Fifteen thousand persons gathered in the 21,000-seat Madison Square Garden last night as the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York devoted its 30th annual “Night of Stars” not to the usual variety show but to a pageant entitled “Out of the Depths–The Saga of Soviet Jewry.” A UJA spokesman called it one of the biggest attendances at a Soviet Jewry rally here. There were 90 policemen on hand, compared with 45-50 at previous “Nights of Stars” and 35 at non-political events at the Garden.
The largest applause was accorded Cantor Mikhail (Misha) Aleksandrovich, the 58-year-old uncle of Riga defendant Ruth Aleksandrovich. Both now live in Israel. The cantor, making his New York debut, sang more than 6000 concerts across the Soviet Union for three decades before getting a visa to Israel, where he arrived last spring.
The Lithuanian-born cantor’s European career was aborted by the spread of Nazism, and he became Chief Cantor of Manchester, England, in 1934, moving to the USSR in 1943. His Russian recordings sold more than 20 million copies and he won the Orders of Stalin and Lenin.
The pageant included a striking ballet depicting the capture of Jerusalem in 1967, a scene showing Jews billed for education tax, and a scene in which five Yiddish intellectuals murdered in the Stalin purges were depicted viewing the current Soviet Jewish protests, with one observing: “If that’s what we died for it’s worth it.”
The two-hour show was introduced by Samuel Hausman, chairman of the UJA of Greater New York, who said it had been inspired by the “letters of fire” from Soviet Jews “whose souls have been set aflame” by Soviet policy.
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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.
