Reviving Jewish Life in USSR is Top Priority, Says Bronfman

The challenge facing the Soviet Jewry movement now is no longer emigration, but rather to help revive Jewish cultural and religious life in the Soviet Union, the president of the World Jewish Congress said here Monday night.

Speaking at the annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, the organization of Conservative rabbis, Edgar Bronfman rejected the argument that all Jews must be rescued from the Soviet Union to prevent assimilation.

“So they come to New York and they are not going to disappear as Jews?” he asked. “It’s nonsense.”

His views appeared to differ slightly with those of Shoshana Cardin, chairwoman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. Addressing the assembly Sunday night, she said Soviet Jews should be given “the freedom of choice” to settle where they like. However, she added, “we should stress the benefits of settling in Israel.”

Bronfman said that many in the Soviet Jewry movement now share his view, because the rate of Soviet Jews who do not go to Israel has reached 90 percent.

“Of course we want them to go to Israel,” said Bronfman. But he suggested that the reason most decide not to do so is because they lack Jewishness.

‘BUILDING A D.P. CAMP IN ROME’

“The reason that most of them want to leave is not for religious purposes, it is to be non-Jewish, not to be Jewish,” Bronfman said. In addition, because the Soviet Union has painted a distorted picture of Israel since 1967, most Soviet Jews do not realize that Israel has a Western-style economy, he said.

The WJC leader also said he would like an end of the problem of Jewish refugees in Rome waiting to enter the United States.

He said he would like to see Jews who want to go to Israel get visas directly from an Israeli Consulate in Moscow and those who want to go to the United States or other countries get their visas from those nations’ embassies in Moscow.

He suggested that many of those who have to wait for long periods to gain admission to the United States will decide instead to go to Israel.

“We don’t want them to go to Rome,” Bronfman said. “Do you realize that we are building a D.P. camp in Rome in the year 1989?”

He said that as a result of the U.S. decision to be more selective about granting refugee status to Soviet Jews, some 7,000 Jewish emigrants are currently waiting in Rome, and there may be as many as 25,000 by the end of the year.

“Shame on us, shame on them,” he said. “It is not dignified any longer for a Jew to be a refugee. It is not tenable anymore for people to say they are afraid of life and limb in the Soviet Union, because it is not really true.”

A NEED FOR TEACHERS

Bronfman said that if Jewish life becomes more viable in the Soviet Union, many Jews will want to remain there.

But since age-old anti-Semitism will likely continue to exist in the Soviet Union, many others will want to leave. They will be more likely to do so if they have had the Jewish education denied Soviet Jews for the last 70 years, he said.

Bronfman said that the cultural centers that the Soviet Union has agreed to open, through negotiations with the WJC, can be the vehicle “to teach people the pride, the tradition of our people.”

One center has recently opened in Moscow, and others are scheduled to open in Leningrad, Kiev, Lvov and Vilnius. “Our challenge is to make those cultural centers vibrant,” Bronfman said.

He said they will need rabbis, teachers and lecturers from the West and Israel to teach Hebrew and Jewish tradition. Money is needed for teaching equipment and libraries to attract Jews to the center.

Bronfman urged the some 600 rabbis and others attending the convention and others to join the effort.

“Take this opportunity seriously, because if not, in 10 years we’ll kick ourselves,” he said. He praised Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev for opening a window to allow Jewish cultural life. But he added, “I don’t know how long this window will be open.”