Albania, the pro-Peking Communist state in the Balkans, has sharply criticized Soviet authorities for permitting Moscow Jews to celebrate Simchat Torah in the street outside of the main synagogue there last October. According to the Albanian news agency “Bashkimi” the celebration was an example of “leniency toward the clergy” by the Soviet “revisionists.”
The news agency said that 12,000 young Jews danced and sang “Hava Nagilah” in a religious ceremony of a pronounced Zionist character and disrupted traffic whole Moscow police stood by. This was tantamount to encouragement, the Albanian source claimed, “because we know that Soviet police previously intervened under the pretext of traffic violations to disperse demonstrations by workers and progressive revolutionaries.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
