{"id":186339,"date":"2026-02-11T14:51:24","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T12:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/?p=186339"},"modified":"2026-02-19T10:53:38","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T08:53:38","slug":"natan_sharansky_40_years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blognli2026.moonsite.co.il\/en\/natan_sharansky_40_years\/","title":{"rendered":"Natan Sharansky’s Meal of Gratitude: 40 Years of Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The table at Natan and Avital Sharansky\u2019s home in Jerusalem\u2019s Old Katamon neighborhood will have been finely set, with the food plentiful, the questions flowing and the responses following. This story is not about their Passover seder<\/em>, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather, it deals with the annual dinner they hold \u2014 this year on the evening of February 19 \u2014 to mark a similar holiday of an exodus. It\u2019s always on the second day of the Hebrew month of Adar, the date in 1986 when Natan, then known as Anatoly, was freed after nine years\u2019 confinement in the Soviet Union’s prison system. He\u2019d been convicted of treason and spying for the United States, crimes the regime fabricated to punish Sharansky for applying to emigrate to Israel and for advocating freedom for Soviet Jews. \u00a0The idea was to deter others like him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"997013810940505171\"
Avital and Natan Sharansky on the day of his arrival in Israel, following his release from a Soviet prison, February 11, 1986. From the Enid Lynne Wurtman Collection<\/a>, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As is the couple\u2019s custom, only the closest family members will be coming: their daughters, their sons-in-law and their eight grandchildren, ranging in age from three to sixteen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sharansky, in an interview at his Jerusalem office, called it a seudat shikhrur<\/em> (liberation meal). His elder daughter Rachel, in a phone interview, termed it a seudat hodaya<\/em> (meal of gratitude). While the dinners lack religious components, aside from Natan\u2019s wearing a kippah<\/em> on one of his two occasions each year, they are rooted in the Jewish tradition of giving thanks for surviving a calamity. It\u2019s what some Holocaust survivors have done on the anniversary dates of their liberation. So have Israel Defense Forces soldiers back from battle and hostages freed from Hamas captivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"997009842838605171\"
Sharanksy (lef) alongside Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet nuclear physicist, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights activist, and his wife and fellow activist Yelena Bonner, from the Natan Sharansky Archive<\/a> at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The tradition dates to the tabernacle, when individuals offered God thanksgiving sacrifices after surviving life-threatening situations. Commentators explained that the offerings were shared with others. \u201cSharansky is certainly walking in the footsteps of that practice,\u201d Yisrael Motzen, rabbi of Baltimore\u2019s Ner Tamid Greenspring Valley Synagogue, said of the family\u2019s custom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marking four decades of freedom \u201cis another reminder that we\u2019re already old,\u201d Sharansky said with a smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* * *<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat was I thinking when we finally saw each other? What did I say, and what did Avital whisper to me? Strange as it may seem, I do not know. I recall only that my head was dizzy and my knees grew weak, as it seemed that at any moment the two of us would leave the ground and start floating up in the air,\u201d Sharansky wrote near the end of his 1988 memoir, Fear No Evil<\/a><\/em>, of the moment he and his wife met for the first time in 12 years, just hours before flying from West Germany to Israel the day of his release on a bridge in Berlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"997013810933505171\"
Natan (center) and Avital (right) Sharansky, alongside Elie Wurtman (left), photographed in Jerusalem. From the Enid Lynne Wurtman Collection<\/a>, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sharansky has been plenty active during his years living in Israel \u2014 at age 78, that\u2019s more than half of his life. A research scientist in the Soviet Union, he served in the Knesset for eight years, after establishing a political party centered on integrating immigrants from the former U.S.S.R.; headed four government ministries; and ran nonprofit organizations, including such bedrocks as the Jewish Agency and the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora. In retirement, he chairs three bodies: an institute at the Jewish Agency that he founded to train Israeli emissaries posted to Jewish communities abroad and two organizations that combat antisemitism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His papers reside at the NLI<\/a>, and more are on their way, he said in the interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sharansky continues to travel and lecture widely. American Jews he meets in Israel or the United States sometimes stop him to ask for a picture and relate their experiences as volunteers in the free-Soviet-Jewry movement. He said he\u2019ll often ask whether they\u2019ve told their children about that period, which ran from the mid-1960s to the Soviet Union\u2019s collapse in 1991.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They generally answer \u201cno,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"997013810937405171\"
