Hero for America’s Jewish youth: Rav Mendelovich

They asked him for a bracha (blessing). He raised his eyebrows, his eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses clear, gentle and still the same intensity as years ago. Pointing to himself and shrugging his shoulders, he shook his head slowly as if to say, “who me?”

After some persuasion, he accedes to the father’s request, a young rebbe from Yeshiva Darchei Torah, and stands and blesses each of the children, gently placing his hands on each boy’s head, standing bowed in front of the girls.

He pronounces the words meticulously, with devotion, eyes closed, “Yisimcha Elokim k’Ephraim v chi’Menashe” (“May G-d make you like Ephraim and Menashe”) for the boys.

Rabbi Yosef Mendelevich, former Prisoner of Zion, Soviet refusnik, one of 16 who attempted to hijack a small plane in 1970 to escape to freedom and bring attention to the plight of the Soviet Jews, is now a rebbe in Israel, and visiting the Five Towns.

The beautiful irony hangs in the air: A Yosef, a former prisoner, invoking Yaakov’s blessing using the names of the sons of the first Yosef, a former slave whose actions ultimately led to the molding of Am Yisrael. Through those painful actions 43 years ago, Yosef Mendelevich and his fellow refuseniks forced the first crack in the Iron Curtain, only to then languish in labor camps and prisons as the trickle of Jews finally allowed to emigrate turned into a flow of over a million, and ultimately led to their freedom as well.

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He said that in 1964, in Riga, Latvia, he wanted to study medicine and took the exams, excelling in physics and chemistry but was told he didn’t do well in Russian composition.

Another irony: Readers of his book, “Unbroken Spirit: A Heroic Story of Faith, Courage and Survival,” recently translated into English, have described it as similar to a classic Russian novel. He realized that his Jewish name kept him out of medical school. “Thank G-d I didn’t succeed in that,” he said in Hebrew in an interview with The Jewish Star.

“Hakadosh Baruch Hu prepares you for something else, a different mission. I was a little upset when my mother died; I wanted to be a doctor to help people. But you can help people in many ways. I fought for freedom of aliyah, so people can be free, not just me. I thank Hakodosh Baruch Hu for the merit to be a part of this.”

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Mendelevich was born in 1947 in Riga, Latvia into a family that toed the Soviet line but maintained limited Jewish ties, discussing Jewish history at Pesach seders and acknowledging Chanukah. In the 1960s, he became active in the Jewish underground movement, obtaining some books and reading up on Jewish history and Chumash with Russian translation, ultimately organizing a weekly parsha group. He became involved with fellow Jewish students in high school, cleaning the mass graves of Jews killed by the Nazis.

After the Six Day War, the USSR broke off relations with Israel. Anti-Semitism, always a fixture in Russia, and pressure on the Jewish citizens increased; study of Jewish subjects and Hebrew was forbidden, and the difficulty in obtaining exit visas to emigrate to Israel became increasingly difficult. The refusniks were refused visas with claims by the government that they were privy to sensitive Soviet secrets.

At age 22, Mendelevich joined a group of refuseniks who planned to fake a wedding trip to Sweden to flee to Israel. The Soviet secret police halted the move, beating and arresting the group before they entered the plane. Two of the activists were sentenced to death at the First Leningrad Trial, but after international pressure, their sentences were changed to 15 years in prison. Mendelevich, the youngest of the group, also received 15 years.

Mendelevich survived 11 years in labor and prison camps in the Ural Mountains, clinging to Judaism, doing his best to maintain his identity and help his fellow prisoners learn and grow Jewishly, in spite of the harsh conditions and brutality.

He was deported after 11 years of his sentence and went to Israel, met his wife through the Soviet Jewry movement in Israel, studied in yeshiva, became a rabbi and currently teaches in Mechon Meir in Jerusalem. He teaches Talmud to Russian students, usually in Hebrew but helps them understand when necessary in Russian.

One student was aghast that the famous Yosef Mendelevich, who helped free the Soviet Jews, was now a rebbe in a yeshiva. “So small!” Mendelevich smiled. “As if I should be riding on a white horse! I teach men in yeshiva. You can’t always do great things. If I do one thing great, I am satisfied.”

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American Jews asked him to translate his book into English “to influence the youth in the U.S. to keep from assimilation, to let them know that we have our own heroes, that is the main thing, to talk in the schools, to give positive motivation to be strong Jews.”

He said that that is the framework of his organization, “Od Avinu Chai,” again a reference to the first Yosef, when he asked his brothers if their father Yaakov was still alive, but also a reference to Shlomo Carlebach’s Am Yisrael Chai song that became the theme of the Soviet Jewry movement that was spearheaded by students and housewives.

Mendelevich noted that it was their protests and actions that pushed governments to ultimately force the Iron Curtain open. Mendelevich is traveling throughout the U.S. and speaking to groups to motivate people, in particular the youth, to be strong in their Judaism, to see what he did to hold on through great adversity and to continue to grow in his Judaism.

He attributed his tenacity and interest in Judaism to his character, not his education.

“Many had the same thing but didn’t do the same thing or did the opposite. When someone doesn’t do what he thinks is good, he doesn’t feel good. How is it that you know to do it and didn’t try to be happy with yourself? If I didn’t do it, I would have hated myself, how can someone not do what is right to do?

“Besides, I so wanted not to be like the Soviet type, to be like them, to think like them. I felt disgust for this, that’s exactly what I left, to be myself.

“In the end, it was G-d’s watchfulness (hashgacha), He pushed me.”

Mendelevich said he could have stayed in Russia and lived that lifestyle, but that “I worried for myself, I wanted to be as I was before prison.

“Prison destroys you. The things you have to do are difficult. I was worried that I would forget who I am. I needed to hold tight to Yahadut (Judaism) and not to sink and be like the others. Like in life, we live with many worries, livelihood, relationships; you can fall and sink.

“I chose a Jewish life — it saved me from sinking.”