Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, a U.S. Navy Chaplain with the rank of Lt. Commander, left for Reykjavik, Iceland, Wednesday on special assignment to provide Yom Kippur worship services for Jewish members of President Reagan’s staff accompanying him to the summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev October 11-12.
Resnicoff, assigned to the Navy Chaplain School in Newport, R.I., was selected for the assignment by Rear Adm. John McNamara, Chief of Naval Chaplains, in response to a White House request forwarded through the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, the Jewish Chaplains Council of the JWB reported.
A JWB staff member met Resnicoff at Kennedy Airport in New York before his flight Wednesday with High Holiday prayerbooks, prayer shawls, skull caps and Jewish calendars to be used in Reykjavik, the JWB said.
Meanwhile, the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) announced that it is sending six representatives to Reykjavik to press U.S. leaders to include human rights on the summit agenda.
According to David Wakesberg of San Francisco, director of the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews and a UCSJ vice president, who is one of the UCSJ representatives going to Reykjavik, “We will be presenting cases to the media and delegations and try to insist that Soviet Jews are not forgotten, even though the summit is in Iceland on the eve of Yom Kippur.”
The UCSJ said it also arranged for its representatives to be joined in Iceland by about 10 emigre relatives of prominent Soviet Jewish refuseniks who will be coming from Israel.
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