Rabbi Simkha Teper, of the township of Faleschti, in Soviet Moldavia, and a former rabbi in the town, Rachmil Draznin, were tried in a “Comrades Court,” convicted of “teaching pupils to pray.” and sentenced to be “held up to public ridicule, contempt and scorn,” according to a cable from Moscow in The ‘New York Herald Tribune today.
With the two religious leaders, two other Jews were tried on the same charges and also convicted, the Moscow dispatch reported. The trial of the religious Jews, according to the report, was staged publicly in a motion picture theatre where not a single witness testified on behalf of the rabbi and his co-defendants.
By asking Jewish children to pray and soliciting a woman for a contribution to the local synagogue, the convicted Jewish had been guilty of “barbaric acts incompatible with Socialist humanism and morals,” the court in Faleschti ruled. The verdict also declared that the Jewish religion is fundamentally “not only reactionary but nationalistic.”
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