It has been a long time since I have
written on this blog.
It has not been for a lack of things to
write about, but the insignificance of my own ups and downs pretty
much snuffed enthusiasm. Or perhaps, as a person of faith and a
student of sacred texts, all the outrages brought by "religious authorities"
have worn me down. I became sleepy.
However, something about the recent
conviction of three young artists in Russia for hooliganism
has reawakened me, a very Proustian moment - an involuntary
autobiographical memory - to when I was 24 years old and passionate about the
Soviet Jewry movement.
On June 22nd, 1978, it was reported that
a Soviet Court sentenced Vladimir Slepak, 50, to five years internal exile and
Ida Nudel, 40, to four years after they were convicted of malicious hooliganism
in separate courts for a silent protest they staged from their apartment
windows. They were seeking religious freedom from the Soviet State.
On August 17, 2012, three young Russian
artists, in a band called Pussy Riot (Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova
and Yekaterina Samutsevich) were found guilty by a Russian Court of
hooliganism. They were seeking freedom from religion: the close connection
between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian State.
Time to wake up.