Natan Sharansky with U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz at the White House, circa 1986-1988. From the Enid Lynne Wurtman Collectio<\/a>n<\/a>, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But neglecting to pass along that history \u2014 of the international mobilization to demand religious freedom and freedom of emigration for Jews of the Soviet Union \u2014 is a pity and \u201creminds me how important it is what we do in our family\u201d at the annual dinner, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe believe it\u2019s important so people can feel the strength of the Jewish people and get confidence,\u201d Sharansky said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stepped over to a shelf and returned with a framed photograph of his family taken 10 years ago, when Natan and Avital brought their children and grandchildren to Moscow for a visit. She had left the Soviet Union the day after their marriage in 1974, and began lobbying relentlessly for her husband\u2019s release.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"997013810941305171\"
Avital Sharansky (center) at a solidarity rally for Soviet Jewry in New York. From the Enid Lynne Wurtman Collection<\/a>, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cThe children insisted: \u2018We need to learn about our roots,\u2019\u201d Sharansky said of the trip. Behind them in the photograph looms the headquarters of the KGB, the Soviet secret-police agency. It\u2019s a building officials warned Sharansky he\u2019d never leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The family also visited the place where Natan and Avital first met, outside the city\u2019s main synagogue. They saw where the couple and their compatriots demonstrated for freedom, the sites of strategy meetings and the building exit where Sharansky was arrested in 1977.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ritual dinner evokes the seder<\/em>, Sharansky said, with its themes of relating to the next generations a vital personal and national experience of liberation and spurring young attendees to take interest enough to ask questions to learn more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor us, it was as natural as to sit together and discuss the escape from Egypt,\u201d said Rachel Sharansky Danziger of her and her sister Hanna\u2019s experiencing their parents\u2019 seudah<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s a powerful way of passing down the story.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When her parents are no longer able to, she said, she\u2019ll lead the seudah<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The message Sharansky said he hopes Israeli youth take from his experiences is \u201chow strong we are together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe could never have done it without the Jews of Israel, the United States,\u201d he said of the public campaign to release him and others denied emigration, known as refuseniks and Prisoners of Zion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"997013810938505171\"
“Refuseniks” gathered for a group photo in Moscow, the 1970s: (Left to right): Vitaly Rubin, Vladimir Slepak, Lev Ovsischer, Alexander Druk, Yosef Beilin (back row), Natan Sharansky (front row), Dina Beilin, Ida Nudel, Alexander Lerner. From the Enid Lynne Wurtman Collection<\/a>, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sharansky thinks that the tide is shifting on American campuses, that Jewish students intimidated by anti-Israel protestors are becoming confident about their support of Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He sees a connection to his ordeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"997009842751405171\"
Sharansky meets with U.S. President George W. Bush in the Oval Office upon being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006, from the Natan Sharansky Archive<\/a> at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow, we are at the beginning of the turning of this process,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are a few \u2014 it always starts with a few \u2014 who say, \u2018We will not be afraid anymore. We are Zionists.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, I am optimistic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writer-editor Hillel Kuttler may be reached at <\/em>hk@HillelTheScribeCommunications.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sharansky was freed from Soviet captivity in February of 1986. Jewish unity helped to bring about his release \u2014 and he says it remains key today. In this interview, Sharansky reflects on his own family’s practice of marking the occasion, which may hold a lesson for many of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":450,"featured_media":186364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[1232,1536,1628,1733],"tags2":[3067,2656,2651,2806,2802],"class_list":["post-186339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diaspora","tag-history-of-israel","tag-jewish-culture","tag-russian-jewry","tag-soviet-jewry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNatan Sharansky's Meal of Gratitude: 40 Years of Freedom<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sharansky was freed from Soviet captivity in February of 1986. 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