Reviewing: “Human Rights and Peace” by Zafra Lerman. Jenny Stanford Publishing. 2024. Hardcover. 206 pages. ISBN-13: 978-9815129243.
Do you remember what you were doing during the late 1980s, while Zafra Lerman (Ph.D. chemistry, Weizmann Institute) was stealing through back alleys in the USSR, cloaked in the dark of midnight, smuggling scientific journals to hidden or incarcerated Soviet dissident scientists (many of them well-known Jewish “Refuseniks”) and collecting credentials for their release?
And, by the way, no one calls her Dr. Lerman; she is simply Zafra.
Zafra’s memoir, “Human Rights and Peace: A Personal Odyssey,” is indeed an odyssey. Most courageously she has ventured alone through those dark alleys in the middle of the night inside hostile territory to liberate imprisoned scientists, so that they could continue their important work safely, in both personal and academic freedom. Readers will be mesmerized and fascinated by her story and her improbable success. The book chronicles how Zafra proceeded to found and develop the international organization “the Malta Conferences,” which brings together scientists from historically hostile countries, so they can collaborate on ways for science to address some of their individual and mutual challenges, such as water insufficiency and public health issues.
The Malta Conferences continue to convene, and the book also reveals the political, financial and security obstacles encountered to achieve this, with Zafra frequently engaging world leaders to advocate for her cause. Often scientists stonewalled by governmental bureaucracies required Zafra to pull out all the stops, leaning on various heads of state and others to get the necessary visas and essential credentials needed for scientists to travel to the host countries of the Malta Conferences. “Billions of dollars are allocated each year to building weapons. … Just a fraction of these funds dedicated to international scientific cooperation and collaboration that materially affect the quality of life of people in the Middle East will go a great distance in bringing peace to the Middle East,” said Zafra.
Peppered with a good deal of light humor, especially by her escapades during her years of service in the Israeli Defense Forces in the late 1950s; the book guarantees that readers will be on the edge of their seats as they learn what Zafra Lerman has accomplished.
In a recent interview with Zafra, she explained about her unusual name. “My name is [actually] Tzipora. My father, one of the pioneers who built the country [Israel] wanted a name that nobody in the Diaspora used. So he gave me a name that nobody in Israel heard about. It comes from the Talmud and it means early morning/dawn, and was used once as a name in a poem written by one of our famous [Russian] poets, [Shaul] Tchernichovsky.”
Zafra’s childhood in Israel led her to dedicate her life to using science diplomacy to advocate for peace and human rights.
The book is available to purchase online from the publisher (https://www.jennystanford.com), Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other sellers. Judaica House in Teaneck expects a shipment to arrive in the near future. Stay tuned for a book signing there as well as other locations in northern New Jersey.
