{"id":2351,"date":"2025-03-07T15:17:12","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T15:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/actionpsj.org\/?p=2351"},"modified":"2025-04-04T15:19:51","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T15:19:51","slug":"honoring-judy-patkin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/actionpsj.org\/index.php\/2025\/03\/07\/honoring-judy-patkin\/","title":{"rendered":"Honoring Judy Patkin"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Dear Friends,

Today, International Women’s Day, we proudly celebrate Judy Patkin\u2014an extraordinary woman whose courage and determination helped shape history and Action-PSJ. Judy\u2019s leadership at Action for Soviet Jewry was instrumental in a powerful grassroots movement that aided hundreds of Jewish refuseniks, providing them with crucial support, medical treatment, and the opportunity to eventually leave the Soviet Union.

From her initial volunteer days in the early 1970s, to her transformative role as Executive Director guiding APSJ through the collapse of the Soviet Union, Judy\u2019s legacy is one of unwavering compassion and relentless advocacy.

Join us at our upcoming event as we honor Judy Patkin and look back at APSJ\u2019s incredible 50-year journey. Over the next few weeks, we will also highlight our other esteemed honorees: Bob Gordon, Barbara Karchmer, Marlene and David Bohn, along with our valued organizational partners, Combined Jewish Philanthropies and The Rashi School.

Please join us in celebrating these inspiring individuals and organizations that have shaped our past and continue to guide our future:


Together, let’s continue this remarkable journey. Honoring our past, shaping our future\u2014because every action counts.

Warm regards,<\/p>

<\/p>

Executive Director<\/p>

Action for Post-Soviet Jewry<\/p>

P.S. Your support truly makes a difference. Please donate today to help us continue our critical work. Thank you!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>
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Judy Patkin began volunteering on behalf of Soviet Jews on the early 1970\u2019s following the publicity over the aborted hijacking of a small plane leading to the Leningrad trials and long prison sentences and death threats.\u00a0 Volunteer work continued with the founding of Action for Soviet Jewry in 1975 as a private non-profit organization to help Jews refused the right to emigrate from the Soviet Union.\u00a0 In the late 1980\u2019s Judy became the executive director of Action for Soviet Jewry.\u00a0 When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the name was changed to Action for Post-Soviet Jewry (APSJ) and we began working with whole Jewish communities.\u00a0 Our Adopt-a-Bubbe program began in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, when the Boston Jewish community adopted Dnipropetrovsk as a Jewish sister city.\u00a0 The program eventually expanded to over a dozen Ukrainian cities.\u00a0 From 1993 through 2019 Judy traveled to Ukraine and led this program, helping over a thousand Jewish pensioners with food, medicine and clothing in Jewish communities in eastern Ukraine and in Bobruisk, Belarus. At present, Judy is retired.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTo support our work in Ukraine<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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In the wake of recent events, the words of my friend echoed in my mind: “My heart breaks twice\u2013once for Ukraine and now Israel.” These sentiments<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/actionpsj.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/actionpsj.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/actionpsj.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/actionpsj.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/actionpsj.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2351"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/actionpsj.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2355,"href":"http:\/\/actionpsj.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351\/revisions\/2355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/actionpsj.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/actionpsj.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/actionpsj.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/actionpsj.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}