Rumanian Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen arrived here today for a visit to the United States during which he will deliver addresses at a number of conventions and will meet with leaders of several Jewish organizations.
Reporting on the religious and social life of Rumania’s 100,000 Jews, Dr. Rosen told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that a Jewish calendar that had been printed in 10,000 copies and which included a Jewish religious manual, had been completely sold out. He said that 1,500 Jewish families in Rumania depended on public assistance and received aid from the Federation of Jewish Communities in addition to routine state aid given to all destitute citizens. He reported that 110 Jews are provided with free meals each day in the kosher restaurant in Bucharest, which, he noted, was not a soup kitchen but a first class restaurant. The revenue to pay for such welfare aid comes from special levies on the purchase of matzoh, wine and other religious items.
Rabbi Rosen announced that a second shipment of 1,084 Torah scrolls had already arrived in Vienna en route to Israel where they will be distributed to synagogues. An earlier shipment of 1,057 Torahs are already in Israel. The shipments, he said, were a gift from Rumanian Jewry with the full consent of the Bucharest Government which had rejected suggestions that the scrolls be sold for cash and declined to make a profit on holy objects which it said were the property of the Federation of Jewish Communities.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
