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introduction
Resettlement, called "absorption" in Israel, welcomed more
than 12,000 new Russian-speaking Clevelanders and assisted
them in starting new lives here. It was a many-year effort
led by the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, with
agency leadership by the Jewish Family Service Association.
It was supported by congregations and other parts of the
organized Jewish community. Possibly more than a thousand
volunteers helped. Yet no report on it had been published.
In the course of planning for the May 15,
2016 program on A 20th Century Exodus, Federation was
asked if such a report was available. One had been written
in 2013 by Rachel Davidson, a Clevelander who was then a
Federation intern. With the permission of
Federation and of the author, we are pleased to web-publish
this summary.
Thanks to Eti Ganin, who asked Federation if a report was
available and to Federation executive Erika Rudin-Luria for
sending it to me and granting permission to publish.
Arnold Berger May 18, 2016
Rachel Davidson writes:
"I wrote this report while I was a summer intern at the Jewish
Federation of Cleveland, when I was a college student studying
Psychology at Oberlin College. I was asked to write a report on
the lives of Jews in Cleveland who immigrated from the Former
Soviet Union, and I found that there was little research done on
their lives after coming to the United States.
This report drew heavily on documents found at the Western
Reserve Historical Society, but also drew on interviews I
conducted with eight Cleveland Jews who came from the FSU.
While I am proud of this report, there is certainly more
research to be done, and I cannot claim in any way to be an
expert in this story. I welcome any comments or corrections, and
I am happy to help anyone who wants to continue this research."
Read the
Cleveland Resettlement report.
(It is a .pdf document. Adobe Reader required.)
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