Soviet authorities have given permission for two Jewish men to come to the United States in order to learn the rituals of shechita and brit milah (kosher animal slaughter and circumcision), and then to return to their communities to practice them.
The agreement was reached in Moscow this past June by Rabbi Arthur Schneier of New York, president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, and Konstantin Kharchev, chairman of the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
Schneier, at a news luncheon Thursday at which he announced the development, referred to the move by the Soviets as “an encouraging indication of ‘spiritual perestroika’ — a restructuring of official Soviet attitudes toward religious communities, including Jews.”
The two Soviet men are expected to come to New York sometime in October, after the Jewish holidays.
Specific plans for where they will learn their religious crafts, which would be supervised by Schneier, were still pending at the time of the announcement.
On Sunday, Schneier met with the Lubavitcher rebbe, who gave his blessing to the project.
The agreement follows one made last year by Schneier and Kharchev that enabled the official rabbi and cantor of Moscow’s Choral Synagogue to come to New York to study at Yeshiva University.
Rabbi Adolph Shayevich and Cantor Vladimir Pliss studied here between February and April.
Schneier’s negotiations with Soviet officials took place during an extensive trip he made in June through Soviet Jewish communities.
Schneier heralded the Soviet willingness to address the needs of several Jewish communities, including Moscow, Kiev, Tashkent and Bukhara, as “a growing sense of responsiveness on the part of Soviet officialdom. They just can’t deny or get away with” dismissing religious wants.
NO FEAR
Schneier said that Soviet Jews he met were “no longer afraid” to make religious requests.
The mohel, Avrech Kaziev, 35, lives in Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan, which has an estimated Jewish population of 100,000 and four functioning synagogues.
The shochet, Moshe Tamarin, 27, of Moscow, learned how to slaughter fowl from Moscow’s only official kosher slaughterer, Mottel Lifshitz, 72, who reportedly requested that a young man be trained to take over from him.
He is coming here to learn how to slaughter cattle.
Schneier referred to the latest approval of religious needs in the Soviet Union as “the willingness of Soviet leaders to confront and rectify the mistakes of the past.”
He said “the permission is just another step of the efforts of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation,” an ecumenical group of clergy who in June sent to Moscow 10,000 High Holiday machzorim printed in Russian and Hebrew.
Schneier has been the target of much criticism from Soviet Jewry organizations because of his dealings with Soviet officials and his refraining from dealing with the refusenik issue.
He deflected criticism on Thursday, saying, “I think that every Jewish organization should do what it can do best.”
He said he favored a “dual-track approach” to the Soviet Jewry issue, including both emigration and guarantess for continued Jewish life in the Soviet Union.
Responding to the issue that refuseniks and many Jewish activists shun the official Jewish establishment, of which the Choral Synagogue is central, Schneier said that there has always been those who prefer to practice the religion in an “underground” manner because of abiding distrust of the government.
He agreed that there was nothing wrong with that continuing, but added, “Jews should not have to feel they have to practice their religion clandestinely.”
Schneier responded unflinchingly to criticism leveled at him by Morris Abram, chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. Abram reportedly has said the prayerbooks that Schneier sends never reach people but linger in the basement of the Choral Synagogue.
Schneier said he knew that wasn’t true because he had met the shipment himself.
He said the prayerbooks were sold in Moscow for a modest price, with profits from their sale to be applied to construction of a Jewish community center adjacent to the synagogues.
Machzorim would also be distributed for sale to synagogues in other cities, he maintained.
Schneier said he found Jews now far less fearful of the state, but admitted they were unnerved by the newly audacious anti-Semitic groups, led by Pamyat. New, he said, there is a new phenomenon in the Soviet Union — police standing guard outside synagogues.
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.
