Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits’ office released a statement today to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency responding to allegations by circles in Israel that he had been duped by Soviet propaganda during his nine-day visit to the USSR last month. The statement, by Moshe Davis, director of the Chief Rabbi’s office who accompanied Jakobovits on his Soviet tour, said in part:
“The allegations of naivety and superficiality are absurd and must be considered against the background of the Chief Rabbi’s wide experience over many years in official meetings and negotiations with government figures in several countries of the world. Dr. Jakobovits is known as a person of acute and perceptive judgement and is the last person I would have thought could be accused of being duped. Furthermore, many of the statements attributed by those who attack him are factually incorrect or distorted. What disturbs me most deeply is that the division of opinion and its expression in such intemperate terms sorely damage the very cause we are all seeking to promote by a variety of means.”
Jakobovits’ report that his trip to the Soviet Union gave him cause to hope that the lot of Jews there would be improved and that the situation of Soviet Jews “Is more complex and the dimensions more acute than one imagines” came under bitter attack from leaders of Soviet Jewish emigre groups in Israel yesterday. The Chief Rabbi’s assessment of the situation in the Soviet Union was also criticized in Israeli official circles as being “superficial” inasmuch as he met only with middle echelon Soviet officials.
Addressing an overflow meeting at St. John’s Wood Synagogue here several days ago–before news of the criticism in Israel reached him–Jakobovits declared that the campaign for Soviet Jewry should be predicated on two slogans– “Let my people go” and “Let my people live.” He took issue with those who claimed a conflict between the two concepts and declared that “the entire debate is irrelevant to the realities of Soviet Jewry.”
The Chief Rabbi said that “At the most” a half million Soviet Jews would go to Israel but no one could write off the remaining two million. He said there would be no Jews to go to Israel if Jewish identity was not cultivated in the Soviet Union and “the same applies here” (in Britain). Aliya, he said, hinges on there being convinced Jews.
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