Christians Adopt Resolution Supporting Right of Soviet Jews to Emigrate

The Board of Directors of the Minnesota Council of Churches adopted a resolution expressing solidarity with the efforts of Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel or to live as Jews in the Soviet Union with full cultural and religious equality. The resolution termed the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union “one of the great humanitarian issues of our day” which “transcends political affiliations, partisan politics and religious differences.”

The resolution, adopted several days ago, expressed profound concern for the fate and future of Soviet Jews and “strong opposition” to the suppression of the “historic Jewish cultural and religious heritage.” The resolution stated further. “We believe that Soviet Jews, cut off from the rest of the Jewish people, as the Soviet authorities are attempting to do, is a crime against the basic human rights of any people…Tens of thousands of Jews have petitioned the Soviet authorities for the right to settle in Israel and raise their children in the Jewish tradition and culture…The reaction of the Soviet authorities to this Jewish awakening has been to mount a campaign of harassment, arrests and virulent anti-Jewish propaganda, the recent Leningrad trial being but one manifestation of such persecution.”

The resolution called on President Nixon, the State Department and US senators and Congressmen to urge Soviet authorities to. “Recognize the right of Jews who so desire to return to their historic homeland in Israel, and to ensure the unhindered exercise of this right; enable the Jews in the USSR to exercise fully their right to live in accord with the Jewish cultural and religious heritage and freely to raise their children in this heritage; put an end to the defamation of the Jewish people and of Zionism reminiscent of the evil of anti-Semitism which has caused so much suffering to the Jewish people and to the world.”