Ecumenical Services Held for Returning Hostages and Families

— Ecumenical services were held this morning at the West Point Chapel for the returning hostages and their families who are having a private reunion at the military academy.

In the opening prayer, Rabbi Avraham Soltes, the Jewish chaplain at West Point, declared: “Grant them the patience and faith now that we are close by to reach out to them across gaps of unshared experience they will never fully understand, even as their hearts reached out to us across endless valleys of distance and fear, of silence and despair.”

Soltes was joined in the prayers by the Rev. Richard Camp Jr., the Protestant chaplain, and Father James Tubridy, the Catholic chaplain. The 17-member Jewish cadet choir joined in with the three other choirs at the academy, Protestant, Catholic and Evangelical, to sing at the service.

There are three Jews among the returning 52 Americans who were held for 444 days in Teheran: Barry Rosen, 36, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Jerry Plotkin,45, of Sherman Oaks, Calif.; and Malcolm Kalp, 42, of Fairfax, Va.

Before leaving Wiesbaden, West Germany, Rosen, who had been the press attache at the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, said he had expected to be treated harshly as a Jew by the militants, but found no consistent anti-Semitic attitude. They allowed him to receive Passover food from home, but when they asked where his wife lived and he replied Brooklyn, “They said she should be in Tel Aviv and they called me a dirty Zionist,” he was quoted as saying.