The controversy which surrounded the life of Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levin followed him in death. Jewish leaders praised him today for maintaining Jewish communal life despite the restrictions imposed by the Soviet government, Tass, the Soviet government’s news agency, lauded him as an anti-Zionist and a champion of peace and friendship.
A spokesman for the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry said that “In spite of the many pressures and handicaps placed on him by the Soviet Union with its repressive policy toward Jews and its denial of their religious freedom. Rabbi Levin saw his role as that of a servant of the religious Jews of Moscow. As the only rabbi in the Soviet capital, the spokesman continued, he helped the Jews there carry on at least minimally, their religious heritage.”
The spokesman added that “Rabbi Levin’s departure now leaves the nearly half million Jews of Moscow without a rabbi.” Of the two remaining rabbis practicing in the European part of the Soviet Union, the rabbi of Leningrad, Rabbi Lubanov, 91, is too old to succeed Rabbi Levin, he said, adding that should Odessa’s Rabbi, Israel Schwartz-blatt, a middle-aged man, replace him, “this would leave that city of 250,000 Jews without a rabbi or a synagogue to replace the one burned out several months ago.” The rabbi of Kiev died four years ago and has not been replaced.
The Conference spokesman concluded that “With Rabbi Levin’s death, one of the last remaining vestiges of Jewish religious life in Soviet Russia is gone, leaving another gap in the already decimated and restricted religious community.”
Tass, in a dispatch from Moscow, stated that the “Soviet public knew Levin as an active peace champion and a worker of stronger friendship between peoples.” He was, Tass reported, a member of the Soviet Peace Committee, a group of Soviet public figures, and he was “decorated with a medal for peace activities.” Rabbi Levin. Tass continued, contributed articles to the press calling for solutions of outstanding world issues
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
