Freedom of the Jews in Israel was juxtaposed to subjugation of Jewry in the Soviet Union as the Greater New York Histadrut Council of the National Committee for Labor Israel celebrated its 34th annual “third seder,” here this weekend, with 2,000 guests participating in the traditional event. While Rep. James H. Scheuer, New York Democrat, hailed the forthcoming 18th anniversary of the rebirth of Israel, Rabbi Harry Halpern, spiritual leader of the Midwood Jewish Center, recalled the fate of Russian Jewry.
Holding aloft a matzoh, which he called “the matzoh of oppression,” Rabbi Halpern noted that most of Russia’s 3,000,000 Jews cannot have the unleavened bread on their tables, cannot learn “the languages of their fathers or hand them down to their children, cannot teach their children to be their teachers, their rabbis; can only sit in silence and become invisible.” He pledged: “We shall be their voice, and our voices shall be joined by thousands of men of conscience aroused by the injustice imposed on Soviet Jews.”
Other addresses and greetings were delivered by Israel’s Consul-General in New York, Michael Arnon; Dr. Sol Stein, executive director of the National Committee for Labor Israel; and Harry Uviller, chairman of the Greater New York Histadrut Council, who is impartial chairman of the dress industry.
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