The Jews of Russia were described today as living “in a spiritual prison and in a cultural wilderness” by an American rabbi who recently returned from a visit to European Jewish communities.
Rabbi Joseph S. Shubow, administrative vice-president of the Zionist Organization of America, also reported that most Jews of Bulgaria had left for Israel, and that there were only 20, 000 Jews left in Poland of a pre-Hitler population of 3, 500, 000. Jews. The rabbi is the spiritual leader of Temple Bnai Moshe here.
Rabbi Shubow said that the religious life he found among the Jews of Kiev and Moscow “touches only a tiny minority of the older generation. The youth are virtually lost because of the repressive measures exercised by the Communist regime.” Adding that there was still “a faint flickering of cultural life,” the rabbi said that “the religious zeal of the few devotees can be beheld only with wonderment and admiration.”
“The Jews of Kiev are much more frightened than the Jews in Moscow,” he reported. “The younger generation knows little or nothing of Jewish religious cultural life and values, and seems to be rapidly assimilating.”
He said that in Warsaw, which once had 400, 000 Jews, there were no more than 3, 000 to 3,500 Jews left. Because they work hard, he reported, “it is most difficult to find a minyan excepting on the Sabbath and holidays.”
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.
