I Insert the text of Rabbi Dalins article to be printed In the RECORD and urge my colleagues to read It Tm YzRs LA rm A RABI RrruRNs TO RUSSIA (By Rabbi Ralph A. Dalin) The Soviet customs official. on learning this was my second visit. asked if I had friends I was going to visit. The honest answer was "no." The friends I had made in the refusenik community in 1976 had. thankfully. been able to emigrate. I refrained from adding that I intended to make new friends. More than ten years had passed since my last visit to the Soviet Union. My previous experiences led me to wonder whether I would be granted a visa for a return visit. I was pleasantly surprised when the visa came through and I was able to make arrangements for a tenday visit to Moscow and Leningrad with my colleague Rabbi Steven Bayar (formerly of Greenbelt and now of Spring Valley. NY). The emigration situation for Soviet Jews Is far worse than It was in 1976. The Jewish emigration total for that year was 14.261. In 1986. less than 1.000 were permitted to emigrate. Statistics alone. however. do not reveal the sadness. the grim. stoic realiza. tion of our Soviet brethren that their dreams of a/lyah will. in all probability. remain dreams for some time yet. Yuli Kosharovsky of Moscow is a sensitive person whose quiet charisma and air of experience come from his many years in the heart of the refusenik movement.
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emigrate emigration visa