(JTA) — Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein addressed the Russian parliament more than three decades after his release from a Soviet prison.
A Ukraine-born Soviet prisoner of conscience, Edelstein was imprisoned in 1984 on trumped-up drug charges because he was teaching Hebrew. He spent three years doing hard labor in Siberian camps.
“Today, I stand here before you as speaker of the Knesset, and in the same language that I was imprisoned for teaching,” Edelstein said Wednesday during his address to the Federation Council, the upper house of the parliament. “I bless you with the ancient Jewish blessing ‘Shalom Aleichem!’ Even in …read more
Source: JTA
