Good Monday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on the recent visit by San Francisco Mayor London Breed to Israel, and feature an op-ed from Miriam Hirsch and Selma Botman. We’ll start with a profile of One Million Lobby founder and CEO Alex Rif.
When Alex Rif spoke on stage at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly last month, she appeared with a sign, urging in all capital letters: “LET MY PEOPLE IN.” The message, written in English, was an homage to, and an inversion of, the American Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry’s slogan, “Let my people go,” reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.
A poet and serial social entrepreneur, Rif is the founder and CEO of Israel’s One Million Lobby, which advocates for the country’s Russian-speaking population. She created the organization in late 2020, with the stated goal of working toward “a better social, economic, and cultural reality for the 1.2 million Russian-speaking Israelis.” Her organization has grown in prominence over the past year, driven by two major developments: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the still-simmering but largely stalled debate over Israel’s Law of Return, which determines who is eligible for Israeli citizenship, specifically the plans to annul the so-called “grandchild clause,” which allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to make aliyah.
Her goal is to ensure that Russian-speaking Israelis are involved in the discussions about issues that will directly affect them, particularly matters of religion and state. Rif told eJP that her motto on these issues is: “Nothing about us without us.”
Rif, who was born in Ukraine and immigrated to Israel with her family in the early 1990s, has emerged as a somewhat curious figure in Israeli politics, bringing a degree of nuance that generally does not conform to the kind of partisanship that Israel has seen in recent years.
The One Million Lobby focuses considerable effort on reforming the government’s conversion authority to better take into account the particularities and sensitivities of the Russian-speaking Israeli community, without watering down the conversion process. The organization also advocates for new immigrants from Russia and Ukraine, as well as for continued aliyah from the former Soviet Union, specifically by opposing efforts to officially and unofficially change the Law of Return. In addition, it works to support the thousands of Russian-speaking Holocaust survivors in Israel, many of whom do not receive the level of support as non-Russian-speaking survivors, and the One Million Lobby is also heavily involved in efforts to create a museum dedicated to the history and heritage of Russian-speaking Jewry.
Later this month, Rif will travel to the United States with a group organized by the Israeli NGO Gesher, which encourages dialogue both within Israeli society and between Israel and the Diaspora. The trip will be funded in part by Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry. During the visit, Rif and the other participants will meet with representatives from the American Jewish community in New York and Washington.
Read the full article here.
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