‘urgent Appeal’ by 8,300 Christian Leaders on Behalf of Soviet Jews Given to Bush

United States Ambassador George Bush accepted an “urgent appeal” from 8,300 Christian leaders today and they stayed on for half an hour discussing ways of alleviating the plight of Soviet Jewry. The “Statement of Conscience” was presented to him and Deputy Ambassador Christopher H. Phillips by an interfaith delegation headed by Seymour Graubard, national chairman of the first Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, which has formulated the text of the appeal. Bush said that his press on the matter to Soviet Ambassador Yakob A. Malik had been dismissed as baseless. But he told the delegation that “we’re going to continue to discuss it very, very seriously” with the Soviets. He added that he would seek to present the petitioners’ case to President Nixon and to Secretary General Thant. He noted that the General Assembly will probably consider the question of Soviet Jewry next fall after receiving a report from the Commission on Human Rights. Bush recalled that he recently advised a Soviet delegation that “this country is tremendously concerned about this problem.” He stressed, however, that the “illegal tactics of the Jewish Defense League were “detrimental” to the cause of Soviet Jews. Graubard was joined among others, by the Rev. Edward Flannery, executive secretary of the Secretariat for Catholic-Jewish Relations of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops; the Most Rev. J. Brooke Mosley, president of the Union Theological Seminary; Dr. Jon L. Regier, associate general secretary of the National Council of Churches; the Rt. Rev. J. Stuart Wetmore, Suffragan Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York; Rabbi Israel Mowshowitz, chairman of ADL’s Intercultural Affairs Committee, and ADL national director Benjamin R. Epstein. The petitions, expressing “profound” concern with the situation of Soviet Jews, were signed by representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and 19 Protestant denominations–white and black–in all 50 states.