Hundreds of Israeli soldiers, called up to take part in controversial campaigns like the 1982 invasion of Lebanon or policing duties in the Palestinian territories today, have refused orders. Many of these 'refuseniks' have faced prison sentences rather than take part in what they regard as an unjust occupation in defence of illegal Jewish settlements. In this inspirational book, Peretz Kidron, himself a refusenik, gives us the stories, experiences, viewpoints, even poetry, of these courageous conscripts who believe in their country, but not in its actions beyond its borders. We read about the cautious, even embarrassed, response of the authorities. And we see the wider implications of the philosophy of selective refusal - which is not the same thing as pacifism -- for conscientious citizens in every country where conscription still exists. Here is a real model for the peace movement in Israel and worldwide.

Soviet dissident and scientist Mark Ya. Azbel recounts the hardships of chidlhood, the joys and sorrows of becoming a full member of the privileged Soviet intelligentsia, the growth of awareness of his Jewish roots, the transfer of his loyalties from Russia to Israel, the decision to emigrate, the drama of his five-year leadership of Moscow's Jewish dissident group, and the final safe arrival in the promised land.

In this searing new volume, Lynn Melnick dives head-first through concentric waves of personal and generational trauma with her trademark fearlessness. Evincing a complex mind shaped by the late 20th century's misplaced priorities, Refusenik interrogates misogyny and anti-Semitism across time and a shifting global landscape-from a football field in Los Angeles to a Russian shtetl to a beloved daughter's Brooklyn bedroom. Variously unraveling and allowing for intricate tangles of anger, nostalgia and love, these agile poems furrow deeper into the terrain of Melnick's much-celebrated earlier titles, arriving at a profound and pressured understanding of what it means to be a contemporary American. LYNN MELNICK is the author of the poetry collections Refusenik (2022), Landscape with Sex and Violence (2017), and If I Should Say I Have Hope (2012), all with YesYes Books, and the coeditor of Please Excuse This Poem: 100 Poets for the Next Generation (Viking, 2015). I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton is forthcoming from University of Texas Press in 2022.

A classic account of courage, integrity, and most of all, belonging In 1977, Natan Sharansky, a leading activist in the democratic dissident movement in the Soviet Union and the movement for free Jewish emigration, was arrested by the KGB. He spent nine years as a political prisoner, convicted of treason against the state. Every day, Sharansky fought for individual freedom in the face of overt tyranny, a struggle that would come to define the rest of his life. Never Alone reveals how Sharansky's years in prison, many spent in harsh solitary confinement, prepared him for a very public life after his release. As an Israeli politician and the head of the Jewish Agency, Sharansky brought extraordinary moral clarity and uncompromising, often uncomfortable, honesty. His story is suffused with reflections from his time as a political prisoner, from his seat at the table as history unfolded in Israel and the Middle East, and from his passionate efforts to unite the Jewish people. Written with frankness, affection, and humor, the book offers us profound insights from a man who embraced the essential human struggle: to find his own voice, his own faith, and the people to whom he could belong.

Narrated in the tradition of Tolstoy's confessional trilogy and Nabokov's autobiog­raphy, Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story is a searing account of growing up a Jewish refusenik, of a young poet's rebellion against totalitarian culture, and of Soviet fantasies of the West during the Cold War. Shrayer's remembrances ore set against a rich backdrop of politics, travel, and ethnic conflict on the brink of the Soviet empire's collapse. His moving story offers generous doses of humor and tenderness, counterbalanced with longing and violence.

The “remarkable” story of the grass-roots movement that freed millions of Jews from the Soviet Union (The Plain Dealer). At the end of World War II, nearly three million Jews were trapped inside the USSR. They lived a paradox—unwanted by a repressive Stalinist state, yet forbidden to leave. When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone is the astonishing and inspiring story of their rescue. Journalist Gal Beckerman draws on newly released Soviet government documents as well as hundreds of oral interviews with refuseniks, activists, Zionist “hooligans,” and Congressional staffers. He shows not only how the movement led to a mass exodus in 1989, but also how it shaped the American Jewish community, giving it a renewed sense of spiritual purpose and teaching it to flex its political muscle. Beckerman also makes a convincing case that the effort put human rights at the center of American foreign policy for the very first time, helping to end the Cold War. This “wide-ranging and often moving” book introduces us to all the major players, from the flamboyant Meir Kahane, head of the paramilitary Jewish Defense League, to Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky, who labored in a Siberian prison camp for over a decade, to Lynn Singer, the small, fiery Long Island housewife who went from organizing local rallies to strong-arming Soviet diplomats (The New Yorker). This “excellent” multigenerational saga, filled with suspense and packed with revelations, provides an essential missing piece of Cold War and Jewish history (The Washington Post).