A delegation of tour American Jewish scholars has been chosen to go to Moscow in response to a world-wide call for Jewish scholars to attend a three-day symposium in Moscow organized by a small group of Soviet Jews, an official of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS)-said today. The AJS was one of the Jewish groups which received the Invitation, according to Dr. Leon A. Jick, director of the Center for Contemporary Jewish Studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
An American Academic Committee for the Moscow Conference, which is scheduled to meet Dec. 19-21, has been formed to support the goals of the conference, at which the Moscow Jewish activists hope to meet to discuss the future of Jewish culture within the Soviet Union. In their call to Jewish scholars to come to Moscow to participate, the activists affirmed the rights of Soviet Jewry to cultural freedom and cited the tenets of the Helsinki agreement. Elie Wiesel is chairman of the American committee.
SCHOLARS HAVE APPLIED FOR VISAS
Jick told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the American Jewish scholars–Marvin Herzog of Columbia University, Baruch Devine of New York University, Jacob Neusner of Brown University and Marshall Sklare of Brandeis University–had applied for visas in the hope that Soviet authorities would permit the conference to take place, allow the activists to rent a hall for the conclave, and issue the visas for the four American Jewish scholars “in the spirit of the Helsinki agreement.” Jick said similar committees had been organized in Israel and in Britain.
The manifesto declared that “although the nearly three million Jews in the USSR represent the world’s third largest Jewish community–after those of the United States and Israel–Soviet Jews are deprived of any sharing in their cultural heritage, customs and traditions.”
The Moscow manifesto continued: “The task of preserving and reviving Soviet Jewry, the task of its salvation from total spiritual destruction, is the noble cause in which all those who want to be Jews must take part.” It was signed by Benjamin Fain, a leading Soviet physicist and chairman of the conference, and 12 other activists. The American committee for the conference said almost all of the signers were “refuseniks.” Soviet Jews denied permission to emigrate to Israel.
The AJS, comprising 800 American Jewish scholars, announced the plans to send the four scholars to Moscow. Dr. Marvin Fox, Philip W. Lown Professor of Jewish Philosophy at Brandeis and association president, said “it has long been our hope that Jewish scholarship and the sense of Jewish identity might be given free expression in the Soviet Union.”
The AJS reported that the Soviet activists have already announced publicly their intention to hold the conference, adding that it appeared this was the first time that a cultural minority within the Soviet Union had attempted to exercise such rights under terms of the Helsinki agreement.
TERMED AN HISTORIC OCCASION
Wiesel said “This is an historic occasion.” Declaring that Soviet Jews “are not permitted to be Jews and they are not permitted to stop being. Jews,” Wiesel said the Helsinki agreement has struck a “spark of hope” and that the Moscow symposium is “a thin flame from that spark.”
He also said that he sensed “a renewed interest in Jewish history and culture. Despite countless obstacles, seminars meet in private homes to study and devour whatever materials they are able to secure on Jewish subjects.”
Serving on the American Academic Committee are Nobel Laureate and Harvard economist Kenneth Arrow; Brandeis president Marver Bernstein; Jewish Theological Seminary of America Chancellor Gerson Cohen; Reconstructionist Rabbinical College president Ira Eisenstein; Prof. Fox, Hebrew Union College president Alfred Gottschalk; Yeshiva University president Norman Lamm; Columbia University president William McGill; and Harvard Faculty Dean Henry Rosovsky.
Jick said financing for the participation by the four American scholars was coming from the scholars, from the association and from the universities of which the scholars are faculty members. He also reported that the AJS was receiving outlines of the papers which the Moscow participants hoped to present at the symposium.
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