OUR COMMUNITY
ON THE COVER
Freedom, Finally!
Recalling the historic arrival of Soviet Jews in Detroit.
ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
I
n 1981, my mother, Alla Zlatopolsky (maiden name Nisnevich), a Jewish immigrant from what was then the Soviet Union, experienced her first Shabbat dinner at the home of a volunteer family in Metro Detroit. These American families were paired with Soviet Jewish families to
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teach them about Jewish life. At 15 years old, my mom, who was born in Bobruisk, Belarus, and grew up in Riga, Latvia, knew little about Judaism. But she, along with the thousands of Soviet Jews who resettled in that area after World War II, weren’t alone in this lack of understanding.
Religion was illegal in the U.S.S.R. due to state-sponsored atheism instilled by the communist regime. Judaism, especially, was not tolerated or permitted. Centuries of antisemitism were deeply ingrained in Russian society, a view that barely improved after the war.
Three million Jews across the Soviet Union from Ukraine to Lithuania faced spiritual extinction. While the physical threat of the Holocaust remained nothing but a terrible, albeit fresh, memory for survivors and their direct descendants, the once-vibrant Jewish life of
