IMAGE Status of Religious Practice
Status of Religious Practice THUS, AS IN the field of culture. Jews are singled out for differential treatment where religion is concerned. But documentation is more difficult to obtain for...
...But they not only refused all the requests, they then proceeded to break up the private prayer meetings under various pretexts, including the charge that such gatherings were not part of an officially registered religious community...
...Similar systems exist on a nation-wide basis for the other two major denominations, Moslem and Baptist...
...Last year the Jewish community was given permission, for the first time in many years, to print an edition of 3,000 prayer books the only Hebrew book permitted in the Soviet Union which is the equivalent of one for every 500 practicing Jews...
...But, Leningrad was not one of the towns where a ban on matzoh had been reported...
...In Kiev, Kharkov, Kuibyshev, Rostov, Kishinev, Odessa and Lvov, a ban was imposed on the baking of maizoh, the unleavened bread eaten during Passover...
...In Minsk, White Russia, Jewish inscriptions have been effaced from a memorial in the former ghetto, which, with its inhabitants, was destroyed by the Nazis...
...Judaism kills love for the Soviet motherland...
...They are cultivated not only by ministers of religion but by swindlers and crooks, who exploit the ignorance and credulity of the faithful...
...Kozlov very carefully avoided meeting the actual charges...
...In Yevpatoriya, in the Crimea, the authorities confiscated 25,000 rubles raised by the Jewish community to rent a building for a synagogue...
...The matzoh was transported from Beltsy to various towns and sold to believers...
...The building was confiscated...
...This observation obviously had no bearing on the closing of synagogues or the dispersal of private prayer meetings anywhere...
...One of these conditions is the registration of every religious community or organization with the local authorities...
...The campaign reached its height between September 1958 and last July...
...al the very time that some of these reports were reaching this country...
...The July 25 broadcast was more interesting and detailed...
...The Russian Orthodox Church is permitted to maintain a centralized, nation-wide organization of religious congregations, with the Patriarch as its head...
...We did sell these ingredients, and the Jews were free to celebrate the holiday in the traditional way...
...In Korosten, the community had saved enough money to build a synagogue...
...Only the Jews are kept in an organizationally atomized condition...
...The ban on private prayer meetings has come as a real blow to Russian Jews...
...And this does not take into account the sizeable number of these prayer books that were shipped abroad for propaganda purposes...
...Citation of these non-Communist sources, however reputable they are, is a departure from the procedure followed in this special issue up to this point...
...The Russian Orthodox and Baptist churches were permitted to print Bibles last year, and the Moslems brought out a new edition of the Koran...
...The average age of the 60 rabbis serving the Jewish community is well over 70...
...No other religion has been subjected to a like campaign...
...Otherwise, why should a rabbi in a city of almost 200,000 Jews have to make the appeal which Kozlov himself described...
...The same discriminatory pattern prevails for religious publishing facilities...
...Quite apart from the invidious remarks about Judaism and the insinuation of disloyalty on the part of believing Jews, this article begs the obvious question: Why would the "speculators" have endangered themselves by baking matzoh secretly, were there not in fact an official ban on the baking of matzoh...
...Considerable Government aid has gone into the reconstruction of damaged Orthodox churches...
...The synagogue was closed down, and its Holy Scrolls transferred to two small huts on the edge of town where services were thereafter to be conducted...
...described in the broadcast as "a Soviet journalist of Jewish origin...
...Thus, a ban on private prayer meetings is tantamount to a ban on prayer...
...The driver, Boris Spector (34 Chapayeva Street), served this clique...
...There are only some 60 rabbis, many of them improperly ordained, for the Jewish population of three million...
...Last Passover, a number of Jews in Chemavtsy, in the Ukraine, including synagogue officials, were arrested on charges of having participated in "Zionist propaganda...
...Though religious education for children under 18 is prohibited for all faiths, the Russian Orthodox and Baptist children can at least take part in their church services in the language they are taught in the public schools...
...Similar confirmation of a Times report came from an article in the July 23 issue of Sovietskaya Moldavia, published in Kishinev...
...But the Beltsy speculators were not alone...
...Once again, there have been no reports of synagogues being closed in those cities...
...The Jews have been given permission only to produce a photocopy edition of a handwritten calendar...
...Contact between local congregations is made difficult, if not impossible...
...The Baptists, Moslems and Russian Orthodox are free to print and distribute their religious calendars and almanacs...
...But the accuracy of these newspaper accounts is doubly enhanced by the fact that they evoked repeated denials from Soviet sources denials which by their very nature served to confirm the accounts...
