Soviet Jewry Undergoing Revival of Religious Faith Says Rabbi Jakobovits

“The miraculous revival of religious faith within Soviet Jewry is matched only by the wondrous rise of the State of Israel out of the ashes of the Holocaust,” British Chief Rabbi Dr. Immanuel Jakobovits declared last night at a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the London Board of Jewish Religious Education. “After half a century of spiritual desolation,” he continued, “religious weddings are again taking place in Russian synagogues. Teenagers are undergoing the right of circumcision to affirm their Jewish identity. Underground study of the language of the Bible has made large numbers of young Russian Jews amazingly fluent in Hebrew.” Dr. Jakobovits urged the outside world to aid this Jewish-consciousness revolution. “In an age when the moral conscience of mankind is stirred by the struggle of the hungry and persecuted throughout the world, Soviet Jewry ought not to stand alone in their fight for religious self-determination and their right to rejoin the mainstream of their people.”