Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen of Rumania counsels patience regarding Soviet so-called promises to allow increased Jewish emigration and to route the emigrants through Rumania directly to Israel.
“Now is the time to wait, because we have hopes that there will be improvement,” Rosen told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview at the commemorative ceremonies of the 44th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Rosen, who addressed some 4,000 people in Yiddish at the ceremony at the Felt Forum Sunday, was accompanied from Rumania by the Rumanian Jewish Federation Choir, all of them children of Holocaust survivors.
The 46-member choir, ranging in ages from 16 to 24, sang several melodies in Yiddish. They are scheduled to sing in the Rotunda of the Capitol Tuesday. En route to Washington, they will appear in the Independence Hall district of Philadelphia and in concert at the University of Maryland.
The choir, said Rosen, is an example of the proliferation of Jewish culture in a socialist state, a state which permits both the preservation of Judaism in all its aspects and also emigration of Jews to Israel.
The most important thing for the Jews, Rosen said, is the continuance of Jewish couture in all its facets, a necessity so that “Jews should not disappear as Jews. It is necessary to give a Jewish identity to their children, of course.” The second important thing, Rosen said, “is aliya, not neshira (dropping out).
“In my humble opinion, quiet discussion is the best tactic. The tactics of Rumania, a socialist state, provide an example” of what can happen for Jews in the Soviet Union. “Ninety-seven percent of Rumania’s Jews have left,” most of them for Israel, Rosen said. For the remaining three percent, he said, Rumania allows Jewish life in full bloom.
“That a socialist state can give the Jewish people the possibility to remain Jews and the choice to remain or to leave” provides hope for Soviet Jews, Rosen said. “Those who go to Israel remain both loyal to Rumania and remain Jewish,” he said.
In addition to several Jewish choirs, said Rosen, “Rumanian Jews have classes in Hebrew, lectures on Jewish topics, and the government is cooperating with us in Jewish festivals.”
Rumania “imparts wisdom for the socialist world. In Rumania, we see that the attitude toward Jews is working,” he said. “Our success in Rumania is a combination of maintaining Judaism and allowing Jews to emigrate.”
Today, he said, three percent of the Jews who lived in Rumania after the war — 23,000–remain. “We have today 70 synagogues, 40 of them functioning daily, 11 kosher restaurants, where daily 4,000 people — mostly elderly — eat.
“Demographically, the remaining Jewish population is mostly elderly,” Rosen said. “All those who could leave left.” Rosen said, “I will be happy that the Jews go to Israel, not to stay in Rumania, but to live in Israel. The first plan is education, and then aliya.”
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.
