Student Says Youth Trying to Change Jewish Community Are Committed to Jewishness

A student speaker at the dedication of the new B’nai B’rith Hillel House warned here last night that Jews should worry when Jewish students leave them alone, “not when they harass them and demand a change of attitude, habit and performance.” Gerald Cromer, student director of the Hillel Foundation, spoke of the “counter-culture” he found in American society, “followed by a Jewish counter-culture within Jewish society.” He said students were trying to change the Jewish community not because they reject their Jewishness but because they acknowledge it. Most speakers at the dedication, including Chief Rabbi Emanuel Jakobovits. Michael Fidler, chairman of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Avraham Harman, president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, devoted their remarks to the situation of Soviet Jewry. The dedication of the eight-story $1.2 million Hillel House took place in the evening. Many attending the ceremonies participated earlier in a demonstration march to the Soviet Embassy here in which an estimated 12,000 persons, many of them non-Jews took part. A delegation delivered a petition on behalf of Soviet Jews. It was received by the Embassy First Secretary in the Ambassador’s absence. He promised to convey it to the Ambassador for forwarding to Moscow. Harman said that “Russia failed to solve the Jewish problem, and that 53 years after the Revolution Russian Jews are in search of their Jewish identity. Our campaign is not an anti-Soviet campaign but a campaign for the right of Soviet Jews to their Jewish identity.”