This wasn’t just a couple of Jewish Agency contacts in Moscow with an interest in moving to Israel. It was an entire secret network, an entire Orthodox community that functioned under the Soviet radar

Ernie Hirsch, founder of the Russian Religious Jews (RRJ) Fund, which sent hundreds of emissaries on clandestine trips behind the Iron Curtain

It really defies logic. How did a Yekkeh-born Jewish jeweler living a quiet life in North West London — me, that is — get to lead a relief effort that sent 250 emissaries and cases full of contraband to support the Russian Jewish underground in Moscow? Honestly, I had no idea what I was getting myself into at the time, but with hindsight, I realize that entire chapter of my life was orchestrated from Above.

Back in the late 1970s, all of us Jews living in Western countries knew that Russian Jews were imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain, and those who found expression for their Judaism or wished to emigrate faced starvation and imprisonment in the Soviet gulag. Of course, there were demonstrations and protests in London on their behalf, but I was an armchair activist at most. At the time, an organization called Herut UK was looking for people to take literature and hasbarah about Israel into the USSR. In January 1980, a friend of ours who was involved in Herut approached my wife, Linda, as a potential courier, since she didn’t have that “Jewish” look.

Although Linda was not keen on the idea of a trip to Communist Russia, I was up for the adventure. Before I traveled, I met with the Herut representatives and I was briefed about the situation there, about the spiritual awakening of Russian Jews, cut off from their heritage for over half a century. Beginning in 1971, as the Soviet authorities began to court better relationships with the West, many Russian Jews took advantage of Western pressure to relax restrictions on Jewish life and immigration by applying to leave the country and emigrate to Israel. The response to those requests was anything but welcoming. These refuseniks, as they came to be known, were fired from their jobs, could rarely find work, and found themselves targets of KGB stalking. Some even had their homes bugged. Refuseniks needed an invitation from abroad just to have a miniscule hope of emigrating, but even if the invitation got past the mail censors, it could take years to process an exit visa. While they waited, they were desperate for Jewish literature, education, and support, and that was what I was asked to provide on my visit.

I was given the number of a refusenik named Rabbi Eliyahu Essas, a Moscow-based baal teshuvah who, I would soon discover, had created a veritable Torah community of several hundred fearless Jews under the noses of the KGB.

I arrived in Moscow for a week’s holiday accompanied by a friend, with a suitcase full of brochures in Ivrit and Russian. The airport officials opened my case, took away all the brochures, and told me to wait in a side room. I’m not easily intimidated, so after an hour, I left the room, went in next door, and let them know that I wanted my stuff back. “Well, you can’t have it,” was the response. But they did give me back one or two leaflets before sending me off to my hotel.

As I had been told, KGB spies waited on every floor of the hotel, and they spied on foreigners as they moved around the city, too. My companion and I called Rabbi Essas, and he directed us to meet him at a certain Metro station, very difficult to find because I don’t read Russian. We stood at the end of the platform, and there was a man coming toward us, young but impressive, full of charisma, and I said to my friend, “That must be the guy.” It was nearly 40 years ago, but the moment has stayed with me. He took us to his apartment and got right down to business, interviewing us about what we could offer his people, who were struggling to learn about their Jewish heritage and live as Jews.

To me, this was a twist in the tale. This wasn’t just a couple of Jewish Agency contacts in Moscow with an interest in moving to Israel. It was an entire secret network. It was actually, we soon found out, an entire Orthodox community that functioned under the Soviet radar. Rabbi Essas gave us more phone numbers, and each individual I spoke to gave me the number of another person. I memorized the phone numbers (it was too risky for those involved if we were caught with their phone numbers), contacted each refusenik one by one, and we met. In one crowded Metro station, then another, I met with scores of young Russian Jews. It threw me how many of them there were, and how desperate they were to know about Judaism, although both shiurim and meetings with foreigners were illegal. Honestly, I was unprepared for the first question everyone threw at me: “Why do you live in London?” They couldn’t understand how a Jew could forgo the opportunity to live in Eretz Yisrael if he’s free to buy a ticket and fly there.