High Holy Days Marked by Various Activities

Civilian rabbis will join Jewish military chaplains and military lay leaders in conducting Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur services at over 600 domestic and overseas military installations, VA hospitals, Army transports and Naval vessels on the high seas, the National Jewish Welfare Board said today.

The Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy of the JWB has arranged for the civilian rabbis to visit bases where no full-time Jewish chaplain is stationed, Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, chairman of the Commission, said.

The Jewish Community Relations Council in Philadelphia announced on the eve of the holiday that it was taking two new actions aimed at relieving the oppression of Soviet Jews. The JCRC said it has sent more than 8000 holiday greeting cards to more than 1400 Jews whose requests for exit visas have been repeatedly denied or gone unanswered by the Soviet government. In addition, the JCRC said it will accept new members on its committees of 1000 for Soviet Jewry.

A two-week “Survival Through Education” drive to enroll every Jewish school age child in metropolitan New York in some type of Jewish school was launched on the holiday eve by Dr. Alvin Schiff, executive vice-president of the Board of Jewish Education. Dr. Schiff said that with the start of the High Holy Day period the world’s largest central agency for Jewish education, supported by the efforts of its 54-member Board of Directors, will be coordinating a “do-or-die” program to combat declining enrollment in the schools.

Yeshiva University has opened a special exhibit, “Art of the High Holy Days,” which will run through Oct. 20. The exhibit focuses on the observances of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and Succoth. Included in the displays are ceremonial objects related to the observances, prayer books from the 18th to 20th centuries, prints, paper-cuts used to decorate succoths and decorative etrog boxes.