Sorensen in Moscow Urges Emigration of Jews to Israel and Mideast Peace

Theodore C. Sorensen, New York Democratic candidate for United States Senate, told a Moscow audience yesterday that the Soviet government should permit emigration to Israel, help seek a Middle East peace, grant increased freedom of speech and agree to halt the arms race. He was reported to have interpreted the response to his remarks on the “Jewish question” as negative. Mr. Sorensen, invited by the Institute of the U.S.A. before his nomination, commented smilingly that he might be criticized for campaigning in Moscow Instead of in New York. Mr. Sorensen also met with Chief Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levin of the Central Moscow Synagogue, whom he gave a Bible from a New York rabbi, and with Foreign Trade Minister Nikolai S. Patelichtev. Refused permission to have American reporters cover his remarks at the Institute, he tape-recorded the proceedings and made the recording available to newsmen in his room in Moscow’s Budapest Hotel. Mr. Sorensen declared in his speech that “the Soviet Union should not keep in adherents of the Jewish faith who have been invited to settle in the state of Israel.” Contending that he was not out to “embarrass the Soviet government,” he advised it and “any government faced with this problem” that “however contrary such a desire to emigrate may be to your wishes, your customs, the desires of a majority of your population or even your laws, let them go.”