Israeli Scholars Invited to Moscow Congress on Ethnography

A number of Israeli scholars have been invited to participate in the forth coming Congress of Ethnography and History, to be held in Moscow, dispatches from the Soviet capital reported here today. One of the Israelis, who has been scheduled to lecture before the congress, is Dr. Zvi Harkavi, head librarian of the Chief Rabbinate headquarters in Jerusalem, a noted scholar in his own right. The Moscow report made it clear that he had been given freedom to choose his own subject.

Reports that synagogues in Tashkent and Alma Atta, in the Soviet Union, have been shut down are premature, according to information from Moscow reaching here today. Officials of the synagogues in both cities, it is established, received eviction notices on grounds that the structures belonged to private owners who allegedly had no legal right to own such structures in the given localities. However, such eviction notices can be appealed and in these two cases appeals were filed and heard by a “higher authority.” Results of the hearings have not yet been made known, according to the report.