The Jews of Rumania, estimated to number between 170,000 and 180,000, practice their religion with absolute freedom, pursue Jewish cultural activities freely, and are given genuine protection against anti-Semitism by their government, Dr. Moses Rosen, Chief Rabbi of Rumania, reported here today.
Dr. Rosen, son of the late Rabbi Abraham Rosen, is a 49-year-old Rumania-born scholar. He is here for a 10-week series of lectures in higher Jewish studies at Yeshiva University’s Bernard Revel Graduate School.
His very inability to arrive at no more than an educated estimate of the number of Jews in Rumania was cited by Rabbi Rosen as proof of the protection given the Jews in his country now by the Rumanian Government. He explained that no official document whatever is permitted to indicate any citizen’s ethnic origin or religious affiliation. The Jewish population estimate is based, he said, on synagogue attendance, Talmud Torah enrollment, the amount of matzot consumed annually, and the records of Jewish burial and cemetery societies.
“On the official level,” he stated, “I can say categorically that anti-Semitism no longer exists in Rumania. It is well known that, before the end of the Second World War, Rumanian anti-Semitism was directly encouraged and stimulated from above, by the government itself. Now the reverse is true. Of course, decades of officially sponsored anti-Semitism had left traces of this tendency among some of the people. But education on all levels, from elementary schools to the universities, is sponsored by the present government in the direction of bringing the people out of its anti-Semitic past.”
500 SYNAGOGUES FUNCTION IN 100 JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN RUMANIA
Prior to World War II, he said, there were about 800,000 Jews in Rumania. During the war years, about 400,000 Jews were annihilated by Rumanian fascists and German Nazis. The Jews in the country now, he reported, have their own Federation of Jewish Religious Communities. There are about 500 synagogues in about 100 Jewish communities in the country. Bucharest alone has 42 synagogues. In the Great Synagogue of Bucharest, where Dr. Rosen officiates, the attendance at the weekly Sabbath service on Friday nights runs between 800 and 1,000 worshippers, he said.
There are Talmud Torahs in all Jewish communities, he said, 10 of them in Bucharest. Talmud Torah tuition is free. There is a yeshiva at Arad, headed by a well-known scholar, Rabbi Shimon Miller. Not only rabbis but ritual slaughterers are trained there, Dr. Rosen said.
Rumanian Jewry, he stated, is well supplied with all its religious needs, having a sufficient number of prayer shawls, prayer, books, Bibles and other Holy works. Five years ago, he said, the Rumanian Jews received from Switzerland 20,000 prayer books and Bibles. From Israel, the Jews receive every year etrogim, lulavim needed for the Succot holidays. A factory at Klausenberg takes 800,000 pounds of matzot each year. The Government has set aside special vineyards for grapes used for kosher wines. There are special state stores handling only meats that are kosher.
JEWISH TEACHERS RECEIVE GOVT. SALARIES; YIDDISH THEATRES EXIST
Jewish ecclesiastical officials, from rabbis and kosher slaughterers to teachers, receive Government salaries plus subsidies paid from the Jewish religious community’s income, the Chief Rabbi said. Culturally, the Jewish people have their own literature, their own theatres performing in Yiddish. He cited as an example the fact that the drama, “The Diary of Anne Frank,” translated into Yiddish, has now run for 300 performances in Bucharest.
Rabbi Rosen himself edits a monthly religious newspaper, with a circulation of 5,000 copies, printed in Rumanian, Hebrew and Yiddish. News of interest to Jews from all over the world, he pointed out in a copy of his newspaper, is printed in the paper, including items from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Asked whether he had printed any of the recent reports about the arrest and imprisonment of leading Jewish religious leaders in Lenigrad and Moscow, Rabbi Rosen said he had not seen those reports until he arrived here last Sunday.
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.
