U.S. Clergymen Seek Soviet Permission to Send 10, 000 Siddurim to Russia

Two Christian clergymen — a Catholic and a Methodist — announced here today they have asked Soviet authorities for permission to send a gift of 10, 000 Hebrew prayerbooks to Jews in the Soviet Union. The clergymen are the Rev. Thurston N. Davis, editor of the Jesuit weekly, America; and Dr. Harold A. Bosley, minister of Christ Church, Methodist. Both are vice-presidents of the Appeal to Conscience Foundation, an organization founded a year ago to aid restoration of religious freedom for Jews in the USSR.

Father Davis and the Rev. Bosley were members of an interfaith team that visited the Soviet Union last winter to look into the situation of religious freedoms there, especially for Jews. A member of the team was Rabbi Arthur Schneier, president of the Appeal to Conscience Foundation. Upon their return, all three clergymen reported that, in Moscow, they had been promised by Peter Makartsev, of the Soviet Ministry of Religious Cults, that 10, 000 Hebrew prayer books, to replace old, tattered copies, would be printed as soon as technical arrangements could be completed.

Pointing out that now, five months after that promise, the Hebrew prayerbooks have not as yet been furnished to the Jewish community in the Soviet Union, the clergymen said that, by granting permission to them to ship those books, the Soviet Government could “go a long way toward restoring world faith and confidence in the USSR, and would help regain its prestige among the family of nations.”

The clergymen said they sent their request to the Soviet Ministry of Religious Cults last week through the Soviet embassy in Washington. They added that “the situation facing the Jewish community of the Soviet Union cannot remain the sole concern of Jewry, but is a matter of concern to all men, regardless of creed.”