State Dept., Says It Recognizes Soviet Jews As Nationality, but Opposes Yiddish Voa Broadcasts

The State Department said today that it recognized Soviet Jews as a national group within the Soviet Union but nevertheless would not institute broadcasts to them in Yiddish or Hebrew over the Voice of America “at this time.” The statement was contained in a letter to Rabbi Arthur J. Lelyveld, president of the AJCongress, from Samuel De Palma. Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. De Palma’s letter was in reply to a letter Rabbi Lelyveld sent to Secretary of State William P. Rogers last June 16 asking the State Department to repudiate a reported statement by a U.S. official that Soviet Jews did not constitute a national group in the USSR and therefore was not entitled to Yiddish or Hebrew broadcasts. Rabbi Lelyveld asked Secretary Rogers to have the VOA inaugurate such broadcasts to Soviet Jews for their “symbolic as well as practical vales.” De Palma said in his letter that the official cited by Lelyveld was misquoted and that the State Department in fact, had long recognized Soviet Jews as a national group.

But the matter of Yiddish broadcasts, he wrote, had been “thoroughly considered both in the State Department and in the United States Information Agency” with the conclusion that “for the present at least such broadcasts should not be instituted.” He cited as reasons for that decision, the “small” number of Yiddish-speaking or Hebrew-speaking persons, most of whom, he said, “also speak Russian or another language in which the VOA already broadcasts.” De Palma also referred to “difficult technical problems” in reaching the entire Soviet Jewish community because it was “scattered throughout the country in an area which spans 11 time zones.”