A Cold War Exodus
How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews
NYU Press, 2024 · Winner, National Jewish Book Award
What do Ingrid Bergman, Passover matzoh, Banana Republic®, the fitness craze, the Philadelphia Flyers, B-grade spy movies, and ten thousand bar and bat mitzvah sermons have in common? Nothing, except that social movement activists enlisted them all into the most effective human rights campaign of the Cold War.
The plight of Jews in the USSR was marked by systemic antisemitism, a problem largely ignored by Western policymakers trying to improve relations with the Soviets. In the face of governmental apathy, activists in the United States hatched a bold plan: unite Jewish Americans to demand that Washington exert pressure on Moscow for change.
Drawing from archival sources including travelogues of thousands of American tourists who smuggled aid to Russian Jews, this book offers a compelling account of activism and its profound impact, revealing how disparate elements were woven together to forge a movement and achieve the seemingly impossible. It stands as a testament to unity, creativity, and the dedication of those committed to human rights.
What Reviewers Are Saying
"[Kelner] argues, persuasively and subtly, that as much as American Jews might have done for Soviet Jews, the movement did more for them, both collectively and individually. It changed the nature of American Jewish communal life for three decades… [a] brilliant social history."
— Jewish Review of Books
"A fascinating portrait of the way the Soviet Jewry movement did what it did."
— Commentary
"A Cold War Exodus has real relevance in these times, as Jewish communities across North America contend with a profoundly disturbing upsurge in antisemitism."
— Jewish Book Council
"Presents an entirely new vista on the Soviet Jewry campaign. Written with a compelling narrative, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in this era of Jewish history."
— Contemporary Jewry
"Essential not only to enthusiasts of the American Soviet Jewry movement, but to students of American Jewish history writ large."
— H-Net Reviews
"A model for students of social movements on how to explore and explain activism in all its chaotic and kinetic glory."
— History: Reviews of New Books
"Persuasively reinterprets the Soviet Jewry movement from a fresh vantage point."
— CHOICE
Tours That Bind
Diaspora, Pilgrimage and Israeli Birthright Tourism
NYU Press, 2010 · Winner, Jordan Schnitzer Book Award (Association for Jewish Studies)
Since 1999 hundreds of thousands of young American Jews have visited Israel on an all-expense-paid 10-day pilgrimage-tour known as Birthright Israel. The most elaborate of the state-supported homeland tours that are cropping up all over the world, this tour seeks to foster in the American Jewish diaspora a lifelong sense of attachment to Israel based on ethnic and political solidarity.
Based on over seven years of firsthand observation in modern-day Israel, Shaul Kelner provides an on-the-ground look at this hotly debated and widely emulated use of tourism to forge transnational ties. We ride the bus, attend speeches with the Prime Minister, hang out in the hotel bar, and get a fresh feel for young American Jewish identity and contemporary Israel. Rich in detail, engagingly written, and sensitive to the complexities of modern travel and modern diaspora Jewishness, Tours That Bind offers a new way of thinking about tourism as a way through which people develop understandings of place, society, and self.
What Reviewers Are Saying
"If sociology is an art form, Shaul Kelner is a master artist."
— Sociological Forum
"Serve[s] up some fascinating insights into one of the most daring and effective social experiments of the modern Jewish Diaspora."
— The Jerusalem Post
"An important contribution to scholarship on tourism, transnationalism, and diaspora."
— Sociology of Religion
"A sophisticated lens through which to analyze what the Birthright program."
— The Forward
"Tours That Bind is must reading for those who work on homeland/diaspora relations. Ditto for those who research tourism in all its modalities."
— Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews
"Original and persuasive…. Kelner offers new ways to think about place, society, and self."
— Society (Social Science and Modern Society)