...With the increasing closing of synagogues, Jews have taken to gathering in each other's homes for prayers...
...Against this background of discrimination, which itself is in large part based on the suspicion and distrust revealed in the articles cited earlier, the recent campaign against many aspects of Jewish religious practice becomes understandable...
...As a result...
...There are ten Orthodox seminaries for the training of priests, with a total of some 1,000 students...
...Because of the 30-year old ban on the teaching of the Hebrew language, younger Jews and Jewish children are at a further disadvantage, compared to their Russian Orthodox and Baptist counterparts, in participation in religious services...
...But the Jewish children are unable to follow the Hebrew prayers of the synagogue service...
...the happy reference to Kiev was clearly calculated to obscure the issue...
...Communists who are troubled about the Jewish question, like Messrs...
...The synagogue officials were forced to promise they would tell outsiders the synagogue was closed down because it had been used for "non-religious and illegal purposes...
...What is more, before a group can register there must be a synagogue in existence, and this the local officials had themselves refused to authorize...
...There is no federation of Jewish communities and no Chief Rabbi...
...Similarly, the Baptists recently put out an edition of 25,000 hymnals, which is the equivalent of one for every 21 of the faithful...
...Berditchev, Dniepropetrovsk, Kirovograd...
...But documentation is more difficult to obtain for religion than for culture...
...Moreover, the Kozlov statement indirectly confirmed the reports that bans were in effect...
...The Times had reported on June 19 that a number of Kishinev Jews had been arrested for violating a Government decree by baking matzoh in preparation for the Passover holiday...
...It is known, for instance, that the celebration of Passover requires the use of matzoh...
...The Moscow Radio broadcast then continued: "There is, however, another reason why in this or that township there may not be a synagogue Each religious community in the Soviet Union may freely organize its activities...
...Nikolayev...
...Soviet Deputy Premier Frol Kozlov was touring the U.S...
...The fact is, however, that in the cases cited in the newspaper reports the local authorities had repeatedly been requested to grant the Jews the right to open a synagogue (in some instances, it was even a question of returning a sequestered synagogue...
...Two weeks later, a statement signed by Kiev Jews appeared in Izvestia, vouching for the fact that their synagogue was still open...
...There are synagogues in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev...
...it was reprinted in the August 2 issue of the Morten Freiheit, over the signature of one S. Rabinovich...
...The State does not interfere with the internal affairs of the communities...
...Since then, the rabbi has not been permitted to function, and ritual slaughter of cattle and all other Jewish rites have been forbidden...
...A number of Jews, hoping to fill their purses, baked matzoh for sale in their homes, under unsanitary conditions and without prior registration and medical checkup...
...Ten days later, at his final press conference, Kozlov again adverted to this question: "Just recently," he said, "I visited Kiev, and I saw the Jews there leading a happy life in their usual pursuits and bathing in the Dnieper...
...again, Rabinovich was careful not to mention those cities, but only their regions...
...many sequestered churches have been returned to the religious authorities...
...The reported facts can be summarized as follows: The synagogues of Chernovtsky, Bobruisk, Korosten, Baranovich, Rakhov, Novoselitsa, Orenburg, Chernigov, Stalino, Babushkin and other cities were closed down by the security authorities...
...This was based on the fact that at the conclusion of the Passover Feast, Jews traditionally repeat the centuries- old statement, "Next year in Jerusalem...
...It is clear from the evasions, indirect admissions and transparent refutations that a discriminatory policy, including a physical campaign against houses of prayer, cemeteries and religious rites, is being conducted in the Soviet Union against the Jewish religion, based on the assumption that it is hostile to the State...
...Sloves, Waterman, Salsberg, Suller, and the British Party delegation, are secularists themselves and are not particularly interested in religious developments...
...In Baranovich, a memorial erected to 4,000 Jewish victims of the Nazis has been destroyed...
...Such speculators were, for example, the following inhabitants of Beltsy: Rakhnes (33 Melnichaya Street), Peisakh Belenko (35 Pervomaiskaya Street), Isser Taliuk (6 Steppnaya Street), Peisakh Shneider (26 Krasnaya Street), and others...
...Such festivals as Passover, for example . . . give rise to nationalist feelings and poison the minds of Jews by diverting their thoughts to Israel, 'the land of their fathers...
...In Vitebsk, White Russia, all 12 private prayer meetings were closed on May 16, and the Jews were threatened with 10 years in prison if they resumed the meetings...
