Jews Ready for Passover; Concern over Russian Jewry Mars Holiday

Jews all over the world were prepared today to start celebrating Passover at sundown tomorrow. The fate of the Jews in the Soviet Union, where matzoh was scarce on the whole, marred an otherwise happy mood as all Jews — even those in the USSR who were allowed to do so — marked the traditional Festival of Liberation.

American Jews were interested, additionally, in their men and women in the United States armed services. The National Jewish Welfare Board reported that the largest number of American Jews in uniform since the signing of the Korean truce in 1953 were set to celebrate Passover in South Viet Nam and at more than 600 other overseas and United States Army, Air Force and Naval installations. Many of these men, the JWB noted, became members of the U. S. armed forces since the recent American military build-up in and around Viet Nam, and were spending their first Passover away from home.

JWB has also made it possible for the wives and children of married Jewish GIs as well as for men aboard Naval vessels and troop transports, those assigned to missile bases and tracking stations, and patients in Veterans Administration hospitals in the United States to observe Passover.

Chaplain Alan M. Greenspan, recently assigned to the U. S. Military Command in South Viet Nam, has arrived in Saigon, according to the JWB, replacing Chaplain Richard E. Dryer, who was transferred to Germany. Chaplain Greenspan and the two other Jewish chaplains now serving in South Viet Nam, Chaplain Robert L. Reiner and Chaplain Harry Z. Schreiner, will conduct sedarim for the growing number of Jewish military personnel in that area.

Through Army cooperation, all of the Jewish servicemen from II Corps, including men from the First Cavalry Division, the 25th Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne Division, will be brought to Nha Trang, Vietnam, for Passover observances in the USO Club. The waitresses, KPs and cooks will be Vietnamese. Chaplain Schreiner, in a report to the JWB Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy, noting that “Passover overseas is always a major project, especially in countries like Viet Nam, ” said “ours in Nha Trang will be no exception. “

Two Jewish chaplains flew to military bases in the North and South Atlantic on special Passover missions. Chaplain Allen S. Kaplan, of Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, will conduct Passover services in the Azores and Bermuda. Chaplain Barry D. Schwartz, stationed at Westover Air Force Base, Mass., will preside at Passover services at Goose Bay, Labrador, and Hamon Air Force Base, Newfoundland.

Jewish Army and Air Force chaplains will conduct Passover services in Ankara, Turkey, Evreux, Orleans and Verdun, France; Vicenza, Italy; and Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Ramstein, Kaiserslautern, Munich and Stuttgart, Germany. The sedarim will be conducted in officers’ clubs and consolidated mess halls. Military personnel and their families from outlying areas will be accommodated in military hotels and transient billets to facilitate their attendance at the Passover services.

Jewish chaplains will also officiate at Passover services in Korea, Japan, Okinawa, the Philippines, Hawaii, Panama Canal Zone and Alaska. Jewish GIs trained by chaplain will lead the services in Greenland and Spain.

MOSCOW JEW REPORTS ON MATZOH; CLAIMS YESHIVA HAS BEEN REOPENED

From The Soviet Union, it was reported today by the New York Herald Tribune that Ephraim Benzvi Kaplan, who identified himself as the “administrator” of the Central Synagogue in Moscow, declared that 50 tons of matzoh “for 9,428 families” had been baked and distributed in the Soviet capital. Last week, the Novosti Press Agency, the official Soviet feature news agency, which serves only the foreign press and which does not have its data published inside the USSR, gave a different figure to the Jewish Telegraphic

(Mr. Kaplan announced at the same time, according to the Herald Tribune dispatch from Moscow, that the Moscow yeshiva has now been reopened. He was reported as saying that the yeshiva started functioning again a month ago, with an enrollment of 12 or 13 students, aged 21 to 45. He claimed that two of the students were from Odessa, two from Kiev, three from Riga, four from Tbilisi, Georgia, two from Moscow and one from Dokhara. He was reported as saying that the yeshiva had been given a two-room dormitory, where eight of the students live. Of the total number of students at the yeshiva, he was reported saying, two are studying for the rabbinate and the remainder were preparing to be cantors or ritual slaughterers.)

JDC SENT 615, 000 POUNDS OF MATZOH OVERSEAS; STUDENTS HOLD VIGIL ON RUSSIA

Overseas, except in the Soviet Union, Passover provisions, including ample supplies of matzoh, were made by the Joint Distribution Committee. A total of 615, 000 pounds of matzoh were provided by the JDC for thousands of Jews in need in many countries, including lands behind the Iron Curtain — except the USSR.

The JDC shipments included even Albania, the Communist country more rigidly shut off from the Western world than any other state. “We don’t know under what conditions the Jews live in Albania, ” the JDC stated, “we don’t know whether they have a synagogue or rabbi or talmud torah. But we do know there are Jews in Albania, and once every year they break through the barriers of silence and ask for just one thing — matzoh.”

This year, JDC sent 1,520 pounds of matzoh to Albania. The JDC also sent 26,400 pounds of matzoh and 8, 000 pounds of matzoh meal to Yugoslavia.

In New York, over 300 Jewish college students ended this morning an all-night vigil at Hammarskjold Plaza opposite the United Nations to dramatize the concern of American Jewry for the plight of their brethren in the Soviet Union. The students, members of the New York Youth Conference for Soviet Jewry, carried placards and banners calling on the Soviet Government to grant freedom to its Jewish citizens, and urging widespread public protests against the oppression of Russian Jews.

Throughout the vigil, the participants read portions of the Bible and the Haggadah, and sang Hebrew folk songs. The all-night demonstration was held next to the “Isaiah Wall” of the Plaza, named for the late Secretary General of the United Nations. The wall bears an inscription quoting from Isaiah: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any more.”