Editing Jewish Autonomous Oblast (section)

==== Cold War ====
The census of 1959 found that the Jewish population of the JAO had declined by approximately 50%, down to 14,269 persons.<ref name=atlas/>

A synagogue was opened at the end of World War II, but it closed in the mid-1960s after a fire left it severely damaged.<ref name="crownheights">{{Cite web |last=Ben G. Frank |date=April 15, 2012 |title=A Visit to the 'Soviet Jerusalem' |url=http://crownheights.info/something-jewish/43151/a-visit-to-the-soviet-jerusalem/ |publisher=CrownHeights.info}}</ref>

In 1980, a Yiddish school was opened in [[Valdgeym]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pinkus |first=Benjamin |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=52Ew77pZsNUC |title=The Jews of the Soviet Union: the History of a national minority |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1990 |isbn=978-0-521-38926-6 |page=272 |chapter=The Post-Stalin period, 1953–83 |access-date=2009-02-18 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=52Ew77pZsNUC&pg=PA272}}</ref>

In 1987, the reformist Soviet government led by [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] pardoned many political prisoners and told the American Jewish community that it would allow the emigration of 11,000 Jewish [[refusenik]]s.{{sfnm|1a1=Doder|1a2=Branson|1y=1990|1p=195}} According to the 1989 Soviet Census, there were 8,887 Jews living in the JAO, or 4% of the total JAO population of 214,085.<ref name="siegel">{{Cite web |title=Nation Making in Russia's Jewish Autonomous Oblast |url=https://www2.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/demokratizatsiya%20archive/05-03_siegel.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160902184547/https://www.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/demokratizatsiya%20archive/05-03_siegel.pdf |archive-date=September 2, 2016 |access-date=January 13, 2017}}</ref>