Harold and Judith S. Einhorn Papers

The Papers of Harold and Judith S. Einhorn 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 movement 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.

Residents of Laverock, Pennsylvania—husband and wife Harold and Judith S. Einhorn—were among the pioneers of the grassroots Soviet Jewry movement. Starting in 1964, the chairman of the Temple Beth Tikvah Community Relations Committee, Harold Einhorn, cooperated with the leaders of several other synagogues and congregations in the Philadelphia area to take their members on the so-called "pilgrimages of protest" —trips to Washington, D. C. to picket the Soviet Embassy in protest of the antisemitism behind the Iron Curtain. After these initial protests, picketing of the Soviet Embassy became an established and accepted means of protest by the American Jewish community in its call for an end to persecution and discrimination, and for Soviet Jewry's right to emigrate. The "pilgrimages of protest" were favorably acknowledged by the US government. The groups' leaders participated in conferences with the representatives of the State Department and met with consultants of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The participants received multiple encouraging telegrams from their elected representatives in Congress. As chairperson of the Soviet Jewry Committee at Congregation Adath Jeshurun, Judith S. Einhorn worked to get her community involved in the Soviet Jewry movement. She coordinated mass letter writing to Jews in the USSR and telegrams to the U.S. elected officials, provided information and instructions for making phone calls to the Soviet Union and personally kept in touch with Refusenik families in dire need of moral and material assistance. She undertook special projects, like planting trees in honor of the families adopted by her congregation. ¹