Leadership

Leadership

Team Group

Executive Committee

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Debbie Kardon

Executive Director, Action for Post-Soviet Jewry; Chair, Action for Ukraine. Leadership roles at Jewish non-profits as a change agent and organizational leader.
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Doug Cahn

Principal, The Cahn Group, LLC. Former: Vice President, Human Right Programs, Reebok International Ltd.; Senior Congressional staff member, Human Rights Information Center of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (Madrid).
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Leo Slepak

An investment banker, investor, and business developer with more than 30 years of experience in global entrepreneurship. In his youth was at the center of Moscow’s refusenik activism; in subsequent years led efforts in the West on behalf of his parents in Soviet exile.
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Miriam Rosenblum

Career in nonprofit leadership. Former: Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, Cincinnati Council for Soviet Jews, Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-Semitism, MIT Hillel, JCRC (Cincinnati). Current: Brain Educators. Co-creator: First U.S. historical marker recognizing Soviet Jewry movement.
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Morey Schapira

Jewish Communal Leader, High Tech Entrepreneur. Former leadership: National President, Union of Councils for Soviet Jews; National Vice President, Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry; Co-founder Boston Action for Soviet Jews; Co-founder Medical Mobilization for Soviet Jews; President, Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews; President, South Peninsula Hebrew Day School; Co-creator Let My People Go website; Co-founder Soviet Jewry Movement Education Project; Harvard Business School alum.
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Simon Klarfeld

Ex Officio, Executive Director, SJMEP. Educator, nonprofit manager, program designer, curriculum developer. Soviet Jewry Movement work in London, Leningrad, SF Bay Area, and Kyiv. Fluent in Russian and dabbles in Hebrew.

Board of Directors

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David Z. Pinsky

Partner, Covington’s international arbitration and litigation practices with focus on former Soviet Union. Lecturer, Columbia Law School. Board service: NY’s UJA-Federation FSU Division, Marks Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst. Emigrated from USSR (Kyiv) 1979 at the age of two.
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Eti Ganin

Jewish communal leader. Former: Materials Scientist and Engineer. IBM & GE. Activist & refusenik in Kishinev & Leningrad; Proud beneficiary of movement for Soviet Jewish liberation that started in Cleveland.
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Jessica Katz

Columbia Univ School of Architecture & Planning. Former: City of New York Chief Housing Officer; Citizens Housing & Planning Council. Once called “The Littlest Refusenik” she emigrated from the USSR in 1977.
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Rabbi Enid Lader

Congregational rabbi, Jewish educator, Interfaith relations. Board service: Academy for Jewish Religion, Greater Cleveland Bd of Rabbis (Chair), AJR Assoc of Rabbis & Cantors (Chair), First US historical marker recognizing Soviet Jewry movement (Co-creator).
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Wendy Eisen

Longtime community leader and Soviet Jewry activist. She served as chair of the Montreal 35s, the Toronto 35s, and the Ontario and national Soviet Jewry committees of the Canadian Jewish Congress. She is the author of “Count Us In: The Struggle to Free Soviet Jews – A Canadian Perspective”
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Zev Yaroslavsky

Director, Los Angeles Initiative, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Former: County Supervisor, County of Los Angeles; Council Member, City of Los Angeles; CA Students for Soviet Jews, Southern CA Council for Soviet Jews; Union of Council for Soviet Jews.

Advisory Council

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Adele Sandberg

South Florida Council for Soviet Jewry leadership; Jewish communal leader.
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Alexander Smukler

Soviet-born activist and community leader shaped by Moscow’s refusenik era. Central figure in production and distribution of Jewish samizdat and dissident materials; samizdat collection archived at the Wende Museum, Los Angeles. Post-emigration: continued advocacy and philanthropic support for Jews in and from the FSU, including documentation of refusenik history and primary-source collections.
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Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetzov

Filmmaker. Director of “Operation Wedding,” 2016, documentary of the 1970 “Leningrad Hijacking;” Winner of 21 awards at film festivals around the world. Creator, “Let My People Go” educational program.
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Barry Shrage

Retired President of Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) of Greater Boston, 1987-2018; Professor, Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program, Brandeis University, 2018-present.
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Danny Grossman

Former Diplomat, Entrepreneur, and Foundation Leader. Jewish Community Federation of S.F. & Bay Area (2015-21); Wild Planet (1993-2011), US Dept of State Foreign Service Officer with focus on human rights (1983-89).
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David Harris

