Rabbi Reveals Soviet Officials Promised More Rights for Jews

A New York Orthodox rabbi disclosed today that he met recently in Moscow with two officials of the Soviet Government department in charge of religious affairs, and that they had promised him certain concessions to meet the religious needs of Russian Jewry.

Rabbi David B. Hollander, spiritual leader of the Mount Eden Center in the Bronx, and president of the New York Metropolitan Board of Orthodox Rabbis, reported in a letter to the Herald Tribune today about a meeting with Boyan Rezanov and Alexander Bukarin, of the Soviet Council of Cults. He reported that the meeting occurred on his fourth visit to the Soviet Union last March. He made his first visit in June 1956 as president of the Rabbinical Council of America, when he headed the first Jewish delegation to the Soviet Union.

Rabbi Hollander cited reports from Russia last month that Moscow’s Chief Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levin had told a Rabbinical Council delegation which visited his synagogue then that Soviet authorities had made such promises. They included arrangements to permit Soviet Jewish students to enroll at the seminary conducted by Rabbi Levin, provision of facilities for the manufacture of Jewish prayer shawls and approval for issuance of a new Jewish prayer book.

GIVEN ‘SPECIFIC ASSURANCES’; BETTER CLIMATE FOR FREEDOM POSSIBLE

Rabbi Hollander reported that the two Soviet officials had given him specific assurances on those points and that he felt that the statement by Rabbi Hollander reported made to him by the Council of Cults officials apparently is not being implemented. He said the two officials had assured him that, while Moscow Jews would not get a sanctified cemetery for Jewish burials to cope with the overcrowded condition of the existing Jewish cemetery, “religious differences would be respected” in a proposed new cemetery “by dividing it into sections separated by plantings.”

Rabbi Hollander also reported that, during his three-hour meeting with the Council of Cults officials, they “indignantly denied” any Government approval of anti-Semitism, and that they were “most disappointed” by the emphasis that the American press gave “to every anti-Semitic incident in Russia.” Rabbi Hollander declared that he was told by “a well known lay leader” of a Moscow synagogue that the “Russian press deliberately played down certain anti-Jewish incidents in the United States and England, lest Russian anti-Semites derive any strength from them.”

He said he left the session with the two officials feeling that the promises made to him would be carried out. He added that if, “as it seems, they will be,” there was hope for a better climate for religious freedom in the Soviet Union.