500 Rabbis March in New York; Protest Soviet Policies on Jews

More than 500 rabbis–Orthodox, Conservative and Reform–representing congregations in New York City and vicinity as well as in New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, staged an impressive march today in protest against Jewish religious and cultural repressions in the Soviet Union. They addressed to the Soviet Government a ten-point appeal for the restoration of Jewish cultural and religious rights and an end to anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union.

An appeal was also addressed to President Johnson for support of this protest. The letter to the President will be taken to the White House by U.S. Senator Jacob K. Javits and Senator-elect Robert F. Kennedy.

After the meeting, a delegation of six rabbis tried unsuccessfully to deliver the appeal to the USSR authorities at the Soviet Mission to the United Nations. The delegation was refused admission to Soviet headquarters on the grounds that only missives from official governmental bodies could be accepted. The Board of Rabbis then said the protest and demands would be mailed to the Soviet Embassies in Washington and New York.

The pleas to the Soviet Union were backed in addresses at a meeting held during the march by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller; Sen. Javits; Mr. Kennedy; New York State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz; and Stanley Lowell, chairman of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, who appeared also as the personal representative of Mayor Robert F. Wagner.

The rabbis started their march at a street corner near the headquarters of the Soviet Union’s mission to the United Nations and paraded silently, under police guard, to the headquarters of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, opposite the United Nations enclave. Preceding Rabbi Max Schenk, president of the New York Board of Rabbis, which organized the protest, were a giant menorah and one banner expressing the rabbinical protest. The appeal to the Soviet Government requested:

1. Permission to Soviet Jews for free functioning of synagogues and private prayer meetings, organization of a nationwide federation of synagogues and permission for association of USSR Jews with organizations of co-religionists abroad.

2. Removal of hindrances to the observance of sacred rites such as religious burial and circumcision.

3. Restoration of all rights and facilities for the production and distribution of matzot and other kosher foods.

4. The provision of facilities for the production and distribution of Jewish religious articles like prayer shawls, mezuzot and religious calendars as well as facilities for the publication of Hebrew Bibles, prayerbooks and other religious texts “in the necessary quantities.”

5. Permission to Soviet Jews to make religious pilgrimages to Israel.

6. Permission to all qualified applicants in the Soviet Union to attend the yeshiva in Moscow and the provision of facilities for the establishment of additional yeshivot, as well as permission to rabbinical students to study at Jewish theological seminaries abroad.

7. The provision of schools and other facilities for the study of Yiddish and Hebrew, Jewish history, literature and culture as well as permission to Jewish writers, artists and other intellectuals to create their own institutions for the encouragement of Jewish culture and artistic life.

8. The re-establishment of a Yiddish publishing house, Yiddish state theaters and Yiddish language newspapers with national circulation.

9. Elimination of all discriminations against Jews in all areas of public life.

10. Permission to Jews separated from their families by World War II to leave the Soviet Union for reunification with their families abroad.

Governor Rockefeller, in his address, listed some of the signs of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. He noted that the number of synagogues in the USSR has declined from 450 in 1956 to 96 as of last April; that at least 89 of the Soviet citizens executed for so-called. “economic crimes,” were “publicly identifiable as Jews”; that state publishing houses have published anti-Semitic works; that Jewish cemeteries have been closed down; that the training of rabbis has been severely restricted, and that “Jewish cultural life has been stifled.”

Sen. Javits proposed three courses of further action: 1. The reintroduction in the next Senate of the resolution condemning Soviet anti-Semitism approved at the last session of the Senate almost unanimously; 2, That President Johnson, at his forthcoming summit meeting with the leaders of the USSR “must press on the highest policy level this repression and persecution” of Soviet Jews; and 3. It must be the policy of the U. S. State Department to press the issue of Soviet anti-Semitism at every opportunity in the United Nations.

Mr. Kennedy told the meeting that the new leadership of the Soviet Union must be made aware of the fact that “Soviet relations with the West can never be clear as long as millions in the USSR are denied the right to worship.” He said: “We must renew our protests until the Jews of the Soviet Union feel relieved of any vestige of persecution.”