May 21, 2007 -- Jacob Birnbaum, who received an honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University at its annual commencement exercises May 17, is the founder and director of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, the Center for Russian and East European Jewry, and several other Soviet Jewry groups. Mr. Birnbaum initiated the grassroots struggle for Soviet Jewry in New York in 1964 and laid the groundwork for a national movement that energized an entire generation of Jewish activists. In conferring the honorary degree on Mr. Birnbaum, Yeshiva University President Richard M. Joel said: “You and your wife, Freda, were convinced that American Jewry and the force of public opinion could transform the anti-Semitic practices of the Soviet regime, and you taught American Jews how to organize on a scale they had never considered possible. You were fully, utterly devoted to this cause. And where did you start your campaign? Right here at Yeshiva University, knocking on our students’ doors." Mr. Birnbaum derives from a distinguished European Jewish family of scholars, artists and poets. His grandfather, Dr. Nathan Birnbaum, was a Jewish Renaissance activist. Long before Theodor Herzl, Dr. Birnbaum was a seminal figure in the building of European Zionism; he coined the term “Zionism” and served as the first Secretary-General of the new Zionist Organization of 1897. Jacob Birnbaum’s father, Solomon A. Birnbaum, an expert in East European Jewry, was a pioneer in two areas of Jewish scholarship: the millennial development of the Hebrew scripts and diaspora Jewish languages. His brother, Professor Eleazar Birnbaum of Toronto is a recognized authority on Middle Eastern languages and cultures. He recently received a Festschrift from Harvard. Mr. Birnbaum was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1926. His family fled the Nazis in the 1930s and resettled in the UK. He received an honors degree in modern European history from London University. In 1946, he hastened to assist victims of Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism and later was involved with the troubled Jewish communities of North Africa. He also served as the director of the Jewish Community Council of Manchester, UK. Settling in New York in 1964, he established a core of teacher and student activists at Yeshiva University and went on to create the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry as a national student movement to activate grassroots American Jewry. During the 1960s he built a significant institutional infrastructure in New York, where he mobilized a critical mass through a series of groundbreaking demonstrations. Having established the primacy of his "Let My People Go" campaign, his approach expanded, becoming known as "Let My People Know" (their heritage) with the aim of protecting Soviet Jewish underground educational groups. He continues his "Let My People Know" advocacy to strengthen the Jewish identity of Soviet Jewry. A house of Representatives Resolution (HR137) "honoring the life and six decades of public service of Jacob Birnbaum and especially his commitment to free Soviet Jews from religious cultural and communal extinction" has reached the final stages of the House legislative process. Today, Mr. Birnbaum’s collection of archival material from the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry is housed at Yeshiva University’s Mendel Gottesman Library on the Wilf Campus. The collection includes papers, photographs, and audio-visual materials, including a tape of the original presentation at the Jericho March in 1965 of the song “Am Yisroel Chai,” written by Shlomo Carlebach at Mr. Birnbaum’s request. To see a gallery of archival photos, click here.