...Nevertheless, from the information provided by interested parties, such as Western religious figures and journalists who have visited the Soviet Union in recent months and years, it is possible to piece together a coherent picture of the status of Jewish religious life there...
...But no Hebrew Bible has been allowed since 1917...
...The windows have been bricked up and the Star of David removed from the building...
...When I worked there, he approached me and asked that the necessary ingredients for matzoh be put on sale there...
...If, however, the community does not bother to register itself or if it breaks the Soviet law in question, then whether it be of the Jewish or other faith it loses its right to open a house of worship...
...On July 3, in San Francisco, Kozlov said, "These charges are slander...
...The Kozlov pattern of evasion also was followed in two Moscow Radio broadcasts dealing with these questions on July 25 and September 3. The latter broadcast, in the English language, denied religious discrimination against Jews and added that there are synagogues in such cities as Odessa, Kiev and Lvov...
...In the Jewish faith, a service, as well as the hallowed repetition of the memorial for the dead, requires a quorum of 10 men...
...Rabinovich, referring specifically to the Times reports, says that the Ukraine, which was described as one of the centers of attacks on the Jewish religion, actually has many synagoguesin Kiev...
...Kozlov made another inadvertently revealing statement on July 3. Commenting on the reported ban on the baking of matzoh, he said: "I personally know a rabbi in Leningrad...
...The synagogue at Voronezh, which escaped destruction during the war when the city was under heavy attack, has been taken over by the authorities for use as a grain warehouse...
...Comparison with the list of cities in the original report shows that Rabinovich failed to mention any one of them in his "refutation," and that none of the cities he cites had appeared in the Times and Herald Tribune reports...
...The peculiar characteristic of most Jewish holidays is their clear expression of nationalism...
...Three major news stories, in the New York Times of May 21 and June 19, and the New York Herald Tribune of July 26, carried most of the details...
...The rabbi of Chernovtsky traveled to Moscow to intervene with the authorities, but in vain...
...In Kharkov, 20 such groups were dispersed last September during the Jewish New Year services...
...Communist sources on religion are virtually non-existent...
...And they looked no worse than you...
...In Baranovich, in White Russia, the Great Synagogue has been taken over by the State Security Committee...
...The Jewish community has been unable to raise the money required to redeem it...
...A public lavatory has been built in its place...
...Of course, the claim had never been made that there were no synagogues in those three cities...
...Bokhlin, the former chairman of the Bessarabskaya community, and his subordinate did not limit themselves to the unregistered mass production of malzoh...
...When queried about them, Kozlov replied with what was a clear evasion, and his lead was followed by other Soviet sources...
...They thus openly violated Paragraphs 127 and 129 of the MSSR Penal Code...
...Rabinovich also claimed that synagogues are active in "the regions" of Zhitomir, Poltava, Khmelnik, Transcarpathia, Chernigov and Moldavia, but he carefully avoids mentioning the names of the towns in those regions...
...There are also several Moslem seminaries and one Baptist seminary...
...All the Holy Scrolls were confiscated, and a policeman told one of the Jews, "You eat Russian bread, but you pray for Israel...
...Unable to obtain an official permit to build, the Jews proceeded to build it anyway...
...But it was not until 1957 that the Jews were permitted to open a seminary, for the first time since the Revolution, and the number of students is restricted to 20...
...Sovietskaya Moldavia wrote: "Religious rituals contribute significantly to the propagation of religious ideology...
...This means that at the present rate of training, the Jewish seminary will be unable to provide replacements as rapidly as the older rabbis die or retire, further depriving the Jewish communities of necessary religious leaders...
...In Bendery, Baranovich, Minsk, Kishinev, Voronezh and Kiev, Jewish cemeteries were desecrated and memorials defaced...
...on the contrary, there has even been a certain relaxation as far as the Russian Orthodox and the Baptists are concerned...
...But in order to do so, it must fulfill certain conditions...
...Many communities have no synagogues at all and must hold services, when permission is granted, in other locations...
...But not one synagogue has been rebuilt or returned to the Jewish communities since the end of the war...
...they contrived to sell it through the stores of the district and the railway supply union...
...Similarly, a number of sequestered Moslem mosques have been returned...
...Prayer meetings in private apartments, in places that have no synagogues or where the synagogues lack sufficient space, were forcibly dispersed in Kharkov, Olevsk, Tula, Bobruisk, Vitebsk and other places...
...They were told, "Your religion is hostile to the Soviet Government...
...Actually, the central cities of two of the seven regions he named have had their synagogues closed down...
...Vinnitsa, Lvov, Odessa, Kherson...
Vol. 42 • September 1959 • No. 33
