Leonard S. Cahan Papers

The Papers of Rabbi Leonard S. Cahan represent one collection housed within the Archive of the American Soviet Jewry Movement (AASJM). These papers reflect the effort, beginning in the 1960s through the late 1980s, of thousands of American Jews of all denominations and political orientations to stop the persecution and discrimination of Jews in the Soviet Union. The American Soviet Jewry Movement (ASJM) is considered to be the most influential Movements of the American Jewish community in the 20th century. The beginnings of the organized American Soviet Jewry Movement became a model for efforts to aid Soviet Jews in other countries, among them Great Britain, Canada, and France. The movement can be traced to the early 1960s, when the first organizations were created to address the specific problem of the persecution and isolation of Soviet Jews by the government of the Soviet Union.

Rabbi Leonard Cahan of Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac, Maryland served as president of the Washington Board of Rabbis, which sponsored demonstrations aimed to raise public awareness of the situation of Soviet Jews. During one such event on May 1^st, 1985 Cahan with a group of over 20 rabbis and a Lutheran minister was arrested by D.C. police for violating the city code by demonstrating within 500 feet of the embassy, and ignoring police warnings to disperse. Rabbi Cahan was among the 8 rabbis sentenced to six months probation, a $50 fine and a suspended jail term. Five of the rabbis, Leonard Cahan, Steven Bayar, Bruce Khan, David Oler and Mark Levine chose to serve their 15-day sentences in jail, in order to show solidarity with, and stress the plight of the Jews of USSR, oppressed by the Soviet government. The rabbis were released after spending 12 days in the Federal Correctional Institute in Petersburg, VA.