With white robes, black candles, and a large menorah, members of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry staged today an “exorcism” of the “dybbuk of anti-Semitism which is possessing the body politic of the Kremlin” at Aeroflot Russian Airlines’ Fifth Avenue office.
Shofar blasts by young men and women clad with prayer shawls opened and closed the unusual ceremony, which attracted a large crowd of onlookers. Many demonstrators held up photos of Soviet Jewish Prisoners of Conscience; one bore a sign, “Let My Dybbuk Go!”
“We can only explain the latest wave of irrational anti-Semitism in the USSR, including Tass’ announcement that imprisoned emigration spokesman Anatoly Shcharansky will receive ‘the most severe sentence’ by the fact that a malevolent dybbuk must have gotten hold of the Kremlin,” a SSSJ spokesman said. “By our exorcism, we hope to have invoked the spirits of human rights and the Helsinki accord to build up sufficient moral pressure to expel this dybbuk of anti-Semitism from the USSR for all time.”
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.
