No Matzoh for Me, Thank You, Soviet Ex-cantor Tells Kin Here

Samuel Rybak, a collective farmer in the new Zlatapol Jewish rural region, who used to be a cantor in the small town from which he came, has written to the Yiddish Communist daily Emes, enclosing a copy of a letter he has forwarded to his brother in America, returning a packet of matzoh which he sent him for Passover.

“My brother in America, without my knowledge and without my consent, has sent me a packet of matzoh for Passover,” he writes. “I have been working all this year on the farm, and though I am over sixty, I have worked 250 working days and am provided with bread for the whole year. I do not want any matzoh, so I am sending them back to America. There are plenty of unemployed and starving there who need bread. Those people in America who are so concerned about the Jews in Soviet Russia would do better to help the Jews who are unemployed in America. I am a collective farmer of the Socialist Soviet Union, and I do not need any religious matzoh. Religion is only poison for the workers.”

The collective farmers of the Jewish collective farm at Origen, in the district of Vinice, told the Emes that they have received $2 per family as Passover relief from the Rabbinical Relief Committee in America, but they have not sent the money back. Instead of buying matzoh with it they have bought suckling pigs, “which will be a useful addition to their livestock.”

All the members of this collective farm pledged themselves to work in the fields during Passover, and have called upon all other collective farmers and artisan cooperatives in the district to follow their example.

A report from White Russia says that 350 workers in the township of Storodorogy, near Minsk, approached the district executive committee, asking it to confiscate the local synagogue and convert it into a cultural institution. The demand has been granted, and has been confirmed by the White Russian Central Executive Committee. The district executive committee has allocated ten roubles towards reconstructing the synagogue as a cinema.

WON’T BAKE MATZOH

A large number of workers in Polotzk, in White Russia, have torn down the mezuzah from their doorposts and have undertaken not to bake matzoh. One of the workers made arrangements for baking matzoh, the report says, but his little girl, a member of the Young Atheist Pioneers, heard of it and argued with her father and convinced him that religion is harmful. In order to influence her backward parent, she put to him the ultimatum, that if he baked matzoh and observed Passover she would leave home. The father took fright and finally agreed not to bake matzoh. At the same time, he tore down from the wall a portrait of Moses Montefiore which he had held sacred for many years.

Twenty-one collective farmers in the region of Slutzk have published an announcement in which they say: “As answer to the clericals we refuse to bake matzoh, and during Passover we shall all go to work as one man, and see that the sowing is finished more quickly. We are spring-cleaning, removing from our houses all religious mildew, mezuzah, religious books, religious pictures, etc.”