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News Briefs
Jackson adviser is pro-PLO
WASHINGTON The Rev. Jesse Jackson’s principal adviser'
on foreign policy is a sponsor of the Palestine Human Rights
Campaign, the major American front for the Palestine Liberation
Organization, according to a report in the (Washington) Jewish
Week. The Jewish Week story said the pro-PLO group lists
Jackson’s aide, Jack O’Dell, as a national sponsor of its
forthcoming Palestine Human Rights Campaign National
Conference being held in Washington Sept. 21-22. For more than
four years, O’Dell has been director of the International
Department of Jackson’s Operation PUSH (People United to Save
Humanity).
Earlier, O’Dell had a long record of Communist activity, the
report said, and was identified as a high ranking Communist Party
official. According to the Jewish Week story, O’Dell was once an
aide to the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but was dropped from
SCLC in 1963 after newspapers reported he had a Communist
background.
Pope writes to Polish Jews
TEL AVIV (JTA)—Pope John Paul II has sent his heartfelt
greetings to all Polish Jews and expressed his hope that the
Almighty will relieve the world of hatred. The Pope’s greetings and
wishes were included in a letter, written in Polish, to Anszel Reis,
president of the World Federation of Polish Jews, who had sent
greetings to the pontiff on his ascent to the Holy See. The Pope
stressed in his letter that he has “prayed to the Almighty that all
those who are acting on behalf of and for humanity would be
blessed.”
Student campaign nets $200,000
WASHINGTON—Jewish college students, with the support
and aid of B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations, the University
Programs Department of National United Jewish Appeal and
local federations, have raised more than $200,000 in their 1979
campaigns, with the final figure expected to reach $300,000, a 15
percent increase over last year’s fund-raising effort. This year
student campaigns were conducted on 160 campuses.
Hosea pins Libyan leader
TRIPOLI, Libya—Georgia state Rep. Hosea Williams,
heading a group of American blacks, has presented Libyan strong
man Moammar Khadafy with a Martin Luther King Jr. medal.
The group is visiting Libya under sponsorship of the University of
Washington. The Libyan news agency reported that the delegation
told Khadafy “they would endeavor to establish historic and
militant relations between the (Libyan) revolution and American
blacks."
Ford receives peace award
NEW YORK (JTA)—The Henry Ford 11 Fund for Research in
Transportation has been established by the American Technion
Society (ATS), it was announced by Alexander Hassan of
Washington, D.C., ATS president. The United States-based fund
will focus on transportation and related problems common to all
countries of the Middle East.
Simultaneously, it was announced by Max Fisher of Detroit,
that Ford would be the recipient of the first Technology for Peace
Award at a dinner sponsored by the ATS Sept. 26 at the Waldorf-
Astoria.
PLO murders Gush member
JERUSALEM (JTA) The Palestine Liberation Organization
has claimed responsibility for the murder of Moshe Yoskovitz
early Sunday near the Church of Gethsemane in the Old City. The
PLO claimed that he was murdered because he was a member of
the Gush Fntunim. Yoskovitz, 47, of Bnei Brak was buried Monday in
the Mount of Olives cemetery, not far from where he was fatally
shot at close range.
November visit set for Begin
NEW YORK (JTA) Premier Menachcm Begin of Israel
will make a special trip to the United States to address a dinner in
honor of Sam Rothberg, general chairman of the Israel Bond
Organization, u ho will be honored for a lifetime of service to Israel
at an International Tribute in Washington on Nov. 18 under the
auspices of the Bond Orgartization.
Begin will also meet with leaders of the United Jewish Appeal in
* New York City on Nov. 19.
■ ■ x X ■ V. .. '
Ray of hope
Act of worship is act of courage
by Bob Evans
Within every prison there is still
a ray of hope. ..
It was bad planning and
oversight that a decade ago had me
deep in Siberia on the eve of Rosh
Hashana. I was a foreign
correspondent for CBS News,
newly assigned to Moscow in the
USSR.
Travel away from Moscow was
the best part of the journalistic
game. You were away from the
central authority and control of an
entire land; the people far from
Moscow were more human and
responsive. So, with camera crew
and baggage, we went Aeroflot
across Siberia to the distant
regional headquarters city of
Irkutsk—5,000 miles due east of
Moscow, and across the trackless
tundra of Siberia. It would have
been still another 1,000 miles to the
Pacific Siberian coast.
And suddenly it was Erev Rosh
Hashana. Realization of the date
struck me like a thunderclap. What
does one do on a Jewish New Year
deep inside Russian Siberia?
I felt sure there was a synagogue
in Irkutsk, if only because of my
discovery of the cemetery.
Massive iron gates stood
sentinel to the cemetery entrance.
A high wall stood barrier in either
direction from the gates, but it was
these seven foot high iron sentinels
that commandeered your stare:
Hebrew letters and the iron
wrought Jewish Star of David,
running the length of the curving
gate top on the left side. And on the
right portal, the Cyrillic script of
the Russian lettering, standing
over a large iron carved Soviet
Hammer and Sickle.
They stood as a weird witness to
challenge the Soviet record on
Jewry—a land and a people hostile
to Judaism over scores of
generations gone by. And it was
enforced now by a government
making a virtue of atheistic attacks
upon belief. The Star of David and
the Hammer and Sickle ...strange
brethren to adorn guardian gates
to a ground of memorial to the
dead
A small door to one side
permitted stooped entry to the
burial ground. All was old. Most
headstones predated the Russian
Revolution of 1917. Many more
intruded into the fading dates of
the 19th century.
Neat and orderly were the
etched year of death: 1907,
I later found the synagogue —a
high-ceilinged, wood-beam
sanctuary being rebuilt and
painted. A congregation
dominated by the elderly. They
smiled and nodded at the Western
wear seated on the aisle, but I was
Soviet escorted, so they kept their
‘The Star of David and the Hammer
and Sickle...strange brethren to
adorn guardian gates...”
walkways, even-bordered plots on
each side. But the trees! Huge and
overreaching, massive roots that
gnarled above ground, and heavy
hangings of Spanish moss, the low-
dropping gray filter tinting the
sun’s rays until it seemed like a
ghostly sound stage with eerie
shadows and flickering lights to
beguile your visual sanity.
Many gravestones stood with
both Jewish and Soviet symbols
etched into the marble: A small
sized Star of David directly across
from a little Hammer and Sickle,
and straddling the middle, an
distance.
These Jews came to pray in spite
of Soviet intimidation. A central
government had made belief in
God a punishable offense. And
within that prison for believers,
they had special sanctions for
Jews. It is bizarre to imagine that
an act of worship might call for a
commitment of courage to make
an appearance.
But appear, they did. And
perhaps they came for a reason
that scarcely had dawned on me.
Within every prison there is still
a ray of hope.
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Page 5 THE SOOTHERS ISRAELITE September 21, 1979