Unbroken Spirit: A Heroic Story Of Faith, Courage and Survival [Hardcover]

Yosef Mendelevich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 25, 2012

At age twenty-two, Yosef Mendelevich participated in an attempt to hijack a plane to the West an act designed to raise awareness about the desperate plight of Soviet Jews. He was arrested before the plane ever left the ground and served twelve years in the Soviet gulag. This is the story of one man s resistance against tyranny, and his daily struggle to retain his Jewishness and his humanity in a system built to extinguish both. Unbroken Spirit is a testament to the strength of the human soul and an inspiration to us all.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Yosef Mendelevich is a true hero of one of the most successful human rights struggles in history: the rescue of Soviet refuseniks and Prisoners of Zion from an antisemitic captivity.... This remarkable memoir must be read by all who love freedom and cherish the right to practice their religion. --Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School

A compelling personal story and an engrossing piece of history
Scott Kirsner, Boston Globe

An extraordinary testament. It tells us that nothing can kill the human spirit. Even living in a totalitarian regime, where his basic rights were denied, Mendelevich managed to rise to great heights of bravery and faith. He recounts his story beautifully and powerfully. It is impossible not to be moved by the resilience of his Jewish soul. --Gal Beckerman, author of When They Come for Us, We ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry, winner of the 2010 National Jewish Book Award

The biography of Prisoner of Zion Rav Yosef Mendelevich, one of the shining examples of the struggle for Soviet Jewry against Communist rule, teaches us how the power of a single individual can change the world: how the power of faith and the uncompromising determination of the spirit can subdue an enemy s power. The book Unbroken Spirit tells the story of an extraordinary man whose whole life is a long treatise of Kiddush Hashem and great self-sacrifice for the sake of observing the Torah and its mitzvot in all situations in pain and crisis and also in peace and comfort.
Rav Yisrael Meir Lau, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Chairman of Yad Vashem

Yosef Mendelevich was among the first to begin our struggle, paving the way for hundreds of thousands of Jews to leave the Soviet Union. His personal story teaches that even under difficult conditions man can overcome all obstacles, especially when he seeks out the spiritual significance of his Judaism within his life. --Avital Sharansky, human rights activist

About the Author

Yosef Mendelevich, born in Riga, Latvia, in 1947, served twelve years in the Soviet gulag for his Jewish activism. Since his release in 1981, he has lived in Israel, where he received his rabbinic ordination and a master s degree in Jewish history. This is his third book.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 351 pages
• Publisher: Gefen Publishing (June 25, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9652295639
• ISBN-13: 978-9652295637
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 1.1 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #477,480 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "Unbroken Spirit" Inspires August 15, 2012

By Glenn Richter

Format:Hardcover

It's incredible: untold thousands of books, films, plays and recollections document Jews' greatest modern-day loss, the Holocaust. But American Jewry seems to have assimilated the redemption of Soviet Jews -- a miraculous triumph -- and the resultant maturation of the American Jewish community, without analyzing why and how it happened, and the lesson we can draw for today: it need take only a group of utterly determined people to change the course of Jewish history.

Yosef Mendelevich's autobiography, "Unbroken Spirit" is a great tool to understand Soviet Jews' awakening from the inside. Smoothly translated by Benjamin Balint, Yosef recreates the stirring of his Jewish spirit in a communist family in Riga. With great clarity, Yosef chronicles each of the huge challenges he faced, explaining the bases of his decisions to identify as a Jew, engage in underground Jewish activity, join the plan to hijack a Soviet airplane to escape to freedom, be strong at his interrogation and trial, and survive the gulag with his soul intact. Yosef delineates his complete determination to carry out what he came to understand to be God's commandments and the necessity not to concede an inch to his Soviet tormenters. The greater Yosef is oppressed, the higher his spirit soars.

Despite the sketchy information which seeped out of the USSR about his background, his defiance at the infamous 1970 Leningrad Trial, and his unyielding adherence to Jewish tradition during 11 long years in Soviet labor camps and prisons, Yosef became a major symbol in the West of the heroism of the Russian Jewish Prisoners for Zion. Yosef's aim is not only for readers to understand his personal story, but to stir our moral conscience and for Jewish readers, strengthen their collective identity.... To that aim, he succeeds and inspires most admirably. Read more ›

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars How Judaism survived the gulag July 29, 2012

By Donald H. Harrison

Format:Hardcover

How Judaism survived the gulag.

Unbroken Spirit: A Heroic Story of Faith, Courage, and Survival by Yosef Mendelevich, Gefen Publishing House; 2012; ISBN 978-965-229-563-7; 337 pages.

Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO -Feeling desperate that Jews were not allowed to emigrate freely from the Soviet Union, Yosef Mendelevich and a few compatriots planned some 42 years ago to hijack a plane from the tiny airfield of Priozersk, near the USSR border with Finland, and have it flown over Finland to neighboring Sweden. From there they would seek asylum in Israel. One of the troubles with the plan was that too many people knew about it, and it came to the attention of the KGB, which successfully arrested the plotters on June 15, 1970.

