Seder Ceremony in Street Near Soviet Mission Asks Freedom for Russian Jews

A traditional seder, the feast celebrating the liberation of Israelites from slavery in Egypt, 4,000 years ago, was held on a sidewalk in mid-Manhattan tonight in a symbolic demand for freedom for Soviet Jews to practice their faith and lead a cultural life according to their tenets without official repression. The seder, for which a police permit was obtained, was held on Lexington Avenue and 67th Street, near the building occupied by the Soviet Mission to the United Nations.

It was organized by the New York Jewish Community Relations Council Coordinating Committee for Soviet Jewry and was attended by 40 presidents and officers of major Jewish organizations in the New York metropolitan area. The seder was conducted by Rabbi Jacob Goldberg of the Fort Tryon Jewish Center, chairman of the Committee. He said that “through this public seder, performed freely and proudly on the streets of New York before the Soviet Mission building, the three million Jews of New York appeal to the makers of Russian policy – let the Jews in Russia express their Jewishness freely, let them have their books and cultural institutions, let them teach their young and remove fear from the old and end the anti-Semitic propaganda that portrays Jews and Judaism as unworthy and shameful.”

The group, through the seder, called on the USSR “to restore religious rights of Soviet Jewry; restore instruments of cultural expression to Soviet Jews; permit the reunion of families and to cease and desist from anti-Semitic propaganda.’ It was pointed out at the ceremony that Soviet Jews cannot easily obtain matzohs for the Passover holiday and that the printing of the Haggadah, the Passover prayer book, is prohibited in Russia.