How the Anti-passover Campaign is Conducted in the Soviet Countries: the Agenda of the Apikorsim Con

The Central Council of the Federation of Militant Atheists (Apikorsim) has decided to convoke an All-Soviet Conference on Thursday, the 26th. March, in order to consider action to extend the anti-religious work among the Jewish masses, the Jewish Communist daily “Emess” here writes. The principal aims of the conference will be to see how the decisions adopted by the Second Conference of militant atheists are being carried into effect, to find out what is the present position of the militant atheist movement among the Jewish masses and to lay down the lines of work for the future.

The collectivisation of the farms, the letter of instructions sent out by the Central Council to the various branches and districts, says the “Emess” report, the transference of the Jewish poor to agriculture, the organising of Jewish regions, the cooperative movement among the artisans, the growth of the Jewish industrial proletariat, following on the general lines of our Party work, have aroused the determined resistance of the remnants of the capitalist elements, the clericals and the chauvinists. The recent stand taken by the “Christian” clergy against the Soviet Union was given the complete support of the Rabbis abroad. This being so, we are obliged to conduct an extensive religious campaign among the Jewish working masses.

The Conference, it is stated, will consider the following questions: The general tasks of the anti-religious campaign; reports from the Ukraine, White Russia, the Western districts, the Crimea, Leningrad, Moscow, Georgia, Daghestan, and Bokhara. There will be three sections at the Conference, a section on methods, a section on organisation and a section for conducting the work among the Bokharans, Georgians and the Mountain Jews generally. The Conference will be attended by 46 delegates, 12 from Moscow, 8 from the Ukraine, 7 from White Russia, 6 from the Crimea, four from the Western districts, three from Daghestan, two from Leningrad, two from Uzbekestan and one each from Georgia and Bureya.

A systematic movement must be carried on, the “Emess” says, to establish at least one atheist collective in every Jewish region as part of the anti-Passover campaign. The Party and the Young Communist organisations and the regional press in the Jewish regions must assist in the formation of an atheist collective or commune in each of the Jewish regions, to serve as the centre of the anti-religious movement in the region. The atheist collective or commune must be a model of social and economic work, working on general party lines. The atheists are the most conscious, progressive and active workers, devoted heart and soul to the cause of Socialist construction, the Communist Party and the Soviet regime. Religion and the clericals are the agents of the big farmers, seeking to sabotage the Socialist construction work and so when a collective becomes an atheist collective, it shows that all or the majority of the members are atheists, and such a collective is free, there-fore, from this clerical sabotage and is a real model of Socialist work.

The Haggadah, with its exhortation to “pour out thy wrath upon the Goyim” and its talk of all “Jews are brethren” is the weapon of the Jewish exploiters who are trying to enslave the militant elements of the Jewish working class, the “Emess” goes on. The Jewish religion, like all other religions, it says, devotes itself, among its other objects, to the work of implanting nationalism and chauvinism in the name of God. “Pour out thy wrath upon the Goyim” and “all Israel are brethren” are aimed very definitely to enslaving the Jewish workers to Jewish and international capital. The Zionists and the orthodox Jews are the allies of that hangman of the revolutionary working class and the impoverished peasants, the maker of pogroms against the Jews of White Russia and the Ukraine, the Fascist Pilsudski. The Jewish rabbis joined in the crusade against the Soviet Union, together with the inquisitors and pogromists, together with the Pope of Rome, and the Greek Metropolitan, who was with the “Black Hundreds”. The Russian, Polish and Italian worker is held up to the Jewish worker as a “Goy” but the Catholic priest, the Greek priest, and the hangman Pilsudski are allies and brethren of the Rabbis, the Zionists and the Bundists in their common fight against the dictatorship of the Proletariat.

The Passover Festival is one of the ways of reconciling slaves to their slavery, the “Emess” proceeds. The Passover Festival of “liberation” is in reality a festival of spiritual enslavement. The miracle of the exodus from Egypt, and the supposed liberation of the slaves in Egypt, are stories told to the enslaved Jewish masses to make them believe in God’s agents, so that they accept the order of society in which the Father of Heaven has placed His children on earth, and become resigned to the troubles and misfortunes to which they are subjected by their oppressors and do nothing to liberate themselves, leaving that to God’s miracle, since he has ordered the world so and its rulers are His annointed.

We stand for Socialist construction, the “Emess” says, and therefore we are against religion. The Cheder and the Yeshibah are nests for breeding slaves of capital and of the counter-revolution. We shall tear these nests out by the roots. There is no Sabbath day of rest with us, just as there is no Sunday rest for our non-Jewish comrades. That is what we ourselves have decided. We have a five-day working week, because we have thrown off the yoke of capital. We throw off every vestige of matzoth, mikvoth, lighting of the candles and taking Chalah. Our spring festival in 1931 is to sow in Bolshevist fashion the second Bolshevik spring.

The Jewish working masses will not allow themselves, the “Emess” says, to be misled by religion, by the ideology of exploiting classes, who are the allies of the counter-revolution. The complete enmity of the Jewish masses to religion and to every form of compromise with religion must be demonstrated, the “Emess” concludes, by the Jewish masses joining en masse in the ranks of the Militant Atheist Federation, the Apikorsim Ferband.