JNS
The Jerusalem book launch of "Be a Refusenik" explores how Cold War–era Jewish resistance offers a roadmap for confronting modern anti-Zionism.
Jerusalem’s Menachem Begin Heritage Center hosted the launch of Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide on Jan. 5, bringing together scholars, former Soviet Jewish activists and young Jewish leaders to explore how the struggle of Soviet Jewry offers a roadmap for confronting today’s surge of anti-Zionism on college campuses.
The evening centered on the book’s author, Izabella Tabarovsky, a senior fellow at the Z3 Project and a leading expert on modern antisemitism. Drawing on her own experience growing up as a Jew in the former Soviet Union, Tabarovsky traced the ideological lineage between Soviet anti-Zionism and rhetoric now commonplace on Western campuses.
Born into a society shaped by state-sponsored antisemitism, Tabarovsky immigrated to the United States in 1989 and later moved to Israel. She told the audience that Soviet refuseniks were defined not by victimhood, but by refusal.
“They refused to accept the idea that they had to live without a connection to the Jewish people—its history, its culture and its traditions,” she said. “All the years they waited to be released, they worked to deepen who they were as Jews.”
That refusal, she argued, became a source of inspiration far beyond the Soviet Union, galvanizing Jews worldwide to campaign for their freedom.
In conversation with American-Israeli writer David Hazony, director of the Z3 Institute for Jewish Priorities, Tabarovsky was joined on stage by Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet refusenik, Israeli cabinet minister and Jewish Agency chairman who wrote the book’s foreword, and Jewish educator and musician Noah Shufutinsky.
Tabarovsky rejected the notion that contemporary anti-Zionism emerged organically in the West.
“Anti-Zionism did not originate here,” she said. “It was developed and refined by the Soviet system and later adopted by parts of the global left.”
After Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, she noted, the Soviet Union reframed its defeat by promoting conspiratorial narratives portraying Zionism as a sinister global force—language that remains disturbingly familiar.
Be a Refusenik pairs six historical chapters on Soviet Jewish dissidents with essays by contemporary student and youth activists. Each chapter distills a principle drawn from the refusenik experience: reclaim your Zionism; educate yourself and others; find allies; act creatively and unexpectedly; reject victimhood; and lead with Jewish identity.
In his foreword, Sharansky frames the book around a question that has long troubled American Jewish leadership. “There are two battles that mobilized hundreds of thousands of American Jews—the struggle for Soviet Jewry and the struggle against antisemitism,” he writes. “Why were we so successful in the first, and so painfully unsuccessful in the second?”
According to Sharansky, Tabarovsky’s work is the first serious attempt to confront that question head-on. By drawing parallels between the refusenik movement and today’s campus struggles—while acknowledging the profound differences—he said the book offers urgently needed guidance.
No one today faces the gulag, Sharansky emphasized, but ideological coercion remains powerful. The pressure to remain silent, to conform, or to disavow Jewish identity may be less brutal, yet it similarly seeks to erase connection and conviction.
Shufutinsky, known to many by his stage name “Westside Gravy,” spoke about cultural expression as a form of resistance. Working with StandWithUs and engaging Jewish students across North America, he said young Jews are often pressured to “reduce” themselves—to downplay or sever their connection to Israel and Jewish peoplehood to be accepted.
“How we respond to outside bullying matters,” he insisted.
Hazony underscored that resistance requires purpose. Many refuseniks, he noted, lived relatively stable lives in the Soviet Union but chose to risk everything rather than surrender their identity. Comfort did not dull moral clarity.
Sharansky returned repeatedly to the importance of historical memory. He recalled that after the Six-Day War, he placed a photograph of Yoni Netanyahu on his wall. For the first time, he said, he understood that Jews were not only victims of history, but actors within it.
“That realization changes everything,” Sharansky said. Fear, he explained, was never absent—but courage meant acting despite it.
Looking ahead, Sharansky expressed both concern and guarded optimism. Israel, he said, will endure, as evidenced by the global Jewish response after Oct. 7, 2023. What worries him more is the erosion of Jewish identity in the Diaspora, he said.
“There is no replacement for the Jewish family,” he warned, adding that Zionism and connection to Israel are not optional accessories but core elements of Jewish life.
At the close of the program, Shufutinsky told JNS that the book’s message transcends generations. “Every young Jewish person—and every Jewish person—has something to learn from this generation’s struggle for freedom,” he said. “It’s up to us to continue the story.”
The evening left the audience with a clear message: Be a Refusenik is not simply a history book. It is a call to action—urging a new generation to reclaim clarity, courage and ownership of its Jewish identity in the face of mounting pressure to surrender it.
