“My life has been one extended miracle,” writes former refusenik Rav Yosef Mendelevich, whose book Unbroken Spirit was recently released in English. From that day in 1970 when he and his refusenik friends tried to hijack a plane out of Russia, through eleven years in Soviet prisons and finally to the tranquility of raising a Torah family in Jerusalem, Rabbi Yosef Mendelevich recently spoke to Mishpacha about that day in June that shook the entire Jewish world.
REFUSENIK TALE
Now, let us look into the mirror of irony. The year is 1978 and the man's name is Yosef Mendelovich. The setting: a dank cell, deep within the bowels of the Christopol prison in the Soviet Union. The date is April 12. On the Jewish calendar it is the 14th of Nissan, one day before the start of Passover.
Yosef is a prisoner. He is a gaunt human shell, and he is about to light a candle. The candle, fashioned by Yosef's own hands, is made from hoarded bits of string, pitiful droplets of oil, and stray slivers of wax. The candle is lit -- the search for chametz begins.
Sometime earlier Yosef had complained of back problems. The infirmary in hell provided him with mustard to serve as a therapeutic plaster. Unused then, this mustard would later reappear as marror -- bitter herbs -- at Yosef's seder table. A long-saved onion bulb in water has produced a humble bit of greenery. This would be his Karpas. And the wine? Raisins were left to soak in an old jelly jar, water occasionally added, and fermentation was prayed for. This was wine.
The Haggadah which Yosef transcribed into a small notebook before being imprisoned had now been set to memory. The original copy was secretly passed on to another "dangerous enemy of the state," Natan Sharansky.
Yosef is not free. He cannot come and go as he pleases. He has been denied even the liberty to know when the sun shines and the stars twinkle. For Yosef, the world of free men doesn't even begin to exist.
Yet, Yosef, perhaps, is more free even than his captors. He knows exactly who he is, what he wants, and is prepared to pay any price to have it.
Today, Yosef Mendelovich walks the streets of Israel, studies Torah, and buys box after box of matzah to serve at his Seder. He is a free man now, just as he was even behind those lifeless prison walls.
