Canadian Rabbi Says Jews Should Meet Moscow Halfway and Avoid Demonstrations

A Canadian rabbi who just returned from a visit to Russia claimed today that the best way for Jews abroad to help Soviet Jews was to try to meet the Communist regime halfway and not engage in public protests and violent demonstrations against it. Rabbi A. Hechtman, executive director of the Montreal Jewish Community Council, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that this technique was the only practical attitude to adopt when dealing with a country that is anti-religious in philosophy and politically hostile to Israel.

Rabbi Hechtman, the only Canadian rabbi to attend the 75th birthday celebrations for Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levin of Moscow’s central synagogue, said he found signs that the Soviet regime was somewhat relaxing its repression of Jewish religious and cultural observances. He said that he was promised by Michail Teodorovitch Kundicof, chief adviser on religious affairs to the Soviet Council of Ministers, that steps would be taken to ease restrictions on Jewish ritual practices. Specifically, Rabbi Hechtman said, Mr. Kundicof promised he would bring before the Council the question of separate burial grounds for Jews. Jewish cemeteries were closed by the authorities two years ago and Jews and gentiles are now buried in the same cemeteries.

The Soviet official also promised that the government would print 40,000 to 50,000 additional copies of Jewish prayer books and Hebrew calendars which are sold to Jewish congregations. Rabbi Hechtman said that 10,000 calendars printed recently were sold out in a day. Rabbi Hechtman reported that for the first time the Soviet Government has made sufficient flour available to Jewish bakeries for the production of enough matzoh to take care of local needs. In the past, Jews had to buy their own flour and take it to the bakeries in time for Passover. This year the bakery run by the Moscow Jewish community baked 90 tons and the Jewish bakery in Riga, 45 tons. Rabbi Hechtman said. Moscow has a Jewish population of a half million and some 45,000 Jews live in Riga.

Rabbi Hechtman said that 50 years of Communism and the machinations of the Jewish section of the Communist Party had failed to uproot Judaism in Russia. He said that on Purim he saw at least 20,000 Moscow Jews listening to the reading of the Megillah over a loudspeaker outside the Central Synagogue and that there was singing and dancing in the streets. He said that despite the anti-religious attitude and the scorn heaped on ritual observances, some 80 to 100 Jewish weddings are performed each year in Moscow and a like number of Bar Mitzvahs. He acknowledged that this represented about one percent of the ceremonies performed in an American city with a Jewish population of similar size. He said there were only three mohels in Moscow and only seven or eight students In the Moscow yeshiva, one of them studying to be a Torah scribe. He said, that while he was there 28 Jews left Riga for Vienna on their way to settle in Israel.