page_title: Dov Schperling
section_title: Political activism
hierarchical_section_title: Dov Schperling / Political activism
caption_attribution_description: Dov Schperling with Menahem Begin and Ariel Sharon.
context_page_description: Dov Schperling; was a Zionist activist and leader who was amongst the first Jews to immigrate from the Soviet Union to Israel. He began his Zionist advocacy during the reign of the communists in the Soviet Union, when such activity was illegal, and as a consequence was imprisoned in a Russian gulag for two years. After his released, he emigrated to Israel, there he continued his struggle for the freedom of Soviet Jews. He was a member of the Herut right wing party and was a delegate of the Jewish Agency to Austria.
context_section_description: During the late 1960s and early 1970s he traveled to different cities in the world to hold demonstrations, often unconventional, and campaigns for freedom of emigration-Aliyah to Israel. In 1970, he flew to New York, along with the fellow immigration activist Jacob Kedmi (Yasha Kazakov), who went on to become the head of the Nativ organization. There they had a nine-day hunger strike in front of the United Nations. The strike made waves in Israel and around the world, during which Kedmi devised the  slogan "Let my people go", that became a symbol of the struggle for Jewish immigration. In 1971, Schperling was one of eight former Soviet Jews who cabled American Jewish leaders protesting their denunciations of the Jewish Defense League and calling the League's activities "most effective." He claimed that a recent cancellation of the Bolshoi Ballet's scheduled American tour was forced by the Jewish Defense League and hailed it as the first public surrender by Soviet authorities to Jewish pressure. Over the years, Dov was active in the Herut [Israeli right wing] Central Committee. In 1979 he joined the Department of Soviet Union Immigration of the Jewish Agency. Later on, Dov was the head of the Jewish Agency for Israel delegation in Vienna, and the head of the Jewish agency travel department.
caption: Dov Schperling with prime minister Menahem Begin and IDF commander in chief Ariel Sharon
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