Thousands of synagogues in the Greater New York area were symbolically closed today by a “decree” posted on the door during the High Holy Day period. Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in Manhattan was the first to be shut down this morning “by an order of the Soviet government.” The “decree” was sent out to more than 1500 synagogues in the Metropolitan New York area.
In ceremonies on the eve of Rosh Hashana, Rabbi William Berkowitz, spiritual leader of the congregation and president of the New York Board of Rabbis, and Stanley H. Lowell, chairman of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry, will affix a poster to the door of the synagogue, announcing that the holiday services were banned.
The event, he said, will serve as a reminder to those entering the synagogue of the unchecked religious discrimination in the USSR against its three million Jewish citizens. The result of this Soviet policy is that the majority of Jews in the USSR are unable to attend the New Year or any other religious services.
The poster reads: “No Services on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement that climaxes the Jewish High Holy Days.) You can ignore this order. Soviet Jews can’t.” Noting that since 1917 the Soviet regime has closed 99 percent of the synagogues–more than 3000 have been boarded up, knocked down or desecrated and that there are only 60 left, the poster states: “How many more shall disappear…?” The poster urged that the New Year be one “of freedom and redemption for three million Soviet Jews. Now. more than ever, they’re depending on your”
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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.
