In 1971, as a high school junior in Brooklyn, Pnina Levermore helped organize a demonstration on behalf of Soviet Jews.
The teens managed to get a former speech writer for President Kennedy to address the rally, which was held across the street from the United Nations Plaza in Manhattan. Their efforts landed them on the cover of the Sunday New York Times Magazine.
That high-profile protest would foreshadow Levermore’s future.
After graduating high school, she went on to earn degrees in Russian studies and foreign diplomacy, and learned to speak Russian fluently.
Now, after more than six years as director of the Russian emigre department at the Albert L. Schultz Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto, the 42-year-old Levermore has been named executive director of San Francisco’s Bay Area Council of Jewish Rescue and Renewal. The nonprofit human rights organization promotes Jewish freedom and survival in the former Soviet Union.
“Our community here doesn’t fully realize the desire of Jews in the former Soviet Union to feel connected with world Jewry,” Levermore contends. “They are hungry for the connection, very responsive to it.”
The Bay Area Council currently sponsors a number of projects supporting Jews who have decided to remain in the former Soviet Union rather than emigrate.
For example, it aided in the purchase of two adjoining St. Petersburg apartments that now comprise what is believed to be the first Jewish community center in the former Soviet Union. This JCC, the hub of St. Petersburg Jewish life, is about to expand into a third apartment.
The council has also advocated on behalf of Jews in the former Soviet Union who it believes were targets of anti-Semitism.
In continuing to pursue such projects abroad — working “not to patronize [Soviet Jews], but to help them,” Levermore stresses — the new director hopes to harness the formidable energy and knowledge of the thousands of Soviet Jewish emigres here in the Bay Area.
She has seen their potential at the ALSJCC, where she played a key role in building an emigre department offering English classes, a Russian library, a chess club, a film series and a regular Russian-language trivia bowl.
“A wonderful outgrowth of the programming we’ve done is that [emigres] have really become plugged in,” she says, noting the large extent to which the newcomers have contributed financially and otherwise to the center.
“People almost fall over themselves to see who can volunteer more,” she says. “It’s really neat.”
Born in Israel and raised in the United States, Levermore has long felt a personal kinship with Jews from the former Soviet Union. It’s a connection that motivated her to pursue Russian studies at the University of Pittsburgh and at Middlebury College in Vermont.
“I came to recognize my background in their background,” she says. “This is the cradle of the Jewish culture.”
Since accepting the position at the Bay Area Council — she officially starts working Feb. 18 — Levermore says members of the Russian-speaking community have expressed their interest in getting involved with the organization.
Eva Seligman-Kennard, who will serve alongside Levermore as BACJRR associate director, says the organization has long wanted new Americans to join the Soviet Jewry cause.
Levermore’s connection to the emigre community is crucial, adds Seligman-Kennard.
“We hope she can make them understand the vitality of their involvement,” says the associate director, who has served as BACJRR acting director since former head Simon Klarfeld left for Brandeis University last summer.
Working closely with emigres over the past six years has only heightened Levermore’s sense of identification with them. “When I look at them I see myself, my own heritage,” she says. “I have great respect for them and they feel it.”