Orthodox Rabbi Says Conference is ‘harassment’ of USSR Which Might Boomerang

Rabbi Abraham Gross, president of the Rabbinical Alliance of America, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today he considered the Brussels conference on Soviet Jewry to be “harassment” of the Soviet Union. “I admit that the public outcry (on behalf of Soviet Jewry) has awakened certain elements that have been oblivious, but I’m questioning what it has accomplished for Soviet Jewry,” he said. Jewish emigration from the USSR has been going on unpublicized for a number of years, Rabbi Gross observed, and “harassing” the Kremlin with an international meeting on the matter could well lead to increased repression of Soviet Jews. Asked to give an example of increased repression as a result of peaceful protests to date, Rabbi Gross noted the recently reported Soviet consideration of a renewal of Jewish relocation in Birobidjan. He added that as a result of the late Rabbi Stephen S. Wise’s call for a boycott of Germany during World War II, Nazi treatment of European Jews worsened, Rabbi Gross was elaborating on a statement he issued yesterday in which he asserted that the Brussels conference was the kind of project that “will only kindle the wrath of the Soviet government, and whose accomplishments for Soviet Jewry are highly dubious.”

The conference organizers, his statement continued, “seem content with placing the Russian government on the defensive and thus feel they have achieved a goal,” while “in reality, the backlash can be a devastating blow to the contacts and aid which are being given to our brethren behind the Iron Curtain” Rabbi Gross added that “not a single religious authority has sanctioned this conference.” He urged its organizers to “be most scrupulous in their statements so as not to endanger the welfare of our Soviet brethren whom they seek to help.” He recommended that efforts on behalf of Soviet Jews be conducted through “forceful and quiet diplomacy.” Rabbi Gross added that he was “terribly disturbed” at the conference’s expulsion of Rabbi Meir Kahane, national chairman of the Jewish Defense League. He said that while he disagreed with JDL’s “violent procedures,” Rabbi Kahane is a Jew and thus “entitled to his platform” at a convention of Jewish leaders. Rabbi Gross said he was disturbed to see “Jew battling Jew.”