Newspaper Page Text
Friday, April 1, 1966
THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
Pare Twenty-One
STEWART-GREENE COMPANY
State Farmers Market — Forest Park, Bldg. "F”
“The best of everything’’ Phone 366-9611
A HAPPY PASSOVER
Lullaby Diaper Service
TRinity 4-5778 ATLANTA, GA.
PETER PAN
RAKING CO.
744 Stewart Ave., S.W.
PL. 31147
Atlanta, Ga.
The Arrow Press
QUALITY PRINTING
See us on all your Commercial Printing
“SERVICE IS OUR MOTTO”
E. A REEVES Hapeville, Ga. C. R. ADAMSON
890 Virginia Ave. POplar 1-2474
PASSOVER
GREETINGS
HAPPY PASSOVER GREETINGS
MARVEL Cleaners
ATLANTA, GA.
2231 Cheshire Bridge Road, N. E.
MElrose 6-1681
Eyewitnesses Paint Gloomy Picture
Of Status of Jews in Soviet Union
NEW YORK (JTA)- A gloomy
picture of a beleagured Soviet
Jew sh community struggling
vainly for cultural and religious
survival emerged last weekend at
a public hearng on the stati s of
the 3,000,000 Jews of the USSR.
Experts and eyewitnesses told of
a g ivernment campaign aimed at
eliminat ng the separate religious
and cultural identity of Soviet
Jewry.
Bayard Rustin, Negro rights
leader, served as chairman of a
panel of six “jurors” who took
tcs’ : racnv "nd examined wit
nesses. Members of the panel in
cluded: Dr. John C. Bennett,
president, Union Theological Sem
inary; Rev. George B. Ford, pas
tor emeritus, Corpus Christi
Church; Samuel Fishman, United
Automobile Workers; Telford
Taylor, professor of law, Colum
bia University; and Norman
Thomas, veteran Socialist leader.
The hearing was conducted by
an Ad Hoc Commission on Soviet
Jews, formed under the aegis of
the Conference on the Status of
Soviet Jews, comprising 24 Jew
ish organizations in the United
States. In a study distributed at
the hearng, the Ad Hoc Com
mission stated that the USSR em
barked on a new and subtler
campaign against Passover as
part of its drive to destroy the
cultural and religious identity of
Soviet Jewry. The Commission
declared that world opinion has
forced the Soviet leadership to
abandon its virulent attacks
against Passover celebrations and
launch instead a “more refined
drive to reduce the scope of Pass-
over from the broadlv h’storic
to the narrowly ritualistic.”
Accord ; ng to the Commission,
the Soviet Government’s recent
lift ; ng of the ban on matzoh-
bakine is “far from nationwide,”
with the result that “perhaps the
majority of Soviet Russia’s Jews
remain unaffected by the
change.” Matzoh production, the
Commission stated is restricted
to the synagogue, “thus depriving
the great number of unreligious
and younger generation Jews of
any tangible means of observing
the hoPday. Even in the syna
gogues the procedure for obtain
ing matzoh f s inefficient and de
meaning: Jews seeking matzoh
must br ; ng the ; r own flour to the
synagogue and register person
ally for matzoh—a registration
that is then sent to the Soviet
police.”
Rabbi Miller Lists
Four Mninr Renuests
For USSR Action
Rabbi Israel Miller, president
of the Rabbinical Council of
America, who spoke from the
pulpit of the Moscow synagogue
last summer, told the hearng
that the world Jewish commun
ity “stood as one” in seek’ne to
alleviate th« plight of Soviet
Jewrv. He Psted four major re
quests designed to end the “spir
itual suffocation” of Soviet Jew
ish life. He called on the Soviet
Government to grant the Jews:
11 Orcon'/od religious life. Fke
other religions: 21 organized na
tional life. l ! ke other nationalities;
3) to conduct an editorial cam
paign aga’nst anti-Semitism on
radio and television and in news
papers; and. 4) to permit re
union of families separated bv
war and persecution, through
granting of permission to emi-
grpfe abroad.”
Dr. Er ; c Goldhagen. director
of the Institute of East European
Jewish Affairs at Branded Uni
versity. told the tribunal that the
“extinction” of organized Jew’sh
life in the Soviet Union was a
“certainty” if the present pol
icies of the Soviet Government
continued. “In 10 or 15 vea r s ”
he predicted, “it will be difficult
to find within the Soviet Union
a man capable of performing a
Jewish religious burial ceremony,
a Jpw : sh weddmg or a bar mitz-
vah ” He sa f d there were only 40
or 50 rabbis still living in the
USSR, that their average age was
65, and that there was no theo
logical school to train young rab
bis in the Soviet Union. “The
Jews of the Soviet Union—the
second largest Jewish community
in the world—have been reduced
by 50 years of Soviet rule to a
state of cultural and religious des-
sication without parallel among
the religious and ethnic minor
ities of the Soviet Union,” he de
clared.
One eyewitness — the Rev.
Thurston Davis, editor of the
Jesuit weekly, America, who re
turned from an inspection survey
of religious liberty in the USSR
earlier this year—said that Jews
and Roman Catholics living in the
Soviet Union faced ‘special dif
ficulties” because of their “out
side 'connections as members of
an international group of be
lievers.” He urged Catholics to
pray for the survival of Judaism
in Soviet Russia and described
the Jews he met there as “ridden
with fear.”
the six expert witnesses who tes
tified before the panel, said the
Sovit Jew was caught in a kind
of “squeeze play between the top
Moscow bureauc racy, which
coerces him to assimilate, and
the middle bureaucracy of the
ethnic republics, including the
Great Russians, which shuts off
his avenues to assimifation.”
Former Premier Nikita Khrush
chev, Mr. Teller said, “modified,
but nevej repudiated, even the
worst features of Stalin's anti-
Jewish policy. His own anti-Sem
itism was deep and personal; and
while his political eclipse has re
moved his personal anti-Semitism
as a factor in Soviet policy tow
ard Jews, his other arguments
continue to inhibit a revision of
Soviet policy.” He was critical of
the emphasis of American pro
tests against Soviet anti-Semi
tism, which he said had put too
much stress on religious discrim-
Judd L. Teller, author, one of ination.
PASSOVER GREETINGS
VENT-A-HOOD Company
1473 Spring Street, N.W.
TR. 6-8179
PASSOVER GREETINGS TO OUR
Many Friends
Trophies Inc.
1123 Spring St, N.W.
TR. 3-3257
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GRACIOUS HOLIDAY
GREETINGS
Cheatham Chemical Co.
Manufacturers of Drugs and Cosmetics
154 Walker St., S. W.
688-1878
Atlanta. Ga.
< vv-vvvvvvyx~yvvyvvvvvv
Gracious Greetings
for Passover
Eckardt Electric Company
We Specialize in Industrial and
Commercial Wiring
48 Alabama St, S.W.
MU. 8-2723
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Bill’s Delivery Service
835 Wylie St., S.E.
Atlanta, Ga.
522-0630
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