Open Up the Iron Door: Memoirs of a Soviet Jewry Activist

Inspired by the cautionary lesson of the silence of many leaders during the Holocaust and the fearlessness of the Civil Rights movement, from 1964–1991 grassroots activists spearheaded a worldwide liberation effort. The demand? That Jews be allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Unlike other accounts of this history, Open Up the Iron Door chronicles the activities of those working outside of, and often in opposition to, the Jewish establishment – as seen through the loving, fiery, in-the-trenches perspective of Avraham (Avi) Weiss, a New York rabbi. This memoir interweaves one man’s personal struggles, doubts, and triumphs with the ups and downs of the activist movement itself—its challenges and personalities, its passionate protests and dreams, its dizzying successes and failures—spanning three decades of strategizing and meetings, sit-ins and hunger strikes, civil disobedience and arrests, and fervent pleas written, spoken, and sung.