Soviet Anti-religious Campaign for Rosh Hashanah Falls Flats: Jewish Masses Indifferent: Even Atheis

The big anti-religious campaign which has been ordered for the forthcoming Jewish High Holy Days is falling flat everywhere, according to the reports which are arriving here from the various localities. The Jewish masses in the towns and townships are taking no notice of the anti-religious agitation, and even the atheist groups are very slack, confining themselves merely to circulating the anti-religious pamphlets and leaflets which have been supplied by the headquarters of the Godless League, but they are making no attempt to control the activities of the clericals, or to follow up their literature by any active movement to stop the Jews attending the synagogue and to induce them to be at their work on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Worst of all is the situation in the Jewish villages, the Jewish Communist press complains. No one pays the slightest heed there to the anti-religious campaign, and there is a danger, the “Emess” says, that in many of the Jewish colonies the backward elements will, like last year, refuse to go out in their fields on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

BUT RELIGION DYING IN AMERICA “EMESS” PROCLAIMS: THOUSAND CHURCHES SYNAGOGUES BETH MIDRASHIM AND YESHIBAHS CLOSED LAST YEAR IT SAYS AND THOSE REMAINING OPEN ALWAYS EMPTY.

But in America, the “Emess” proclaims joyfully, however, religion is dying. Last year a thousand churches, synagogues, Beth Midrashim and Yeshibahs were closed down, and those which remain officially open are for all practical purposes closed, for it is seldom that anyone enters them. In summer, it is rare, indeed, to find any church or synagogue open. The militant Atheist Organisation in America is being helped in its fight against religion, the “Emess” adds, by President Hoover’s thanksgiving day call. Fancy eleven million starving unemployed, it says, being invited to thank God.