How 77 Leningrad Jews Celebrated Passover Despite Kgb Harassment

The dramatic story of how a group of Leningrad Jews celebrated Passover despite harassment by Soviet authorities was reported today by Mrs. Lynn Singer, president of the Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry. The information of the event was related to her by Jewish refusniks in Leningrad whom she called. They provided her with the following information.

One hundred Jewish refusniks wished to celebrate the Passover holiday together. Since there was no home large enough to accommodate them, they rented a cafe in Leningrad, paid the rental fee, and made plans to conduct a seder. As they arrived at the cafe on the eve of Passover, they found the place closed.

When they complained to the management, stating they had paid a fee and had been promised the use of the facility for the evening, they were told, “the cafe was closed for inspection. It was the right of the Soviet authorities to decide when a building was to be inspected, regardless of whether it had been rented.”

Disheartened at the prospect of not being able to hold the celebration as a group, and frightened by the knowledge that the cafe had been closed on orders of the Soviet police, who had somehow learned of the planned seder, the mood of the refusniks was somber. Yet, 77 of the original 100 decided to walk to Vosstaniye Square and enter the public dining area in the Oktyabrskaya Hotel. This section of Leningrad is best known for the march of workers shot down by the Czarist police during the 1917 February revolution.

RESPONSE TO THE EFFORT

Arriving at the hotel, the group was denied admission at the hotel entrance. After explaining that they were justified in seeking admission because they wished to dine in the public dining room, the hotel manager called the KGB to report the attempt of the Jews to enter the hotel. Following lengthy negotiations between the hotel manager and the KGB, the 77 were allowed into the hotel dining room.

As the group entered, members of the orchestra, evidently aware of the encounter, suddenly began to play a traditional Yiddish song, Erailach. Whereupon the manager of the restaurant promptly dismissed the orchestra. The music stopped as suddenly as it had started. But, there was to be music in the dining room of the Oktyabrskaya Hotel on the eve of the first seder night of Passover. Seated at tables in the now overcrowded dining room Jewish voices broke out in song.

Soviet Jews do not know the words nor the meanings of the songs of the seder. They are not allowed to study the ritual, nor to learn the order of the seder. What they sang were the songs of modern Israel, songs that were taught them by Jewish tourists who visit the USSR, songs learned from records that tourists bring as gifts for Soviet Jews.

UNDAUNTED BY AUTHORITIES

Tourists who had been dining in the restaurant joined in and began to clap their hands and stamp their feet as the 77 Jews burst into song. A group of Rumanians interrupted their dinner to sing Rumanian songs, encouraged by the Jews. The dining room manager, by this time thoroughly frightened by the possibility of reprisals against him by the Soviet authorities for permitting the celebration, ordered the orchestra to return and to play loud patriotic Russian music to drown out the sounds of the singing, and to stifle the holiday atmosphere.

Undaunted, the 77 Jewish refusniks proceeded to pass out pieces of matzoh they had brought to all the tourists in the restaurant who had attempted to celebrate with them. Finally, at 10 p.m., the group was asked to leave the hotel. Normal closing time for the restaurant is 11 p.m., but this night of Passover the hotel was ordered to close the restaurant one hour early.

As the group of Jews left, the orchestra which had continued to play loud Russian patriotic music, began to play a popular Russian ballad titled: “It Is Not Our Fault,” or loosely translated. “We Are Not To Blame.” “It was the musicians’ way of telling us that they were sorry we could not conduct a proper service,” Mrs. Singer was told over the telephone.

‘FREE JEWS FOR A FEW HOURS’

The group of 77, which included long-term refusniks Mikhail Bargman, Lina and Arcady Rabinow, Felix Aronowich and Aba and Ita Taratuta, “performed an exceptional action in the Soviet Union where conducting a religious ceremony is illegal and dangerous even when performed in secret,” Mrs. Singer commented.

“In New York, Passover 1977 now past, lingers as a pleasant memory for American Jews. In Leningrad, strong-willed and courageous Jews will remember Passover 1977 as the Passover during which, despite the KGB and against the threat of tremendous repercussions, they acted as free Jews for a few hours.”