It’s possible you may recognize the name Marina Furman. Perhaps on a list of speakers at a conference, or maybe at the end of a letter asking for a donation. While to some, Furman may just be someone you pass on the street, there was a time when she was the face of a global movement.
Born in 1959 in Kyiv, Ukraine, Furman’s only connection to her Jewish identity was the mark on her passport. Despite acting like everyone else, she had curly dark hair and faced discrimination from her teachers in school, her neighbors, her bosses at work and the government.
“I knew nothing about my Judaism, but I knew about Israel, and I wanted to live in a country where I would be with other Jews, and I did not want to live my life in the Soviet Union. I rejected their dictatorship and treatment of Jews,” Furman told Philadelphia Jewish Exponent.
So, at the age of 19, she became a refusenik.
In the Soviet Union until the late 1980s and 1990s, it was illegal to openly practice Judaism. But in order to leave, you needed permission that, more often than not, wasn’t given. Furman explained applying for an exit visa was not only expensive, but dangerous. Applicants were seen as traitors.
“In our case, both my mother and I lost our jobs,” she explained. “On one hand, they would fire you, and nobody would employ you because you were a traitor of the Soviet Union, but it was illegal not to work. So … my first arrest in Kyiv happened because they said I was a parasite and I didn’t work, and that was grounds for arrest.”
Those who were denied exit visas were referred to as refuseniks. Not all refuseniks were actively fighting the Soviet government, but those who were became a part of a global movement.
“I was an active refusenik for 10 years,” Furman said. “As it progressed, it really became [a] fight to force the Soviet government to change the immigration policy, so Soviet Jews would have a chance to leave the Soviet Union.”
Furman said her husband was active as a refusenik for 13 years and was one of the movement’s founders.
She added that when she met her husband, it was actually “a very cute story.”
“I decided, when I became [a] refusenik, that I needed to learn English and America had a special radio station called Voice of America that broadcast into the Soviet Union and I listened to it, trying to learn English, and I heard his name,” she said. “He was very, very well-known refusenik. Very famous in the West.”
While living in Ukraine under Soviet rule, Furman, after becoming a refusenik, was arrested multiple times, beaten up and threatened with rape.
So, she decided she had to leave and moved to Tbilisi in Soviet Georgia, where she met her future husband, Lev Furman, an underground Hebrew teacher, when he was saying goodbye to a mutual friend.
“[The] Soviet Union was a big country. Kyiv, Ukraine, [was] one of the most oppressive republics and Georgia was one of the most liberal,” Furman added. “Georgia [had] a long history of embracing the Jewish community, so it was a matter of survival.”
Lev was looking to return to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), where he lived, but feared he would be arrested if he did. He needed a wife to support him while in prison. So before moving back, seven days after meeting, they got married. “But luckily he [wasn’t] arrested for a long term,” noted Furman.
While living in Leningrad, they had visitors from all over the world representing the Soviet Jewry movement. But when they had their first daughter, Aliyah, the KGB threatened her.
“I became pregnant with our first child. The KGB told me that they would murder me when I give birth unless we give up all our Jewish activities,” she said.
Because of the visitors they hosted, and the connections they had in the United States, she and her husband became the faces on picket signs in marches during the White House summit of 1987.
In 1988, Furman and her family were granted permission to leave the Soviet Union and moved to Israel. There, she gave birth to her second daughter, Michal, and worked with the Israeli government to help Soviet Jews immigrate to Israel.
To raise money, Furman went on speaking tours around the U.S., making connections with people in the U.S. Visiting Philadelphia often, she was offered a position as a shlicha for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.
Then, in 2002, Furman joined the Jewish National Fund-USA, and now serves as the executive director of national major donor advancement.
“I felt that if I left Israel, my mission should be supporting it in different ways, and I felt like the Jewish National Fund is really truly an organization that focuses on Israel and benefits every single Israeli,” she added.
Today, Furman lives in Bala Cynwyd and is a member of Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El in Wynnewood and Chabad of the Main Line.
While Furman has accomplished a lot in her lifetime, she said her proudest achievement is her daughters, Aliyah and Michal.
“My daughter Aliyah, the one who was almost killed in the Soviet Union, just had, four months ago, a third boy, and she [named] him Ami Oz, which … translated from Hebrew, is ‘my mighty nation,’ and she named him in honor of the bravery [and] resilience of the Jewish people,” she added. “And my daughter, Michal, is a sergeant in the Philadelphia police department and the only Israeli citizen in the department.”
