SECRET WORK BEHIND ENEMY LINES

Mr. Nechemia Levanon worked for the Israeli government in various secret roles which few knew about. Under the guise of an agricultural attaché at the Israeli embassy, he made contact with Jews in the Soviet Union, including many Lubavitcher Chassidim. He helped them by transferring Jewish religious items and the Rebbe’s divrei Torah. This work stopped after he was caught red-handed and was expelled from the Soviet Union as an undesirable. * Stories from behind the scenes and about his special yechidus with the Rebbe – based on his testimony in the book “HaRebbe V’haMossad” by R’ Yosef Yitzchok Kaminetzky. * Part 1 of 2

Nechemia Levanon was the marketing coordinator on a kibbutz, the father of three children, the oldest of whom was 12. His wife was a preschool teacher on the kibbutz. Levanon was completely involved in plans for developing life on the kibbutz and raising his children. The year was 5712/1952.

Nechemia was called to a meeting in Cholon without knowing the purpose of the meeting. In a modest home he found about twenty people who had also been invited. The ones who initiated the meeting were the head of the Mossad Isser Harel, and Shaul Avigur former member of the Haganah and head of the Aliya Bet, and at that time, adviser to the Defense minister.

Harel, a short man though one who radiated nonstop energy, began the meeting. He spoke about what was known in those days regarding the condition of Russian Jewry which was unbearable, due to Stalin’s brutal persecution of them and of anyone deemed disloyal to the motherland. Persecution centered on the Jews. Those years were known as the Black Years, and for good reason.

Harel thought that due to the government incitement against Jews, a threatening atmosphere was developing which could lead to actual physical attacks on Jews, maybe pogroms. In conclusion, he asked the following question: In light of all we know about what is going in the Soviet Union, should we, can we, use the Israeli embassy in Moscow in order to make contact with Jews, so we can follow developments while searching for ways to defend Jews if necessary?

Avigur sat silently. He preferred listening to the opinions of those present and he sometimes asked questions. The participants expressed serious doubts about the possibility of operating from the embassy. Like all western embassies, the Israeli embassy was under a security siege by the Soviet security forces, which prevented any possibility of making contact with the locals.

Some participants not only expressed their doubts but stressed that attempts to make contact with Soviet Jewry was likely to lead to tragedy. They assumed that a situation could develop in which the Soviets would not suffice with punishing the few Jews guilty of contact with a foreign embassy, but would use collective punishment against masses of Jews.

Finally, it was Nechemia Levanon’s turn to speak. He was the youngest of them all and had no personal experience with the Soviet regime. However, he noted that in the Soviet Union were hundreds of thousands of Jews who wondered whether the State of Israel, which had an embassy in Moscow, cared about them. Was there no hope of contacting them? Was it possible that the Jews of Israel and the Diaspora considered Russian Jewry a “Lost Tribe?”

“These remarks, as it turned out later, changed the entire course of my life and the life of my family,” he said many years later to the Chassidic researcher, R’ YY Kaminetzky, in an interview.

A few weeks after that meeting, Harel appeared at the kibbutz and informed Levanon that they had decided positively about reaching out from Moscow, and that he had to go there with his family. Nechemia wondered why he had been picked for this assignment. Harel explained briefly that he thought Nechemia’s cultural background as well as his personality made him suitable. Also, the fact that in those days he still had many friends in Russia would be a big help. Under the conditions of fear and suspicion that prevailed in the Soviet Union, this would make the initial contacts easier.

Levanon concocted a cover story for the members of the kibbutz who released him to work in the service of Israel, without knowing what the service consisted of and where he was headed.

Mike Harari, a young Shabak member, was his professional guide; he taught Levanon how to behave, how to check if he was being tailed, and how to shake off a tail.

Then suddenly, the Israeli embassy in Moscow was closed. This was after someone hid a bomb in the Russian embassy on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv. The Soviets announced the severing of diplomatic ties with Israel. The staff at the Soviet embassy packed their bags and the staff of the Israeli embassy in Moscow was told to leave the Soviet Union.

Levanon was therefore sent to work through the Israeli embassy in Stockholm from where he was supposed to try and make contact with Russian Jews. He tried doing this through sailors who sailed from Finland to the Soviet Union but nothing worked out well and the results were meager and unsatisfactory.

Stalin died on Purim 1953. Until his final moments he had absolute control over the mighty Soviet empire. Upon his death Soviet citizenry was in shock. Even after the “troika” of Malenkov, Molotov and Beria takeover of the government, the shadow of Stalin was still felt. The governing system that Stalin built and the tremendous fear that he engendered for the system prevented significant changes from taking place for a long time. The new rulers were cautious and did not rush to show that they were veering from Stalin’s way of doing things.

The ruling troika was united in their thinking that sooner or later they had to show the outside world that the Soviet Union was a stable entity under the new government. One of the gestures they made was their decision to renew diplomatic ties with Israel.

Just a few months had passed since Stalin’s death and negotiations began about renewing diplomatic ties. At the Foreign Office in Yerushalayim practical steps were being taken. As a first step, it was decided to open a limited consular representation led by Shmuel Elyashiv along with Luba Gideon, while Nechemia Levanon was appointed as the “agricultural attaché.”

