The struggle for Soviet Jewry transformed Rabbi Norman Patz, now rabbi emeritus of Temple Sholom of West Essex in Cedar Grove.

"I never pictured myself as a foot soldier in any of the struggles that were developing. I graduated college in 1959, and I was part of the silent generation," he said. "But Soviet Jewry made me realize you've gotta go, you've gotta do, you've gotta get involved personally. It made me a community activist."

And it had lasting repercussions for his congregation as well.

"It really solidified the sense that we really were an extended family, that we were socially, ideologically, theologically connected and dedicated to the same causes."

Before he arrived at the synagogue in 1969, Patz said, "I'm not sure I was much aware about anything in the Soviet Union." Elie Wiesel had published his book The Jews of Silence in 1965; in 1967, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry was founded.

But it wasn't until the Leningrad Trial in December 1970 that everything changed for the rabbi. That's when 11 people — nine of them Jewish — were put on trial in Russia for trying to hijack a Soviet plane and go to Israel. Two were sentenced to death on Christmas Eve — and the plight of the Soviet Jews dominated the headlines. "It swept me in," Patz said.

He joined local efforts through the Community Relations Committee — which he would later chair — of what was then the Jewish Community Council of Essex County (a forerunner of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ).

"There were not too many rabbis involved in those days," he said, citing Rabbi Jehiel Orenstein from Congregation Beth El in South Orange and Rabbi Alvin Marcus of Ahawas Achim B'nai Jacob and David in West Orange. "The point is, it hadn't really percolated up yet," Patz said.

That Rosh Hashana, his second in Cedar Grove, he brought the issue to his synagogue's membership. The congregation would eventually embrace the tradition of a completely alternative second-day Rosh Hashana service dedicated to the cause of the Jews of the Soviet Union; this was one of the first.

"The whole liturgy was devoted to Soviet Jewry," he said. "We read Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poem ‘Babi Yar.' I think we played parts of Shostakovich's symphony ‘Babi Yar.'" After the service, he said, "We went out on the front lawn and held a demonstration to free Soviet Jewry."

By the early 1980s, b'nei mitzva in the congregation were twinning with refuseniks and wearing silver bracelets bearing their names. Patz was involved with a variety of activist organizations, including the Metropolitan New Jersey Conference on Soviet Jewry, which he eventually chaired. In 1985, through the CRC's efforts, Patz and his wife, Naomi, went on a rabbinic morale-boosting trip to Leningrad to visit refuseniks.

"We met with refuseniks late at night, after they came back from their cruddy jobs. They served us fresh fruit and vegetables, which was really special since they were very hard to get. They lived in such degraded circumstances because they had spoken up or out. They were stokers for coal burners on the midnight-to-8 a.m. shift." He recalled in particular visiting Tanya Edelstein. Her husband Yuli was serving a sentence of hard labor in a camp near Siberia for teaching Hebrew. She asked the Patzes to buy goods for her at a Beriozka shop, which sold fancy goods to foreigners only.

"I asked her, ‘What does your husband need fancy stuff for in a hard labor camp?' She looked at us as if we were stupid. ‘It's not for us. I need to bribe Aeroflot to sell me a ticket to let me get on a plane. I need stuff to bribe the ticket agent to get a ticket for the train. Then I need to bribe the warden to let me see my husband. If I have some loose tobacco left for my husband, that will be a big deal for him.'"

So Patz, with his wife, bought hundreds of dollars worth of goods for her.

Patz also remembers a wedding he performed in Moscow. "Someone had previously smuggled in a ketuba. I filled it out. The apartment was jammed. The wedding was so crowded there were people standing on a day bed."

He said that after they had their traditional 15 minutes alone, the couple emerged — with their one-year-old. They had had a civil ceremony, but wanted a Jewish wedding even after a year had passed since their civil marriage.

After the wedding, a few people asked if he would lecture them on liberal Judaism in the West.

"I said, ‘It comes out of liberal socioeconomic and political circumstances in the West. You live underneath an authoritarian regime. You need a highly structured Judaism.' They said, ‘We know about Orthodoxy. We want to know about other forms of Judaism.'" He said he was impressed by their interest and gave the talk they requested.

By the late 1980s, Temple Sholom had adopted a Soviet Jewish family, Mark and Evgenya Behrenfeld, who had two sons. "We would place telephone calls once a week to say ‘How are you?' and we sent things to them to be hand-delivered," said Patz. The congregation raised money for the family to use if they should get out of the Soviet Union. And on Shavuot, when older son Benjamin was 15, the congregation confirmed him in absentia. "We had an empty chair out with his name on it," said Patz.

Several families who fled the Soviet Union came to the Temple Sholom community when they were released, including the Behrenfelds, who arrived in the early 1990s. "When Mark was first taken to the supermarket, he was overwhelmed. He couldn't believe it," said Patz. Local families housed them until they could find their own apartment.

Meanwhile, a year later, another family came to the community. Benjamin would fall in love with their daughter, Ina Shevstso. Together they attended college and medical school; eventually, they were married. "It's a great success story," said Patz.

It wasn't all success. Patz did acknowledge the families who arrived in the States and left Judaism behind. "They wanted to be 100 percent American." At one point, Patz helped organize an ad campaign to bring them back into the community but, he said, he doesn't know if it met with success.

Overall, he said, the movement was ultimately so successful because its goals were in the interest of the United States government. "If the American government had been hostile, despite the popular support, the movement would not have gone anywhere," he said. He noted, by comparison, the failure of the Armenian genocide bill in October, which was rejected based on U.S. interests in Turkey.

Patz said he continues to view the struggle for Soviet Jewry as an interesting moment in Jewish history. "If you ask people what they did on behalf of Soviet Jewry, it unlocks a flood of memories — positive memories — about what a great time it was to be Jewish here."