Rabbis Ask High Soviet Clergy to Intervene on Behalf of Jews

High Soviet Russian clergymen, headed by Archbishop Nikodim of the Russian Orthodox Church, met here this weekend with a group of Denver rabbis, and promised to convey to Soviet officials the concern of the American rabbinate over the lack of the freedom to pursue their religious rights and practices endured by the Jews in the USSR. Announcement of the meeting, believed to have been the first of its kind, was made here today by Rabbi Samuel Adelman, president of the Rabbinical Council of Denver.

The Russians, guests here of the National Council of Churches, which concluded its annual board meeting yesterday, included representatives of the Orthodox Church of Georgia, the Armenian Church, the Evangelical Christian-Baptist Union, and the Lutheran Churches of Esthonia and Latvia. The Denver rabbis welcomed the Russians on their behalf, as well as on behalf of the Synagogue Council of America, and made these points, among others:

American Jewish religious leaders cannot meet with their counterparts from the Soviet Union, although Christian clergymen do not suffer such restrictions; Russian Jews have been forbidden to obtain matzoth from State bakeries; there is a lack of Jewish prayer books, prayer shawls, phylacteries and other religious articles needed by practitioners of the Jewish faith in the Soviet Union; nine synagogues in the USSR have been closed recently; there are only four students at the single yeshiva in the Soviet Union, in Moscow, and two young rabbis ordained there recently have not been given pulpits.

In general, according to Rabbi Adelman, the replies were that the visiting clergymen would convey the protests to higher authorities in the USSR. The Russians insisted, however, that they had no “special status” with the Soviet Ministry of Cults. At one point, Archbishop Nikodim, who spoke in fluent Hebrew asked why the problems mentioned were not being tackled by Moscow’s Chief Rabbi Yehuda Levin.

The Soviet churchmen left Denver yesterday and will visit, under the auspices of the National Council of Churches, in San Francisco, Indianapolis, Austin, Tex., Atlanta, Des Moines, Dayton, Minneapolis, Chicago, Buffalo and Boston. In addition to Rabbi Adelman, the group that met the Russians included Rabbis Robert Hammer, Daniel Goldberger, Earl Stone and Manuel Laderman.