Grayce Perlbinder Papers

The Papers of Grayce Perlbinder 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.

The collection contains the papers of Grayce Perlbinder related to the activities of the Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry during the 1970s and the early 1980s. Created by Inez and Sydney Weissman in the early 1970s, the East Meadow-based Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry became the pivotal grassroots group within the national coalition Union of Councils for Soviet Jews. Grayce Perlbinder was one of the cadre of leaders of the LICSJ that included Inez Weissman, Toby Newman, Honey Karasyk and Lynn Singer. She served as the Committee’s Vice President and President. LICSJ worked to raise awareness of the plight of Jews in the USSR by keeping its community informed via its own newsletter, the Soviet Jewry Report. The group organized numerous demonstrations, vigils, sit-ins and benefit concerts on behalf of Soviet Jews. The Committee helped connect American and Soviet Jewish families with projects such as Adopt-A-Family and the Soviet Jewry Write-ins. They also arranged meetings between Jews in the USSR and the American travelers.