by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

December 25, 2008

A Montclair man who emigrated from Russia in 1991 was elected to lead an organization that advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Eurasia.

Former refusenik Alexander Smukler was chosen president, a lay position, of the NCSJ at the organization’s board of governors meeting Dec. 10 in Washington, DC.

NCSJ, the former National Conference on Soviet Jewry, coordinates Jewish community policy and activities among an estimated 1.5 million Jews in the former Soviet Union.

“It is very important for me to take this position as president in order to continue to support our efforts on behalf of Jewish communities in the former Soviet Union and to continue the struggle to combat hatred against Jews,” Smukler said in a news release.

Smukler is the board chair of Century 21: Russia, Kazakhstan & the Ukraine, a franchise of the residential real estate firm. He is the president and founder of the American Foundation for Orphans Abroad and a board member of the Russian Jewish Congress.

Smukler arrived in New Jersey directly from Moscow in 1991, in part as a result of the advocacy and by the invitation of the MetroWest community.

Before leaving Russia, he served as a member of the board of the Vaad, or Confederation of Jewish Organizations and Communities of the USSR, and executive director of both B’nai B’rith of the USSR and the Jewish Information Center of Moscow.

As a leading Soviet Jewish activist and refusenik, he met with advocates from the MetroWest community. He was aware of their work on behalf of Soviet Jews, and his sister had already settled in Rockaway.

“MetroWest had the strongest group of Soviet Jewry supporters in the 1980s,” said Smukler, speaking to NJJN from a friend’s boat off the coast of Miami, where he is vacationing. “They had a long history of helping with underground Jewish activities. I knew the MetroWest community pretty well.”

When he arrived, he was adopted by Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, where he is still a member.

“We spent our first night in the house of Rabbi Steven Kushner,” Smukler recalled. “Within a few days, the [community] rented an apartment for us, volunteers helped us settle, and they collected furniture for us. Temple Ner Tamid was extremely welcoming and warm.”

Smukler recalled spending nearly a month in the home of Sheldon Altwarg and his wife, Dorothy Ann, and finding in Josh and Judy Weston his first mentors and eventually close friends.

“In those first few years, the community really took care of us,” he said. “It was a lesson for all my life how people should help each other. I will never forget those days.”

He continues to support Ner Tamid, but because he is in Russia and Europe for seven or eight months of the year, his charitable support goes mainly to organizations there and in New York City rather than locally, he said.

Smukler has three children, 26, 19, and nine. The eldest graduated from Montclair High School, the middle son graduated from Montclair Kimberly Academy, and his youngest child attends public school in Montclair.

JTA contributed to this article.

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