Nehemiah Levanon

Nehemiah Levanon was born in Estonia in 1915 and later became a kibbutznik.[3][1] By the Stalin era, he was engaged in covert efforts to encourage Zionism among Soviet Jews, activity Soviet authorities treated as illegal.[3] He died in 2003.[1]

The organization known in Hebrew as Lishkat Hakesher, or the Liaison Bureau, and operating under the code name Nativ, was created in 1952 as a branch of the Israeli Prime Minister's Office under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.[4][5] Its purposes included maintaining connections with Eastern European Jewry, coordinating the struggle for Jewish emigration rights, strengthening ties between Soviet Jews and Israel, raising Western awareness of Soviet Jewry's plight, and supplying prayer books, Bibles, dictionaries, and pictures of Israel to clandestine Jewish communities.[2]

In the bureau's early phase, Levanon, his wife, and two other families—described as BILU agents—joined the newly established Israeli Embassy staff in Moscow.[3] Although Levanon was listed officially as an agricultural attaché, his actual assignment was to distribute Jewish and Zionist materials secretly to Jewish homes and underground communities inside the Soviet Union—activities the Soviet government considered illegal.[3] In 1955, Soviet authorities arrested thirty Jews and expelled the BILU diplomats while implementing additional anti-Jewish measures.[3]

After the 1955 expulsions, thousands of tourists traveled to the Soviet Union as clandestine envoys of Zionism and Jewish culture.[3] They carried materials in their luggage and distributed them at secret meetings with Jewish activists, helping sustain communal identity in a country where independent Jewish activity was largely confined to underground groups.[4]

Levanon also participated in a major dispute over how publicly to advocate for Soviet Jews. In early September 1960, after replacing Binyamin Eliav in the Liaison Bureau, Levanon sent Meir Rosenne a telegram instructing him to halt preparations for an international conference on Soviet Jewry.[6] The instruction followed a warning relayed to Nahum Goldmann that Romania would cease all Jewish emigration to Israel if the conference proceeded.[6] Rosenne opposed cancellation, arguing that no proof existed of a genuine Soviet request and that backing down would cause greater harm.[6] The conference ultimately took place on September 15, 1960, after David Ben-Gurion insisted it proceed. Representatives from fifteen countries spanning four continents attended, and the resulting statement called on the Soviet Union to grant its Jewish citizens the same rights as other minority groups.[6]

Levanon was present in Moscow during the Adolf Eichmann trial in the early 1960s. He recorded in his memoir that the Soviet regime used the trial to criticize Israel, presenting it as "orchestrated to showcase Nazi crimes against Jews only" in order to foster Jewish nationalism and support for Israel.[7]

At a government meeting on November 2, 1969, Levanon served as deputy head of Nativ and discussed Jewish emigration applications from the Soviet Union, including applications concerning Jews in Georgia, as well as conditions affecting Jewish religious and communal life there.[2] He became head of Nativ in 1970, after Prime Minister Golda Meir appointed him shortly before the events surrounding Operation Wedding.[8][2]

Operation Wedding was a dramatic episode in the Soviet Jewry struggle. A clandestine Zionist group known as the Leningrad Committee sent an inquiry to the Israeli government describing a planned operation—the attempted hijacking of a Soviet aircraft to flee to Israel—and requesting its opinion.[8] Because the committee feared that direct contact could expose its members to charges of treason, Israel's response was framed as medical advice. Levanon conveyed the government's position by telephone in coded language: "The professor who is a high medical authority cannot recommend the use of the medicine."[8] After receiving the message, the Leningrad Committee announced its withdrawal from the operation.[8] Mark Dymshits and his fellow activists nevertheless proceeded without the Israeli government's backing; on June 15, 1970, they were arrested before they could board the aircraft.[8] In this episode, Levanon acted as the intermediary between the Israeli government and an underground Soviet Zionist network.

As head of the Liaison Bureau, Levanon co-chaired a committee with Ralph Goldman of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, reflecting coordination between Israeli and American Jewish organizations in addressing the Soviet Jewry crisis.[5] He devised strategies to dramatize the plight of Soviet Jews and helped mobilize foreign governments and Jewish communities worldwide.[3]

Levanon remained an advocate for support after the Soviet Union began to open. In a 1991 speech, he asked American philanthropists to remain patient with Israel and to support the absorption of Soviet Jews into Israeli society.[3]

A 2002 study described Nativ before perestroika as a major channel of contact with and support for the underground Jewish Zionist movement in the Soviet Union. It stated that during the early perestroika period, Nativ also became a channel through which other Israeli and foreign Jewish organizations entered the Soviet Jewish sphere.[9] A Knesset plenary record quotes MK Yuri Stern describing the Liaison Bureau building under Levanon as a place from which an international struggle on behalf of Soviet Jews was conducted, with important visitors participating in discussions he characterized as fateful for the Jewish people.[10]

Levanon documented his decades of clandestine work in the 508-page Hebrew-language memoir Ha-Kod—Nativ (The Code—Nativ, sometimes cited in English as "Nativ" Was the Code Name), published by Am Oved in Tel Aviv in 1995.[11][5] The book recounts Israel's struggle on behalf of Jews in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the Liaison Bureau's secret activities; the volume includes illustrations, portraits, and facsimiles.[11] Scholarly and official Israeli accounts cite it as a source on Nativ's operations from the 1950s through the early 1980s.[4][2]