I sat down with Mr. Boris Gorbis to discuss his opinions on the the involvement of Jews in the Russian Revolution(s). (Mr. Gorbis wasn’t the first to rightly point out that Jews participated in several attempted and successful revolutions in Czarist Russia.)
Even more interesting were his take on the consequences of the revolution on Jews and Jewish identity in the Soviet Union, and on Soviet-Jewish identity in the U.S. Mr. Gorbis shared his considerable knowledge on the subject, as well as his personal experiences. For one, he pointed out that there were four separate policy actions whose goals could be described as the eradication of Jewish life on Soviet territory.
Mr. Gorbis immigrated to the United States from Odessa, Ukraine at the age of twenty five, with a degree in psycholinguistics. Upon arriving in California, he enrolled in the Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law while also lecturing at Stanford. He was a founder of the Association of Soviet Jewish Immigrants, and sits on the National Board of the AJC.