J.D.B. News Letter

(By our. Moscow Correspondent)

A slice of Jewish life in Soviet Russia is presented in a report in the press here, of a case which has just been heard in a law court in the Crimea.

The case arose out of an incident which took place some time ago, when a journalist on the staff of the local Russian newspaper “Red Crimea”, passing through a street at night heard cries for help from a courtyard. On entering the courtyard he found an old man complaining that his sons were beating him because he was saying his evening prayers. The journalist went away and wrote an article in his paper headed “How we conduct anti-religious propaganda”.

Out of this incident, the old man, Isaac Ginsburg, brought an action against his wife, Rachel Ginsburg and their two sons, Abraham Ginsburg a worker and a Young Communist, and Jacob Ginsburg a demobilized Red Army soldier, now a militiaman. The father accused the sons of persecuting him because he observed the Jewish religious laws. The mother, he said, sided with the sons. “If I sit down to read the Psalms or I say my prayers,” he declared, “there is at once shouting and whistling, and it generally ends with them beating me.”

The Court found the defendants not guilty and acquitted them, declaring that Isaac Ginsburg had provoked them by his actions. The defendants pleaded that they had not interfered with his observance of Jewish ritual but that he caused scenes when he found milk and meat dishes together. He was annoyed when they refused to stand up when he said Kiddush. He refused to see his oldest daughter, who had married a non-Jewish Communist, and he said that he did not want any Gentile grandchildren.

A grandchild, a young schoolgirl, belonging to the Communist pioneers, gave evidence that on Saturdays her grandfather had always tried to prevent her going to school and had stolen her out of the house to go with him to synagogue. Often she had run away during the service and gone to school. He was always very angry with her when that happened. Now that her uncle had come home from the Red Army, her grandfather was afraid of him and no longer forced her to go to synagogue.

At the end of the proceedings after the defendants were acquitted, the wife, Rachel Ginsburg, asked the Court to make an order compelling her husband to leave the house because she wanted to live with her sons and he was a disturbing element. She produced a decree of divorce from the Soviet Court.

The old man protested. He knew nothing of any divorce, he said. “We were married by the Rabbi,” he cried, “and only the Rabbi can separate us.

The Court granted the application of his wife, and he was ordered to leave the house.