Vance Reported to Have Promised the State Department Will Probe Ussr’s Ban on Matzoh Imports

The Synagogue Council of America (SCA) said today that Secretary of State Cyrus Vance has promised to have the State Department investigate the Soviet Union’s ban on the importation of matzohs. Vance gave his assurance to Rabbi Henry Siegman, executive vice-president of the SCA, at a private meeting at the State Department last Friday.

The Soviet action was in the form of a note the Moscow authorities sent to the Universal Postal Union in January asking that it notify post offices throughout the world that the Soviet Union forbids the import of “alimentary doughs and products of flour converted into bread in any postal item whatsoever.” The SCA said Siegman pointed out to Vance that since few other products containing flour are shipped into the Soviet Union, the regulation effectively bans the Soviet Union, the regulation effectively bans the shipment of matzohs to that country for Passover which begins April 2.

The National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ), which called attention to the Soviet ruling last week, said it was promulgated shortly after Soviet officials in the West had given assurances that matzoh packages would be permitted entry. The ban was characterized by the NCSJ as a new “assault” on the cultural and religious tradition of Jews in the Soviet Union.

According to Abraham S. Karlikow of the American Jewish Committee’s Paris office, “some 25,000 individual packages were in preparation for shipment to the USSR for Passover” by firms that specialize in sending packages to the Soviet Union.

CONCERN OVER JEWS IN SMALL TOWNS

In Chicago, the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry called on Christians and Jews to join in a protest against the Soviet decree. A statement issued by Sister Margaret Traxler, Prof. Andre Lacocque and Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, co-chairpersons of the Task Force, expressed “dismay” that the Soviet authorities had reversed their earlier decision.

“While we were encouraged to hear that the Soviet government will allow the baking of matzoh in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, we are concerned that Jews in small towns and outlying areas will not have sufficient supplies for the eight days of Passover,” they said. The SCA also noted that Jews in small towns and villages in the Soviet Union depend on matzoh packages shipped from the U.S. and Western Europe.

BRITISH JEWS RAP BAN

In London, the office of British Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobowitz described the ban as “a grave violation of basic religious rights.” A spokesman said, however, that there should be no shortage of locally produced matzohs in Moscow. Leningrad. Kiev and Georgia. But he had no information about the supply in Odessa. Kharkov. Kishinev. Minsk and many smaller Jewish population centers.

Anglo-Jewish leaders, meanwhile, have asked the government to intercede with Soviet authorities to lift the matzoh ban. They noted that parcels of matzohs were to have been sent to smaller Jewish communities on the strength of an agreement by Soviet authorities to permit the import of matzohs when Jakobowitz visited Moscow last year.