Washington Jewish Week - 01.03.2007

Washington Jewish Week

Staying relevant

New NCSJ president aims to publicize needs of Jews still in former Soviet Union

by Eric Fingerhut, Staff Writer 

When Lesley Israel first traveled to the Soviet Union in the 1970s, she said her tour guide probably thought she and her sister-in-law were "silly girls" because they told him they wanted to skip a museum tour to go shopping. 

But they didn't go shopping - they instead visited Soviet Jewish refuseniks. 

Three decades later, Israel is still working to support Jews in the former Soviet Union, as the new president of NCSJ: Advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia. 

Israel points out that if her grandparents hadn't come to America, she might have been in the same situation as those refuseniks and never have been able to live the life she has lived here. 

"But for the grace of God," she said. 

Much has changed in those intervening years. She notes, for instance, that meetings no longer need to be set up with instructions like, "I'll be in red ... holding the Dosteyefsky book." 

But that doesn't mean that NCSJ's mission is any less important, or that anti-Semitism has disappeared, she emphasized in a phone interview last week from her home in Royal Oak on Maryland's Eastern Shore. 

"Too many people after communism asked, 'Why are you still relevant?' " she said. "My first job is to make them aware we are relevant. ... It's really important to recognize that these are not problems that have been solved." 

For example, while state-sponsored anti-Semitism may not be much of a problem anymore, that doesn't mean anti-Semitism isn't a strong force. A poll this fall found that 36 percent of Ukrainians do not want to see Jews as citizens of their country. 

The mission is more complicated, she noted. Instead of working and advocating for Jews in one country, there are now 15 nations. While Russia and Ukraine may have a Jewish population numbering in the hundreds of thousands, other smaller countries may have only a "handful of Jews" - but each one needs to be dealt with individually. 

"Even though they're small, they're there and they need us," Israel said. 

She admits that with so much focus on the Middle East these days, "it can be tough" to get Jews to pay attention to other areas of the globe. "But at the same time, people are more sensitive to the problems of the Jewish community around them." 

Israel, 67, has a wealth of experience in the international arena, not just from her involvement in recent years with NCSJ (formerly known as the National Conference on Soviet Jews), but from her work with the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. She is treasurer of the organization, which provides assistance to new and developing democracies. 

In fact, she traveled to the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s to teach campaign skills to Russians - everything from targeting voters to how to make political advertisements. 

"All the things we do, they had no idea [how to do]," she recalled. "They had no ... background." 

That election ended up being an indicator that "things hadn't changed" completely in Russia with the fall of communism, Israel recalled - it brought noted anti-Semite Vladimir Zhironovsky to power. 

NSCJ executive director Mark Levin said Israel's involvement with IFES "highlights the diversity within our leadership." 

"Men and women like Lesley who are actively involved in many different organizations and interests can come together" and "NCSJ can take advantage" of their talents, he said. 

Israel got involved in IFES through her career as a political consultant. That included work on congressional campaigns, as well as on a number of unsuccessful Democratic primary campaigns for president - from Hubert Humphrey to Ted Kennedy to Henry "Scoop" Jackson. 

She said the campaign closest to her heart was her work with the Democratic Party to defeat white supremacist David Duke during the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial campaign. 

Israel decided to retire from political consulting about 10 years ago because the profession had become too "mean and nasty." 

"It wasn't fun anymore, and the truth is I realized there were other things that mattered," she said. 

Since then, she has traveled to more than a dozen countries with IFES to monitor elections and teach classes, and makes it a point to visit the Jewish communities while she's there, from the synagogue in the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Jewish community center in Kyrgyzstan. 

In some cases, local residents aren't even aware of the Jews in their midst, recalling in that trip to Kyrgyzstan that her interpeter had no idea that the Jewish center existed. 

Israel's prior experience with politics and diplomats throughout the world is a "pretty good training ground for NCSJ," said Harold Luks, a North Bethesda resident and former chair of the organization. (NCSJ has both a chair and a president, which Levin said allows the organization to split the multitude of duties that comes with leadership.) 

"At the end of the day, the one overriding question" for NCSJ is "when do we speak out and what do we say," said Luks. "Lesley has the background to deal with both questions." 

Israel is a longtime Washingtonian and still keeps an apartment in the District, but she and her husband, Fred, now live in Royal Oak on Maryland's Eastern Shore, just a few minutes' drive from St. Michaels. There, they attend Temple B'nai Israel, a 165-member congregation where Fred has served as president. 

She's a former president of the JCC of Greater Washington, serving in the position in the mid-1980s, and has also been active in the Anti-Defamation League. She's now a member of the organization's national executive committee. 

Israel said her Jewish activism over the years has taught her that "Jews all over the world take care of Jews all over the world," noting that even in those risky visits in the 1970s to Soviet Jews, her hosts always urged her to "come into my home and have a cup of tea." 

"I realize how much group responsibility we have for one another," she said. "It's pretty awesome."