Jewish Congress to Take Up Anti-religious Persecutions in Russia

The Communist campaign against the Jewish religion and the Hebrew language in Soviet Russia will be the subject of a special conference of representatives of central Jewish organizations called by the American Jewish Congress, according to announcement made by Bernard S. Deutsch, president of the Congress. The conference is to be held on Sunday. December 8th, at the Hotel Astor. Facts, previously not made public, with regard to suppression of Jewish religious practices in the Soviet Union and the persecution of Zionists, will be presented at the conference. Mr. Deutsch announced.

“Not only the synagogue but the Hebrew religious school and the teaching of the Hebrew language and literature in any form are made the special ob-

(Continued on Page 4)

(Continued from Page 1)

jects of hatred and attack on the part of the Communists obsessed by an anti-religious fanaticism,” stated Mr. Deutsch. “All Yeshivas or theological seminaries,” he pointed out, “have been closed by the Soviet authorities; rabbis and religious teachers are being treated as pariahs and the legal prohibition against the teaching of religion to children before they are eighteen years of age tends to undermine the foundation of the religious life of the Jewish people. The persistent agitation for the continuous conversion of houses of worship into workingmen’s clubs is a source of the greatest uneasiness and anxiety to congregations which have built up and maintained their synagogues through the most difficult years of privation at considerable self-sacrifice.”

Among the speakers will be Dr. Stephen S. Wise, Bernard S. Deutsch, Nathan D. Perlman, Congressman Hamilton Fish, Judge William M. Lewis, Baruch Zuckerman, Dr. Chaim Greenberg, and representatives of a number of Jewish organizations which will be represented.