed up with a popular Chanukah song he said he wrote years ago at the request of his colleagues Mary Travers and Paul Stookey who wanted to be able to include something Jewish at a Christmas concert at which they  performed. The song was the popular “Light One Candle,” in which the Jewish Federation audience  also joined enthusiastically.

Clearly moved, Sharansky told the crowd that he always loved to sing as a boy growing up in the Ukraine, but neither his teachers nor his friends thought his voice very good.  Whenever he would try to sing, he was rebuffed, he said.

Later for his Refusenik activities, including organizing a demonstration in which he and other Jews held up signs for the media telling of their desire to emigrate to Israel, Sharansky was sent to prison, where he languished for many years.  A good portion of the time he was in solitary confinement — and there, he said brightening, he could sing as much as he wanted.  Of course, his guards didn’t like it very much — but what could they do?   He was already in solitary.

Sharansky said the songs he sang were Jewish and Hebrew songs he had learned during his years of political activity in behalf of Zionism and human rights.  The songs equated in his mind with his heritage, and knowing his heritage conferred upon him a great sense of freedom.  Prior to the discovery of his Jewish identity, he said, he knew that he and other Jews  were  different from other Soviet citizens — his identity card said so — but he did not know about the Jewish people’s values or beliefs.  Only after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War of 1967 did he begin to glean the pride of being Jewish.

Sharansky eventually was permitted to move to Israel — and unbeknownst to him the sister of one of the men who helped politically in that effort was in the audience.  That was Teedie Appelbaum, sister of the late U.S. Senator Chic Hecht, a Republican from Nevada.   Hecht, in a controversial deal with then President Ronald Reagan, agreed to vote in favor of selling AWACS to Saudi Arabia — a position that was an anathema to the Jewish community — if Reagan would come to the aid of Soviet Jews.  Reagan did so in 1986, when he met Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at a summit in Iceland.  Reagan gave to Gorbachev a list provided by the Council on Soviet Jewry of refuseniks he hoped would be permitted to emigrate, which Gorbachev agreed to look into provided the matter received no publicity.

When Hecht revealed the story years later to this reporter, he said that he had agreed to undertake the effort at the request of the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

After immigration, Sharansky served as a member of Israel’s Knesset and a minister in the government before eventually retiring from elective politics and later accepting the chairmanship of the Jewish Agency.

Today, he said, 94 percent of the Jews of the world live in freedom — most of them in Israel and in the United States — but there is still concern for Jews in scattered parts of the world, most particularly those in Iran and in Venezuela, among other trouble spots.

He mentioned that the Jewish Agency now is preparing to bring  many thousands of Falasha Mura to Israel, where it is expected many will convert formally to Judaism. The Falasha Mura are descendants of  Jews of Ethiopia who converted to Judaism, in many cases under duress, and now wish to return to their ancestral religion.

Earlier in the Jewish Federation program, Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs, well known community philanthropists, introduced the “Torahs for Our Troops” in which small, portable kosher Torah scrolls are being written by a sofer for use by military chaplains.  A full color guard marched an unfinished Torah scroll to the stage.

Navy/ Marine Chaplain  Irving A Elson introduced some Jewish members of the military who are now based in San Diego.  Along with Jewish Federation President Jan Tuttleman, and the Jacobs family, two of the active duty military members joined the sofer at a table, pronounced the appropriate blessings, and assisted as he filled the opening letters of the Torah.   Jacobs urged other members of the community to purchase letters in the scroll to do the mitzvah of bringing Torah to troops now serving overseas.

Among attendees were Congresswoman Susan Davis (D-San Diego) who has just returned from a trip to Israel, and Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher (R-San Diego), who is widely considered a future candidate for mayor.

San Diego’s current mayor, Jerry Sanders, had been scheduled to attend the meeting of the Jewish Federation, but had to cancel after Police Officer Christopher Wilson and two other persons were killed in an early morning shootout in another part of the city.   The Jewish Federation observed a minute of silence in the police officer’s memory.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World