Dr. Yossi Shuchmacher
Yossele Schumacher affair - Mossad operation
Israel
English, Hebrew
Yossele Schumacher was born in 1952 in the Soviet Union to secular Jewish parents. His maternal grandparents, Nachman and Miriam Shtrakes, were conservative Haredi Jews of the Breslov Hasidic sect. In 1958, the family immigrated to Israel, where Schumacher's parents settled on a secular kibbutz, but after running into financial difficulties they asked his maternal grandparents to look after him instead. The grandparents decided to hide the boy within the Haredi community in Israel, and Nachman Shtrakes, together with his son Shalom, arranged for Yossele to be hidden away.
Yossele Schumacher affair - Mossad operation
Yossele Schumacher is a Soviet-born Israeli whose abduction as a child in 1960 became a cause célèbre within Israeli Jewish society. Schumacher was abducted by his Haredi Orthodox Jewish grandparents to prevent him from being raised as a Secular Jew by his parents and was found in the United States after an extensive international search by Mossad before being returned to his parents' custody. Schumacher's abduction led to an early major polarization among Israeli Jews due to disagreements between Orthodox Jews, who largely supported the abduction, and Secular Jews, who largely opposed it.