Yosef Mendelevich, born in 1947 in Riga, Latvia (then part of the USSR), grew up in a Communist family within an antisemitic community. At age 16, he joined the underground struggle for Jewish rights, founding an illegal Jewish organization and becoming one of the first Soviet Jews to return to Jewish observance and faith. In the 1960s, he formed a movement for underground Jewish education and served as editor of the samizdat newsletter 'Iton'. In 1970, at age 22, he participated in a dramatic attempt to hijack a plane to the West, aimed at drawing international attention to the plight of Soviet Jews seeking to emigrate to Israel. Arrested before takeoff, he endured 12 years in Soviet labor camps and prisons, emerging as a refusenik and symbol of resistance. After his release, he immigrated to Israel, where he continued his Jewish activism, became a rabbi, and authored 'Unbroken Spirit: A Heroic Story of Faith, Courage and Survival,' chronicling his experiences.