CKE§XJF

 

 

VOL.Xm

' @ENTRAL
KENTQQGKY
JEWDsfi-l
FEDERATHGN

SUMMERIQQO

M16

 

THE EXODUS HRS BEGUN!

Soviet Jews coming home to Israel.
Hundreds of thousands of them. Israelis
receiving them, helping them become a part
of the country. And American Jews helping
too, playing our part in the drama.

The American Jewish effort to help
Soviet Jews settle in Israel is called
Operation Exodus. Like the Biblical Exodus,
a great mass of Jews are moving from
slavery to freedom. And Jewish life will
never be the same again.

The Soviets have relented, and Soviet
Jews are free to leave for a life of
freedom, as Jews in the Jewish homeland,
Israel. Moving from slavery to freedom --
from oppression to liberty: this is a
recurring theme in Jewish history.

The very idea that people could end
their oppression and change it through
struggle to freedom -— that idea was a
revolutionary concept introduced to human
culture by the Jewish people.

Who are the Soviet Jews now preparing
to leave the USSR or already arriving in
such large numbers in Israel? They have
lived in conditions of modern oppression --
but they have struggled to be free. They
are a generation worthy of freedom. They
have earned it during their decades of
wandering in the Soviet wilderness. There
was no straight line to their freedom. And
there is no straight line to their new
lives in Israel.

 

In their dream of freedom, in our dream
of an end to the oppression of Jews, our
responsibilities begin. We were
responsible for helping free Soviet Jews.
Now we must be responsible for helping them
build new lives as free men and women, as
free Jews in the free Jewish land.

Operation Exodus is our way of sharing
in the dream and the responsibility. The
special UJA/Federation $420 million
campaign is our share in enabling Israel to
settle more than 800,000 Soviet Jews. The
money is desperately needed for the costs
of transporting Soviet Jews from Moscow to
Israel and to help with the cost of
settling them during their first year in
Israel.

Operation Exodus is our way of helping
this true exodus of Jews move from
oppression to freedom, to new lives in the
State of Israel.

 

David Rubinger‘

at