Hundreds of women in the New York metropolitan area are adopting Soviet “pen pals.” Through Hadassah chapters, the names of Soviet Jews who have expressed a strong desire to correspond with coreligionists in the United States have been given to the American women, who will write in English, Russian, Yiddish or Hebrew.
The letter-writing effort is a joint project with the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry, which provided the names and addresses from the Soviet Union. “Russian Jews are eager for contacts with the outside world.” Sylvia Eisen, the Hadassah liaison of the project, said. “The letters will be a-political. We have no intention of embarrassing the recipients.”
Bernice S. Tannenbaum, president of Hadassah, said that the organization will follow this effort, known as “Project Yachad” (Together) with great interest, “If there is a genuine thaw and correspondence flows freely.” she predicted that Hadassah women all over the United States will want to take pen in hand. “If the project is stymied,” Mrs. Tannenbaum said, “we shall call on the Carter Administration to take another look at the Helsinki accords, so the issue can be dealt with at the follow-up meeting in Belgrade this summer.”
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.
