Not Enough Interest Shown in Anti-passover Campaign Yiddish Communist Daily “emess” Complains: Even

There is not enough interest shown this year in the anti-Passover campaign, the Yiddish Communist daily “Emess” here complains in an editorial article to-day. There is too much indifference and passiveness, it says. There is no militant, aggressive anti-religious agitation.

One would have thought, it says, that this year, when we are making such a fierce assault along the whole Socialist front, we would have it accompanied by a raging, tearing campaign also upon the anti-religious front. Unfortunately, that is not the case with the anti-Passover campaign.

Now, with the great new class of Jewish industrial workers, collective farmers and co-operative artisans growing up rapidly, and the women drawn in large masses into productive work, with the Nepmen and the big farmers losing their last hold, with the declassed and dejected impoverished Jews lifted up by the beneficent Socialist work, instead of fighting against religion, we are told by all manner of opportunist excuses that the fight against religion no longer matters, because religion has lost its hold on the masses, and we should therefore attend to more important campaigns. So we shall probably content ourselves with a few concerts during Passover, and that will be all. There is no mass campaign, no mobilisation of anti-religious forces. When the “Emess” sent telegrams to the local Yiddish papers all over the country, asking for information about the anti-passover campaign, a number of the papers, the “Emess” of Stalindorf, for instance, replied that they had not started yet. Papers like the “Berditchever Arbeiter” (Worker) had on March 13th. not written a single word about the anti-Passover campaign. It was busy, it seems, with other, more important campaigns, like spring sowing and technical training. We urged that all this should be linked up with the anti-religious campaign by organising atheist migration groups and atheist collective farms, but no attempt has been made to start this new movement.

It is characteristic of the prevailing indifference, the “Emess” says, that the preparations for the first All-Soviet Conference of Jewish anti-religious workers called by the Central Council of the Apikorsim Ferband for Thursday, the 26th. inst., is being left to drift without any real preparations being made for it. The press was to have started a propaganda campaign for the Conference. Nothing has been done; not a word is heard in the local areas about the forthcoming Congress.

Meanwhile, the “Emess” says, the Jewish clericals and the religious nepmen are busy baking matzoth, and doing other Passover business, exploiting the ignorance of the people. The religious Jews abroad have become bolder than ever this year, collecting their 5 kilo parcels of matzoth, to save the Jewish masses who are starving in Soviet Russia. It is a consistent campaign conducted in conjunction with the Bund and the other Jewish “Socialists” to discredit the Soviet regime by trying to make the workers believe that the workers living in the country of the proletarian dictatorship are worse off than they are themselves. This is the result of our neglect of the anti-religious campaign.