About 7,500 Bronx Jews today marched for several blocks along the Grand Concourse, the borough’s main thoroughfare, then held a rally on the steps of the Bronx County Court House, to demand equal rights for Soviet Jews as granted them under the Soviet constitution. It was the first time that the Jews of the Bronx rallied in a single borough protest for Soviet Jewry.
Protesting Soviet anti-Semitism, the rally heard U.S. Sen. Jacob Javits and other dignitaries decry Russian treatment of Jews. Borough President Herman Badillo proclaimed today as “Bronx Soviet Jewry Day.” Rabbi Herschel Schacter, of the Bronx Mosholu Jewish Center, was chairman. He has assumed chairmanship of the newly-formed Bronx Council to Aid Soviet Jewry. Rabbi Israel Miller, of Kingsbridge Heights Jewish Center, the Bronx rabbi who heads the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, addressed the rally.
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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.