“In that capacity, I obviously had to behave as an agricultural attaché. I had to make professional connections in the field of agriculture in order to conceal my real role: starting a Jewish underground whose purpose would be to boost the morale and spiritual lives of Soviet Jews.”

The Levanon family went to Moscow and after a few months they were joined by others who worked with them to “spread Judaism.”

“In our first weeks there we realized that we were under constant surveillance,” recalled Levanon. “The Soviet security apparatus employed numerous people to follow foreigners. There were various levels of surveillance. Apparently there were ‘professionals’ who were hard to identify and it is doubtful whether we discovered who they were most of the time. Then there were the working-class amateurs; those we called shleppers. The shleppers were easy to spot based on their appearance and behavior.

“We spent a lot of time visiting the big shul on Archipova Street as well as the small shul of the Chabad Chassidim in Marina Roscha, a neighborhood distant from the center. We lived completely differently than the community of foreign diplomats. Usually, this community is completely isolated from the local populace, while we actively sought ways to break through.

“Chance meetings and snatched conversations with Jews eventually led to regular ties. Through them we learned about what was happening among the Jews. Gradually, these encounters served as good opportunities to disseminate Jewish reading material.

“After Stalin’s terror state destroyed all Jewish institutions in the Soviet Union, the shuls were the final remnant. Many of them were closed and those that remained operated under the careful scrutiny of the government. At the head of every shul which operated with government permission, there was an administrative board of twenty people. Good Jews found ways of warning us that all members of the board reported to the government, some voluntarily and some were coerced. Some told us that even among the worshipers there were government informers.

“Nevertheless, the shul was the only place where Jews gathered and only there could we meet them. We hoped that there we would be able to form significant connections. Our first visit, on Shabbos, left no doubt that our assignment would be very hard and would demand patience and time.

“The first Shabbos in the big shul presented us with a challenge. We had to work consistently so that our visiting the shul would also produce some practical results. We decided to ignore the informers and snoops just so that we could make contact with Jews.

“Although we all learned brachos and the format of the t’filla, our secularism was apparent. Since I had stood with my wife under the chuppa in the shul in Binyamina, I hadn’t been to a shul. So I asked one of members of the underground who was familiar with Jewish tradition to guide us in how to behave in shul.

“During my two years of work in Moscow, I saw how important it was to keep close ties with the shuls. Despite all the restrictions placed by the government, we visited the shul every Shabbos.

“The value of the shul in preserving the Jewish spark reached a peak on holidays. The atmosphere then was completely different. The number of people attending was larger and sometimes the average age dropped significantly and there were children too.

“We ‘plowed’ all the big cities throughout the Soviet Union. In every city we went to, we immediately went to the local shul where we made our first connections with the local Jews. During our years there we succeeded in establishing ‘underground cells’ in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Odessa, Riga, and Tashkent.”

One of the few shuls that operated in Moscow was the Chabad shul in Marina Roscha. The diplomatic emissaries visited there a lot. On every visit they would bring Jewish religious items, siddurim and a lot of Jewish material. They received the material from the Mossad via diplomatic mail.

When they originally began visiting the Chabad shul, they were regarded very suspiciously but over time, they managed to forge strong ties with a few of the people through whom they found out about the vast work that Chabad Chassidim were doing all over the Soviet Union.

Levanon: “One time, when I visited Marina Roscha, one of the Chabad Chassidim asked to meet with me in some quiet place. He suggested we meet at a certain time in the city bathhouse in the center of Moscow.

“At the appointed time, after they scanned the area and found it to be ‘clean,’ a Jew came over to me and told me about the hardships Chabad Chassidim had in contacting the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York. ‘Chassidim ask the Rebbe’s advice about everything,’ he explained. ‘Can we use your services to make contact with the Rebbe?’ I promised him that I would try to do something.

“I spoke to the person appointed over us at the Mossad, Avigur, and conveyed the Chassid’s request – could we be the channel between the Lubavitcher Rebbe and his Chassidim in Russia. He said yes.

“Later on I found out that Avigur had a friendly relationship with the Rebbe, and consulted him a lot about our work throughout the Soviet Union. Until today, I don’t know who spoke to whom, but I know that after I asked Avigur, we became the contact channel between the Rebbe and his Chassidim.

“We arranged another meeting with this Chassid in the bathhouse and I told him the positive answer. We arranged to meet every Friday at the bathhouse. He would give me questions and requests for brachos for the Rebbe and I conveyed them to Avigur. Avigur would send it to the Rebbe and within a few days, the Rebbe would send responses and brachos to the Mossad which were sent by diplomatic mail to the Israeli embassy in Moscow.

“With time, the ‘contact channel’ expanded and the Rebbe also sent Jewish religious items, t’fillin, mezuzos, and talleisim. At a later point, when the Chassidim saw that our ‘courier service’ wasn’t causing them any problems and was working smoothly, they got up the nerve to ask to send them the Rebbe’s divrei Torah.

“At first I tried saying no, that this wasn’t our job to disseminate the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s teachings throughout the Soviet Union, but the Chassid’s pressure was enormous so that I could no longer withstand him and I caved in. I conveyed the odd request to the Mossad and to my great surprise they said okay and began regularly sending the Rebbe’s teachings. The Chassid was ecstatic. This went on for only a few months until the underground network collapsed.

“‘Go and tell people today that thanks to some kibbutznikim, Chabad Chassidim in Russia learned the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s teachings.”