Scholars from many fields participated in conferences in various cities around the country yesterday to express solidarity with the Jewish cultural symposium in Moscow. As they gathered, news of the arrests of the Moscow symposium leaders and some 110 Soviet Jewish activists who planned to attend the symposium shocked and saddened the scholars.
In New York, four college and university presidents who addressed more than 100 participants at an academic conference at the City University Graduate Center deplored the arrest of the Soviet Jewish academicians and activists. President William McGill of Columbia University noted that the conference was now “a somber occasion.”
Remarking on the Soviet Jews who managed to conduct the first day of the scheduled three-day conference, Norman Lamm, president of Yeshiva University, declared: “These Russian Jews offer one of modern history’s most remarkable and admirable examples of determination of Jews to remain Jews, to embrace their differentness as a sign of their humanity, to consider Israel as their homeland, and to turn their eyes to Zion no matter where their obstinate protests take them–whether to house arrests or Russian prisons or Siberian exile.”
Gershon Cohen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, in a direct message to Soviet Jews, in Hebrew, which he characterized as “the language of Jewish liberation,” drew a comparison between the Jewish in the USSR today and the Jews of Imperial Rome 2000 years ago. He noted that the Jews were able to survive as a distinct social entity because they insisted on four rights: the right to language, the right to movement, the right to collect funds for communal needs and support of Jews in Israel and the right of assembly. Essentially, Soviet Jews are struggling for the same rights and freedoms, Cohen said.
SCHOLARS SHOULD LEAD STRUGGLE
Dr. Harold Proshansky, president of the Graduate Center, prepared to hall the Soviet Union for allowing the Moscow symposium to take place, was shocked by the wave of arrests. “All attempts to bring freedom to Soviet Jews must now be increased, renewed and strengthened with more effort than ever before,” he said.
McGill, who spoke of Columbia University’s long and eventually successful struggle to free one Soviet Jew, Vitaly Rubin, the internationally renowned Oriental scholar, declared: “I hope that you will also remember the Vitaly Rubins of this world. They do not possess the freedom, the respect and the confidence that we take for granted.”
In summarizing the conference, sponsored by the Academic Committee for the Moscow Conference and the City University of New York Department of Sociology in cooperation with the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry (GNYCSJ), Prof. Seymour Lachman, former New York Board of Education president who chaired the conference, stated:
“Academics are not immune from moral issues. The condition of Soviet Jewry today is one of the great moral issues of the world. The Soviet Jews represent a vital link in the long chain of free men and if they are denied their basic liberties, and if academics are denied the right to publish and to conduct free research, and if the average person is denied the right to emigrate and if Jews are denied the right to cultural expression, then all free men must speak up in a clear voice. The academic scholars of this nation can be and should be at the head of this movement for freedom.”
Bronx Borough President Robert Abrams, GNYCSJ chairman, commenting on the arrests in the Soviet Union, said: “We are outraged over this brutal answer to Soviet Jews seeking to revivify their culture and explore their ancient heritage. We must note that all the preparations for this conference were public, and that Soviet officials had been consulted and invited to attend. But the Soviets responded with months of harassment.” We fully expect that today’s actions by four university presidents in condemning these arrests is but the beginning of an outpouring of outrage over this latest in a series of Soviet actions which blatantly flout the recently signed Helsinki accords.”
EFFORT TO GET FORD’S ATTENTION
In Colorado, five professors from local colleges and 30 others participated in the Vail Academic Conference in support of the Moscow symposium. The Vail conference was sponsored by the Colorado Committee of Concern for Soviet Jewry. The purpose was to call attention to President Ford, who was vacationing in Vail, the problems of the Moscow symposium,
An invitation was sent to Ford to attend the Vail symposium but no response was received. The news of the arrest of the Moscow participants, just prior to the opening of the Vail symposium, added drama and emotion to the presentations of Profs. Dennis Gallagher and Richard Bowles, of Regis College; and Profs. Arthur Gilbert, Howard Ancell and Charles Milligan of Denver University.
The conference closed with the drawing up of a statement to Ford asking him to demand the release of the Jews arrested in Moscow. This statement, along with an enlarged copy of the telegram sent to Ford recently by the Moscow activists, was delivered directly to the President’s headquarters in Vail by the symposium participants.
TESTAMENT TO DISCRIMINATION
Chicago’s Jewish community expressed its concern with the plight of Soviet Jewry in a symposium held at Spertus College of Judaica. Rabbi Eric Friedland, vice-chairman of the Public Affairs Committee of the Jewish United Fund which sponsored the symposium, called attention to the arrests in Moscow. He told the 175 persons attending: “While the Chicago symposium was originally intended to educate people to the discriminatory practices in the Soviet Union that threatened to obliterate Jewish identity, it now becomes an ironic testament to that discrimination.”
The symposium featured prominent scholars from the Midwest, including Prof. Arcadius Kahan and Prof. Richard Hellie, both of the University of Chicago; Prof, Herbert Paper, of the University of Michigan; and Rabbi Moses Mescheloff of Congregation K.I.N.S.
In Philadelphia, academicians held a seminar at Gratz College. The program was chaired by Dr. Marvin Wachman, president of Temple University, and the participants included the presidents and faculty members of major universities in the Greater Philadelphia Area. Among them were Nora Levin, author of “The Holocaust.” and a faculty member at Gratz; Ronald Brauner, professor of rabbinics at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College; and Burton Caine, a member of the Soviet Jewry Council of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Philadelphia.
In Cambridge, Mass. scholars invited to attend the symposium in Moscow who were refused visas, participated in a “Conference-in-Exile” at Harvard University. Those denied visas and presenting papers included Elie Wiesel; Marvin Herzog, Columbia University; Baruch Levine, New York University; Jacob Neusner, Brown University; Marshall Sklare, Brandeis and Henry Feingold, City University of New York. Prof. Leon Jack of Brandeis chanced the meeting.
Meanwhile, the arrests in Moscow were condemned by B’nai B’rith and the National Confer- ence on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ). David M. Blumberg, B’nai B’rith president, accused the Soviet Union of flouting the Helsinki agreement and “again proved its disdain for the rights of minorities despite pledges at Helsinki to protect them. The Western world must not let this latest terrorist reaction to a peaceful meeting go without protest.”
Eugene Gold, chairman of the NCSJ, said that the arrests are indicative of the Soviet Union’s “desperate attempt to further destroy all vestiges of free discussion on Jewish culture in the USSR and create a false picture of the situation of Jews within the USSR.” He said that the NCSJ has asked the State Department to protest and Rep. Dante Fascell (D.Fla.), chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to investigate and hold a public hearing on the denial of cultural rights.
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.
