Efry Spectre Papers

The Papers of Efry Spectre represent one collection housed within the Archive of the American Soviet Jewry Movement (AASJM). These papers reflect the effort, beginning in the 1960s through the late 1980s, of thousands of American Jews of all denominations and political orientations to stop the persecution and discrimination of Jews in the Soviet Union. The American Soviet Jewry Movement (ASJM) is considered to be the most influential Movement of the American Jewish community in the 20th century. The beginnings of the organized American Soviet Jewry Movement became a model for efforts to aid Soviet Jews in other countries, among them Great Britain, Canada, and France. The movement can be traced to the early 1960s, when the first organizations were created to address the specific problem of the persecution and isolation of Soviet Jews by the government of the Soviet Union.

Rabbi Efry Spectre was active in the American Soviet Jewry movement during the 1970s and 1980s when he served at the Adat Shalom Synagogue in Detroit and chaired the Committee on International Concerns and the Soviet Jewry Committee of the Detroit Jewish Community Relations Council. The stated purpose of the Detroit Soviet Jewry Committee (DSJC) was to advocate Jewish emigration from the U.S.S.R. and free expression of Jewish religious and cultural rights within the Soviet Union. The DSJC worked to raise the consciousness of the local community to the plight of Soviet Jews. Rabbi Spectre was involved in projects and events designed to increase awareness of the Soviet Jewry movement and to link the Detroit Jewish community with the Jews in the U.S.S.R. such as Bar and Bat Mitzvah twinnings, meetings with former Soviet Jewish Refuseniks, rallies, concerts, lectures, and solidarity days. In 1976 Rabbi Spectre participated in the American delegation to the World Conference on Soviet Jewry in Brussels.