Mendelevich was in the vanguard of those brave souls who came to be known as Soviet "refuseniks," Jews who had sought to emigrate but were refused permission to leave. Although not all tried to hijack airplanes, all felt the oppressive opposition of a state that couldn't admit to itself, much less to the world, that great numbers of people desperately wanted to leave its "worker's paradise." Tried and convicted for his role in the plot, Mendelevich was sentenced to 15 years, but this later was reduced to 11 years.

Like many Soviet Jews who were denied formal education in the precepts and practices of their religion, Mendelevich had only a spotty knowledge of Judaism and Israel. However, he knew in his heart that both the religion and the land were essential to his identity. Once he was imprisoned, he began a quest to transform himself from an uninformed Latvian Jewish citizen of the Soviet Union, who had been force-fed communism his entire life, into a pious, Shomer-Shabbos, Israel-bound Jew....

The problem was that materials about Israel and Judaism were prohibited in the prison system. If any such materials were found, they were confiscated by the authorities Any prisoner involved in the chain of custody was punished. So prisoners often had to pool their fragmented knowledge of Judaism and create clandestine study groups. Materials smuggled on rare visiting days into the prisons by friends or relatives were hidden in cells, or clothing, or within body cavities, until they could be copied on pieces of paper more easily hidden. However, among the prisoners, there were always the spies who in exchange for a more generous food allowance, or other "privileges," would report any strange behavior, as well as any non-regulation reading material, to the authorities.

Much of the Mendelevich's book, which was first published a quarter century ago in Hebrew and only recently translated into English, describes the cat-and-mouse game that prisoners played with the authorities in order to increase their knowledge of Torah, their knowledge of Israel's geography and people, and their knowledge of the Hebrew language.

As the West became more aware of the Soviet refuseniks, and names like "Yosef Mendelevich," "Ida Nudel," and "Anatoly Sharansky" became household words, even White Household words, the cat and mouse game became more intense. The fate of well-known prisoners would often be raised by Western negotiators during Arms Limitation treaties and other meetings. So from the Soviet standpoint, it wouldn't do to kill these celebrated refuseniks, but on the other hand, it wouldn't do to give into them either. And thus there was a tug of war.

Mendelevich, and other "prisoners of conscience" to protest their treatment, would declare hunger strikes, word of which eventually would make its way to the West. In response, these political prisoners would be carted to solitary cells, where they would continue their hunger strike. At some point, when their condition became alarming to prison doctors, they would be force fed.

Sometimes, prison authorities looked the other way when prisoners engaged in Jewish practice. Mendelevich was allowed to grow his beard, and wear a yarmulke, even though both violated prison regulations. Then, suddenly, the yarmulke was snatched from his head, and guards held him down as he was roughly shaved. Sometimes, he was allowed to turn in piece work he had done in excess of his quota during the week, and that would be considered his Saturday quota. Under such circumstances, he could rest on Saturdays , and thereby observe the Shabbat. On other occasions, however, he was forced to work and therefore the sanctity of Shabbat was violated.

To an outsider, it might seem that for Mendelevich, prison life was "win some, lose some." But every battle, whether he won or lost, kept his mind fully occupied with his commitment to learn Judaism, Hebrew and about Israel.

Over 11 years of tussle, harassment, arbitrariness, vindictiveness and pettiness on the part of the prison authorities, Mendelevich survived, his faith in Judaism and knowledge of its rituals growing fragment by fragment until he became one of the most knowledgeable Jews in the entire prison gulag system.

After his release, and a tumultuous hero's welcome in Israel, Mendelevich went on to formally study the Torah, and eventually gained ordination as a rabbi.

Reading his tale, I realized that in an ironic way, prison had liberated him from many of the distractions that Jews today-especially Jews in the West -- face. Rather than bouncing from one subject to another, or from one social fad to another, prisoner Mendelevich was able to concentrate intensely on the object of his desires -Jewish knowledge -- and to internalize it.

There were no great Jewish libraries, the very size of which might discourage him, to browse and learn from. He had no access to Jewish learning on the Internet. He had no rabbi with whom to consult. Instead, he obtained every tiny scrap of Jewish knowledge through cleverness and willpower, and his intense effort made the information thus gained all the more meaningful to him.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World, [...] He may be contacted at [e-mail] Read more ›

5.0 out of 5 stars Unbroken Spirit: A Heroic Story Of Faith, Courage and Survival January 24, 2013

By Jeremy Hayman

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

A remarkable account of the power an individual standing up against the might of insurmountable physical and psychological pressures of a dominating bullying state. Yosef Mendelevich is a hero of our times. a must for everyone