Mayor Oved Ben-Ami, of Nathanya, who led an Israeli delegation to a municipalities conference in Leningrad, expressed the belief here today, en route back to Israel, that Jewish values and the Jewish heritage of Soviet Jewry “are withering and dying before our very eyes.”
He asserted that the 3,000,000 Russian Jews were “in danger of losing their identity in the vast isolation in which they find themselves. The image of God’s children is fading in a land where God’s spirit does not hover.”
Mr. Ben-Ami reported that, in many ways, there was less discrimination against Jews and less anti-Semitism in Russia than in many Western countries. He declared also that, as citizens, Jews enjoyed the benefits of medical care, social services and educational facilities open to all Russian citizens. However, he said, the tragedy of Russian Jewry through the loss of Jewish values was “the greatest calamity that has befallen the Jewish people.”
In a related development, it was reported here today from Lvov that all efforts by Lvov Jews to obtain permission to reopen a synagogue closed by Soviet authorities in 1962 have failed. The synagogue was forced to close after a violent Soviet press campaign attacking it as “a center of economic corruption and speculation.” Lvov Jews have repeatedly appealed to both local and central authorities without success.
Soviet authorities have informed the Lvov Jews that the synagogue will be converted into a high school. The worshipers fear that, once the building is secularized, they will be unable to find another structure, even if the authorities would license them to open a synagogue again.
It was reported that the situation was looked upon in Lvov as a test case of the sincerity of Soviet officials in their reported concessions to the religious Jews in Moscow. It was understood that, whatever may happen in “show-case” Moscow, nothing has yet been done to relieve the distress of Jewish religious communities in provincial areas, where there are no synagogues at all.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
