A self-appointed delegation of three rabbis, a legislator, a Jewish community leader and two students pressed the case for aid to Soviet Jewry yesterday in the Washington offices of nine Senators and Congressmen, including at least three Presidential contenders, “Soviet Jewry is a Presidential issue,” explained Rabbi Avraham Weiss, a member of the delegation, head of B’nai Jeshrun in Monsey, N.Y., and a teacher at Stern College for Women here. Up to now, he charged, “our government has done next to nothing” for Soviet Jewry. The Jewish group conferred with the aides of Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, Democrat of Maine; Sen. Birch Bayh, Democrat of Indiana; Sen. Harold Hughes, Democrat of Iowa; Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts; Sen. Jacob K. Javits, Republican of New York; Sen. James L. Buckley, Conservative-Republican of New York; Sen. Peter H. Dominick, Republican of Colorado and Reps. Edward I. Koch and John G. Dow, Democrats of New York. Rabbi weiss reported that the legislative aides to the Senators and Congressmen expressed sympathy with the delegation’s plea and willingness to meet with Mrs. Rivka Aleksandrovich, who is due in the United States soon to speak on behalf of her daughter, Ruth, imprisoned in Riga. The delegation also met for more than 90 minutes with high officials of the Voice of America to ask at times heatedly, that they initiate Yiddish-language programming for Soviet Jews who speak that language. Rabbi Weiss told the JTA that the VOA officials were sympathetic but noncommittal.
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