A delegation of 15 American rabbis, members of the Rabbinical Assembly, will visit the Soviet Union, as well as Czechoslovakia and Rumania, later this month. It will be the first such visit by a Rabbinical Assembly delegation. Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, executive vice-president of the association of Conservative rabbis, who will head the delegation, said the rabbis have received visas from Soviet authorities for the visit. They will spend 10 days in the Soviet Union, visiting Moscow and Leningrad, and two or three days such in Prague and Bucharest.
They will make the visit from London, where they will attend the conference of the World Council of Synagogues from July 15-18, Rabbi Kelman said. They plan to arrive in Leningrad on July 18. Their visit also will be the first by an American delegation since the first visit to the United States by Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levin of Moscow and Cantor David Stiskin of Leningrad.
In Syracuse, the Upstate Council of Youth for Soviet Jewry began yesterday a campaign to secure 100,000 signatures on a petition calling for removal of religious and cultural discrimination against the Jews of the Soviet Union. Five thousand copies of the petition were being distributed throughout the area. The signatures will be presented to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day.
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