Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levin, the rabbi of Moscow’s Choral Synagogue, will make his second trip abroad this week. He is scheduled to visit Budapest on Oct. 16 to participate in a service marking the 25th anniversary of the Nazi killing of 600,000 Hungarian Jews. Rabbi Levin visited the United States in June, 1968.
Rabbi Levin’s plans were disclosed here today by his friend, Rabbi Arthur Schneier of the Park East Synagogue, president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, following telephone conversations with Rabbi Levin and Dr. Coza Seifert, president of the Council of Hungarian Jewish Communities, who invited the Moscow rabbi to Budapest. Rabbi Levin’s visit to the U.S. marked the first time a Jewish religious leader was permitted to leave Russia to visit Jewish communities abroad since the Communist Revolution. Rabbi Schneier said that even though Hungary is in the Soviet sphere, contacts between the Jewish communities there and Soviet Jewry were limited. Last February, however, Dr. Seifert participated in Rabbi Levin’s 75th birthday celebration program in Moscow, also attended by Rabbi Schneier.
According to the New York rabbi, Rabbi Levin informed him that he would stay in Hungary for eight days and would visit various Jewish religious institutions including religious schools sponsored by the Hungarian Jewish community.
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