For the second successive day, Jews conducted a prayer meeting near Convention Hall here today, calling the attention of delegates attending the Democratic national convention to the plight of Soviet Jewry, suffering anti-Semitic discriminations at the hands of USSR authorities.
The first of the special “Services for Russian Jewry” was held on the Boardwalk at dusk yesterday, and the second was conducted this afternoon. Both services included a call to the world to pray “for the oppressed of all faiths, and appeals to the “conscience of the world” to seek abolition of anti-Jewish policies by the Soviet authorities. The prayer services were opened with the sounding of the shofar, and included recitation by rabbis, joined by the other participants, of the El Mole Rahmim, the traditional prayer for the dead.
The services were sponsored by the New York Board of Rabbis, the American League for Russian Jewry, rabbis from Atlantic County, which embraces Atlantic City, and the Students Struggle for Soviet Jewry. Members of the latter group also staged a demonstration in the lobby of the hotel where the New York delegation has its headquarters. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who is staying at that hotel, greeted the demonstrators warmly, and assured them that he “deeply” deplores the persecution of Russian Jewry.
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.