National Coordinator, Freedom Sunday; key organizer, Soviet Jewry movement. CEO, American Jewish Committee (25 years). Author: In the Trenches: Selected Speeches and Writings of an American Jewish Activist, 1979–1999.
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David Waksberg

Retired Jewish educator and nonprofit executive. Activism rooted in grassroots Soviet Jewry organizing — active with Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry as a teen and young adult. Former Executive Director, Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews. Founding board member, SJMEP.
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Dina Beilin

A leading Moscow refusenik leader, coordinator of refusenik records.
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Dr. Michael Beizer

Historian of Russian-Soviet Jewry, former refusenik, and activist in Leningrad. Retired research fellow at Hebrew University. Author of multiple books on Soviet Jewry. Executive Director of “Remember and Save” archive of the Aliyah Movement in the USSR.
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Gal Beckerman

Senior Editor for Books, The Atlantic. When They Come for Us We’ll Be Gone (2010), his book documenting the Soviet Jewry movement, chosen as a book of the year by The New Yorker and the Washington Post.
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Glenn Richter

National Director, Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ), 1964-1991.
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Joel Sandberg

Former Vice President, Union of Councils for Soviet Jews; South Florida Council for Soviet Jewry; Jewish communal leader.
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John Grabowski

Senior Vice President, Western Reserve Historical Society; Krieger-Mueller Associate Professor of Applied History, Case Western Reserve University.
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Jonathan D. Sarna

University Professor Emeritus and the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor Emeritus of American Jewish History at Brandeis University. Sarna was chief historian for the 350th commemoration of the American Jewish community. He is author of numerous books and articles including “The American Jewish Experience” and “American Judaism: A History”.
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Laura Bialis

Documentary filmmaker; Founder, Foundation for Documentary Projects; Director & Producer, Refusenik (2008).
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Natan Sharansky

Refusenik; Prisoner of Zion; Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, 2001-2003; Chairman of the Executive Board of the Jewish Agency, 2009-2018; Author.
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Pamela Braun Cohen

Author, "Hidden Heroes, One Woman’s Story of Resistance and Rescue in the Soviet Union." Former: Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (President), Chicago Action for Soviet Jewry.
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Rabbi Irving Greenberg

Lifetime of service to the Jewish people: Leading Jewish thinker, scholar, professor, author, and innovator. Pioneer in Holocaust education and commemoration; supporter of intra-faith dialogue in Jewish leadership; a founder of Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry.
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Rita Eker

Leader: The 35’s - Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry (United Kingdom). Co-founder: One-to-One Project. MBE honors in 1999.
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Shaul Kelner

Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies, Vanderbilt University; Author, "A Cold War Exodus" (2024) and numerous papers and chapters about Soviet Jewry movement; Teaches annual seminar "The Cold War Struggle to Free Soviet Jews."
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Sylva Zalmanson

Former refusenik, Participant in the 1970 “Leningrad Hijacking”; Human rights activist; Artist.
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Tatiana Zunshine

Author, "A Woman Under Surveillance: My Fight With the KGB to Free My Husband From the Siberian Gulag." Former refusenik. Founder and Director, Children Helping Children International.
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The Honourable Irwin Cotler

International Chair, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights; Former Member, Canadian Parliament, Minister of Justice, and Attorney General. Represented Natan Sharansky.
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Yosef Abramowitz

American-Israeli activist, educator and entrepreneur; recognized as one of the pioneers of the solar industry in Israel. Was president of the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) at the height of the Soviet Jewry movement.​
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Yossi Klein Halevi

Senior Fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem. Co-host, For Heaven's Sake podcast (Hartman Institute). Former Contributing Editor, The New Republic. Co-director, Hartman Institute's Muslim Leadership Initiative (2013–2023). Author: "Like Dreamers" (Jewish Book Council Everett Book of the Year) and "Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor" (NYT bestseller, published in 12 languages).
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Zoya Raynes

Managing Director, Bank of America; Senior Relationship Management team. 25+ years Wall Street experience; formerly Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Bear Stearns. Current board service: Jewish Funders Network (Chair), UJA-Federation of New York, Ruderman Family Foundation, Jewish Heritage Program. Former President, Jewish Communal Fund. Born in Kyiv; immigrated to the US in 1979.
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