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The Southern Israelite Vol. LXII The Voice of Atlanta's Jewish Community Since 1925 Atlanta, Georgia, Friday, October 24, 1986 g- ~ icr r~ No. 43 Soviet Jewry rally may draw 1,200 c by Richard Bono TSl staff writer The metropolitan Atlanta Jewish community will come to gether Monday in a major display of solidarity for the estimated 2.8 million Jews living in the Soviet Union. The rally will convene at 7:30 p.m. at The Temple on Peachtree Road. Interest in this year’s Simhat Torah Rally for Soviet Jewry has been heightened, according to officials, because of such recent international events as the Rea gan/Gorbachev summit and the release of Soviet dissident Natan (Anatoly) Shcharansky. “This is a unique opportunity to link human rights issues, such as Soviet Jewry immigration, to the Reagan/Gorbachev talks,” said Noah Levine, community relations director at the Atlanta Jewish Federation (AJF). Added Jack Horowitz, chair man of AJF’s Worldwide Jewish Affairs subcommittee, which is helping to oversee the upcoming rally, the release of Shcharansky in February of this year increased the visibility of Soviet Jewry in the world’s consciousness. “A lot of people have realized that it is possible for Jews to be released from the Soviet Union,” Horowitz said. “It has awakened new feelings of hope.” Horowitz added that a recent trip to the Soviet Union by a group of Jewish Atlantans further raised the community’s aware ness and commitment to helping those Soviet Jews who want to leave, but who have been denied exit visas. AJF has taken advantage of the new level of awareness among Atlanta’s Jews and others in or ganizing the Simhat Torah Rally for Soviet Jewry. “An exceptional publicity ef fort has been made this year,” said Levine. “Awareness is per haps at an all-time high in Atlanta. Rabbis are speaking about Soviet Jewry from their pulpits. And it’s being discussed at the many meet ings that are conducted in the community.” More than 1,200 people from throughout Atlanta are expected to fill the sanctuary of The Tem ple, according to Levine. He said some 90 Jewish organizations have been “hooked in” to a par ticular refusnik in the Soviet Union. Central to the rally this year is a letter-writing campaign to President Ronald Reagan. “Each of the Jewish organiza tions here has been asked to present at least 18 letters to Rea gan expressing their concern about a particular refusnik and about all the 2.85 million Jews in the Soviet Union,” Levine said. “There will be a refusnik ‘role call,’ and when each name is mentioned, a representative of the organization will come up and drop their letters into a mailbox.” As pictures of refusniks are shown on a large screen set up in The Temple sanctuary, student chorales from the Hebrew Acad emy and the Epstein School will join the audience in singing “Yerushlayim Shel Zahav.” In addition to the Jewish com munity, Levine said that politi cians, including Buddy Darden and Wyche Fowler, are partici pating in the letter-writing cam paign for Soviet Jewry. Members of the Atlanta City Council and all metro-area county commis sioners have been asked to parti cipate. Atlanta’s rally for Soviet Jewry is being conducted in conjunc tion with similar rallies across the country and in the Soviet Union, where in Moscow, Lenin grad and Riga, Jews sing and dance in expressions of their own solidarity. In the United States, as in Members of the Atlanta Jewish Federation’s Young Leadership Council write letters on behalf of Soviet Jewry. See story page 24. many other Western countrl Simhat Torah has been decla} by Jewish youth as the day solidarity with Soviet Jewi youth. Mass demonstrations d being staged, voicing demands to the Soviet authorities for free dom of Jewish life and the right of immigration to Israel. Jack Horowitz estimates there are 30,000 refusniks in the Soviet Union. They have been so labeled because they have made applica tions for exit visas, which the government has denied. “The reason the Soviet govern ment refuses them exit visas is difficult to ascertain,” Horowitz said. “The reason they give to not release somebody is, ostensibly, that they have access to classified information, which, most of the time, is totally irrelevant. The other reason they frequently give is that they have insufficient rela- See Rally, page 25 Book marks Holocaust remembrance by David Landau JERUSALEM (JTA) — A Memorial Book recording the names of more than 128,000 German Jews killed by the Nazis was presented by the West Ger man government to Israel in re cent ceremonies at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Center here. Prof. Hans Booms, head of the Federal Republic’s Archives at Koblenz, where the 1,700 page book was compiled over the past 25 years, told the 300 guests at the presentation ceremony that there can be no rapprochement See Remembrance, page 25 Rotation Accomplished Israel settles in with new prime by Yaacov Ben Yosef Special to The Southern Israelite JERUSALEM—Yitzhak Shamir was sworn in as Israel’s new prime minister Monday after a tension-filled week in which Shamir’s rotation accord with Shimon Peres and the future of the national unity government looked in doubt. Undoubtedly helping Peres and Shamir to settle their differences was the terrorist hand grenade attack outside Jerusalem’s Old City Wednesday evening against Israeli soldiers and their families. One 46-year-old man was killed and 69 others were wounded in one of the worst terrorist assaults in the city’s history. The Jerusalem bombing— against soldiers who had just been to a swearing-in ceremony upon completing their basic train ing—at the Western Wall, led to an Israeli air raid Thursday afternoon against Palestinian guerilla positions south of Sidon in south Lebanon. In that air raid, Israel lost a plane, the first time that has hap pened in nearly three years, and the two pilots of the F-4 Phan tom were forced to parachute to the ground. Israeli air force offi cials said later a technical mal function appeared to be the cause. One pilot was rescued by the IDF in a daring effort during which the pilot was placed on the landing gear of the chopper under fire and flown to a nearby beach. There he was tied firmly to the landing gear and flown the re maining 40 miles to safety on the Israeli side of the border. The second pilot is missing. He is apparently in the hands of either Amal, the Shiite Moslem militia, or the Syrians. Peres said Monday he did not exclude the Yitzhak Shamir possibility of an exchange of pri soners for the missing pilot if it was done at what he termed “a reasonable level.” On Sunday, Peres announced that the perpetrators of the West ern Wall bombing had been caught: all three were from Jeru salem. Shamir took the oath of office, along with the 24 other ministers after a four-hour parliamentary debate which culminated in the historic transfer of power from outgoing prime minister Peres, head of the left-leaning Labor Alignment to Shamir, head of the Likud bloc. Shamir’s new government won its first vote of confidence by a vote of 82-17 with three coalition members abstaining. Agudat Yis- rael’s Knesset members absented themselves during the vote, say ing later they were disappointed with the Likud’s performance in the national unity government. The only new face in the govern ment belonged to Shoshana Ar- beli-Almoslino who replaced Mordechai Gur as health minister. As part of their coalition minister agreement forged in September 1984, after elections produced a stalemate between the two major parties, Peres served as prime minister for 25 months. Now it is See Rotation, page 25 THIS WEEK Inter-religious prayer meeting criticized 12 Refusniks’plight becomes personal 24 Business 22 Arts & Entertainment 23 Obituaries 28 Classified 29 10 & 25 years ago 31 unhibiint c dhur.iN CA uLPbPAPLh PPCJl Cl