The Soviet Government, apparently disturbed by the mounting criticism of its treatment of Russian Jewry, came out with a report in the official weekly publication of the Soviet Embassy here asserting that Jewish religious services are being held in 150 synagogues throughout the Soviet Union.
The publication, named “Soviet Union Today,” said that a new edition of the Siddur, the Jewish prayer book, was being prepared for publication and that the Moscow Jewish religious community had a bank account of 500,000 rubles. It asserted that the Moscow synagogue was visited by 500 Jews daily and by 1,500 on the Sabbath.
The publication stressed that Chief Rabbi Yehuda Levine was head of a rabbinical seminary in Moscow and that the Jewish religious community paid each student 1,200 to 1,500 rubles a month and provided free lodging and food for the seminary students. The report also said that the Moscow synagogue had a ritual slaughterhouse, and that the Moscow Jewish community published a Jewish calendar annually.
The cities in which the synagogues were listed as being located included Berditchev, Lvov. Cherson, Chmelnizki, Kiev, Leningrad, Minsk, Nikolajev, Odessa, Poltawa, Riga, Zhitomir, Tashkent, Tbilissi, Tchernigow, Vilna and Biro-Bidjan.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
