sentences:  He testified in Congress some eighteen times between 1976 and 1986 in relation to the Amendment's application to emigration from Romania and achieved the release of six long-time prisoners, a rescue which elicited an enthusiastic letter of congratulations from the State Department.During the 1980s, Birnbaum deepened SSSJ's support of a Jewish awakening in the USSR.After 1917, the Soviets had destroyed all aspects of Jewish communal, religious, cultural, and social life, resulting in a severely weakened sense of Jewish identity among Soviet Jews.