Editing Baal teshuva (section)

===In the former Soviet Union===
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The baal teshuva movement also appeared in the former [[Jewish history (Russia and the Soviet Union)|Soviet Union]], which at that time had almost completely secularized its Jewish population. The rise of Jewish pride came in response to the growth of the State of [[Israel]], in reaction to the USSR's pro-[[Arab]] and [[Anti-Zionism|anti-Zionist]] policies, and in reaction to USSR's [[antisemitism]].

The Israeli victory in the Six-Day War in 1967 ignited the pride of Jews in the Soviet Union, particularly in Russia. Suddenly there were hundreds of thousands of Jews wanting to go to Israel, although they dared not express their desire too openly. Several thousand applied for exit visas to Israel and were instantly ostracized by government organizations including the [[KGB]]. Many hundreds became [[Refusenik (Soviet Union)|refuseniks]] (''otkazniks'' in Russian), willing to suffer jail time to demonstrate their new-found longing for [[Zion]]. In the middle of this, there arose a new interest in learning about and practicing Judaism, an urge that the Communist government had long attempted to stamp out.

Many Russian Jews began to study any Jewish texts they could lay their hands on. Foreign rabbis, often young students in Chabad Yeshivot, came on visits in order to teach how to learn Torah and how to observe [[Halakha|Jewish law]]. Jewish ritual objects, such as [[tefillin]], [[Mezuzah|mezuzot]], [[siddur]]im, and even [[matzah]], were also smuggled into Russia. With the fall of the Communist regime, there is now a rich resource of Russian religious texts that flourishes and caters to Russian Jews living in Russia, America, and Israel.

The return-to-Judaism movement was a spontaneous [[grassroots]] movement from the ground up and was part of the refusenik movement; it came as a great surprise to the Soviet authorities, and even to the Jewish community outside the USSR and it eventually contributed to [[Aliyah#From the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states|Aliyah from the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states]] and the [[History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union#The collapse of the Soviet Union and emigration to Israel|collapse of the Soviet Union and emigration to Israel]]. Young leaders included [[Yosef Mendelevich]], [[Eliyahu Essas]] (who eventually became a [[rabbi]]), [[Herman Branover]], and Yitzchok Kogan, who all later [[Aliyah|moved to Israel]] and are now actively teaching other Russian emigres in Israel, aside from Kogan, who leads a community in Moscow.