A national Day of Prayer for the welfare of the Jews in the Soviet Union was observed by all Jewish communities throughout Canada this week, according to a decision of the All-Canadian Rabbinic Conference held recently in Ottawa under the sponsorship of the National Religious Welfare Committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress.
Two of the largest services were held yesterday in Montreal and Toronto with thousands of men and women crowding the synagogue where 30 rabbis officiated. They represented every major congregation in Montreal–Orthodox, Conservative and Reform. The addresses were given by Rabbi Pinchus Hirschprung, head of the Orthodox Rabbinate in Montreal, and Rabbi S; M. Zambrowsky, chairman of the National Religious Welfare Committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress.
The National Day of Prayer gave expression to the great anxiety expressed by Canadian rabbis that the Jewish community in the Soviet Union is prevented from pursuing a collective Jewish life by the closing of synagogues; lack of any facilities for Jewish education for their children; deprivation of opportunities for practicing religious observances; denial of Jewish burial grounds; lack of religious articles, prayer books and ritual objects which Jews in Russia cannot produce themselves, neither are they permitted to get them from abroad; denial of public facilities for baking matzos; lack of religious and cultural bonds with one another and with Jewish communities in other lands and constant and continuous curtailment of Jewish cultural activities.
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