“Judaism is alive in Rumania” and is “capable of reproduction”, an American rabbi who visited the Soviet Union and three other Communist states in Eastern Europe said today in an article in the New York Journal American. The rabbi, Samuel Adelman, contrasted religious freedom and a rich religious life in Rumania with the barrenness of Judaism in the USSR.
Rabbi Adelman reported that his party of Orthodox rabbis found 48 synagogues serving Bucharest’s 90,000 Jews, and that they found a rabbinical seminary in Arad. “Every city has at least one Talmud Torah and Bucharest has three,” he wrote. He added that the government helped promote religious education and that a surprisingly large number of Jewish children attend yeshivas.
“The Kosher butcher shops, the prayer shawl factory, the Kosher wine, the Matzo bakery, the ritualariums, the Rabbis, the Cantors, the Shoctim (ritual slaughters), the Yiddish theaters in Jassy and Bucharest, the Jewish library in the capital city all gave concrete evidence that Judaism is alive in Romania. And that it was still capable of reproduction”, Rabbi Adelman said.
In Czechoslovakia, Rabbi Adelman wrote, “we were depressed by an almost complete absence of religious education except for one hour a week of instruction modeled after the release-time program in New York schools. It seemed to us that the Jewish religious museums and relics of the past we found in Prague were symbolic of a Jewish community whose glorious history held little promise for the future.”
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.
