Anti-passover Campaign by Soviet Yiddish Press

A vigorous anti-Passover agitation, exceeding in its magnitude any such campaign of the last few years, has been started by the “Emess”, Yiddish Communist daily. Full-page articles, reports and news items from the provinces fill the pages of the paper with agitation against the coming festival.

In an article written by the editor of the “Apikoiras”—the “Freethinker”—one finds the following:

“Passover, the exploiting festival of the Rabbis, is approaching. This festival is the best instrument possessed by the capitalistic and exploiting elements of the population to stir up trouble and spread hatred against the cultural and economic forms of socialism. Rabbis still preach that all Israelites are brethren, which means that there is a union between the Jewish parasite and the Jewish proletariat. While the Government calls for the preparation of corn for the coming spring, the Jewish clericals and kulaks demand that seed should be embezzled for the purpose of baking matzoth.”

Enumerating a list of the sins of the clericals, and indicating the danger of religion in general, the paper points out that the anti-religious campaign must be conducted with all vigor possible, in view of the tremendous problem with which the country is now faced. The present campaign, it says, must sever any contact which still exists between the Jewish masses and the Jewish clergy, and no collaboration with Jewish exploiters must be allowed to distract the Jewish element from Socialist factories, collective farms and enterprises.

A vigorous campaign, it says, must be conducted against those opportunists who declare that an anti-religious campaign is no longer necessary, urging, as they do, that the Jewish masses have already foresworn this religion, which is by no means the case.