I didn’t know that this was Yom Kippur. I didn’t care what festival. The main thing was that I would once again be able to be in the company of my new friends. And so for the first time I came to synagogue on Rosh Hashana. Quite possibly, if my family had not known tragedy, perhaps I would not have come so quickly to a synagogue. I have to note that then, in 1963, Zionist activists decided to exploit the official standing of the synagogue in order to establish a semi-legal meeting place for youth and to set up on this basis an underground Zionist movement. And this was indeed what happened. After Rosh Hashana came Yom Kippur. The Yom Kippur about which I wish to relate took place six years after the first encounter with Rosh Hashana. I was 22 then, and one of the leading activists in the Jewish underground in the Soviet Union, the editor of the nationwide underground magazine. And something else occurred. Since there was no opportunity of emigrating to Israel, I decided with a group of friends to hijack a Soviet aircraft and flee to Israel. We hoped that this exceptional act would attract the attention of the Jewish world to our plight, and enable the lifting of the Iron Curtain to permit free emigration from the Soviet Union. We were unsuccessful. We were arrested. They attempted to break our spirit and make us cooperate with the regime. I was not broken, and so one day they transferred me to a mental hospital called “Serbski” in central Moscow. This was a KGB facility. If someone was dissatisfied with the situation in the Soviet Union- he must surely be crazy! Because every normal Soviet citizen had to love Communism. For my first “medical” visit there came to see me a colonel of the KGB with a white gown over his shoulders. He said to me at once- ” if you cooperate, you will go back to prison, if not – we shall register you as being a mental case and will give you special drug treatment.” Some time later they brought me for examination to the chief psychiatrist, Professor Daniel Luntz. He sat on a tall chair, as if on a throne. Around him were – doctors. I saw Jewish faces. They were enjoying the show.
“What!? You wanted to be the King Messiah?” the professor asked me. He spoke the words in the Hebrew tongue. Apparently, he had once studied in a yeshiva before the Bolshevik Revolution. I understood that they wanted to accuse me of megalomania. “No, I am a simple man and we have family in Israel, therefore I wanted to be with them.” The answer did not satisfy him, and he continued to ask me all kinds of trick questions. After they took me back to my cell I was very disturbed. What would they do with me, would they really begin to give me injections to make me go out of my mind? There were there some patients who had already undergone the “treatment.” It was terrible. A few days Professor Luntz summoned me again. This time he was alone. “Young man, you have a problem. Do you think that I can help you? The question was unexpected. I hesitated about what to say. Apparently, he wanted me to ask him to pass a letter to my friends and thereby to trap me. But perhaps he really did want to help me? Perhaps he felt sorry for a young Jewish boy? Suddenly there sprang into my head an evasive answer: “I don’t know, perhaps you can help me. I only ask one thing of you- don’t harm me.” “Is that all you are asking for?” He was silent for a moment – “OK”, he pressed a button and a policeman arrived to take me back to my cell. I was extremely stressed, and felt that at any moment I would go out of my mind. After a month of tension there came a young KGB lieutenant and said that I was leaving the “hospital.” “Where are you taking me?” I knew that in Moscow itself they didn’t do the forced “treatment.” Apparently, they were taking me to some secret facility to continue the torture. But the young lieutenant said: “Professor Luntz, who is a big expert, decided that you are pretending to be a mental case in order to evade the trial. But the truth is that you are well and able to stand trial. Therefore, we are returning you back to the prison to continue the interrogations.” What good fortune, what happiness! I will be on trial with my friends. I prefer to be given the death sentence rather than to remain in the asylum. My luck didn’t end there. Instead of loading me on to the prison train, the lieutenant took me to a regular train, and I could for a moment imagine that I was a free man During the journey the young officer asked me whether I was perhaps hungry: “I have some apples here.” And he took out two fine apples the like of which I hadn’t seen in the prison. I must emphasize that before the plane hijacking attempt I had learned by heart some dates of the Jewish festivals. That date was the last one that I remembered – it was the eve of Yom Kippur! Those apples reminded me of the apple with honey we eat on Rosh Hashana. Did the KGB officer know about the festivals of Israel? He took out a book- “Perhaps you want to read?” I looked – “It was Leon Feuchtwanger’s ‘The Jewish War,’ about the great revolt against Rome. I almost felt that they had sent Elijah the Prophet to me. We believe that on the eve of Rosh Hashana two books open – for life and for death, and on Yom Kippur they are signed. I don’t know for which book was I inscribed on that Yom Kippur. Perhaps it was for a third book, a book of hope,. At the trial, the People’s representatives demanded the death penalty for me and my comrades. But through international pressure, which the Russians hadn’t anticipated, they annulled all the death sentences and mitigated them. I got “only” 12 years imprisonment in a forced labor institution. After Yom Kippur comes the festival of Sukkot. In the forced labor camp I tried very hard to observe the mitzvoth – Shabbat, prayer, festivals even though for everything I was punished. I spent 3 years in the harsh conditions of the closed prison for observing the Shabbat. Only one mitzvah I was unable to keep – the Mitzvah of Sukkah. Who was going to permit me to build a Sukkah in a KGB camp! Some years later, I saw at the edge of the camp a pile of straw. I knew that if I could scrape the straw so that I would from underneath be able to see the stars – this would be considered as observing the mitzvah of Sukkah. The problem was that this pile of straw was near to the camp’s electric fence . It was forbidden to approach it. One might be suspected of an escape attempt and be shot at. But the desire to observe the mitzvah overcame the fear. Towards evening, when they had not yet lit the projectors on the guard towers, under cover of the darkness, I ran toward the pile of straw, got inside it, scraped the straw looked at the stars and made the blessing “who has sanctified us by Thy commandments, and hast commanded us to dwell in the Sukkah.” As soon as I finished the blessing, I rapidly retreated from the Sukkah. But my heart was filled with joy. I did it! Thus, from that first miserable Rosh Hashana of the start of the long trek, I had reached the Sukkot of confidence and faith. Shortly thereafter I was released and straight from the prison “expelled” to Israel. It seems to me that this story exemplifies how, despite the sadness of the approaching winter, a Jew can rejoice and create his own world of struggle within himself and victory – in the end it all depends on you!
