Religion: Russia Flayed

Perspiring in a convention room of Detroit’s Hotel Statler last week sat several hundred delegates to the 32nd annual conference of the Zionist Organization of America. But chilling was the picture they beheld with their minds’ eye. They saw steely, Atheist Russia, land of Communism, attacking and destroying what they held dearest: the great Zionist movement which has already given Jews a city of their own, Tel Aviv, close to historic Jaffa. They heard about Jews in Russia who had turned against Jew, striving to abolish from Russia all traces of Judaism. Cleveland’s Rabbi Barnett Robert Brickner, fresh from a trip abroad, told his listeners that leading officials had told him it is “the ambition of the Yevseksia [Jewish branch of the Communist party] that the Jewish people in that country shall be assimilated first and that their identity as jews shall be lost. The present policy in Russia is a very deliberate one and is intended not merely to destroy every vestige of Jewishness in Russian Jewish life but also to destroy the most self-conscious element of Russian Jewry—the Zionists. . . . These are the days for protest and condemnation.”

Abraham Goldberg of the Bronx, N. Y., added that the blame was not only Yevseksia’s since if the Soviet Government did not approve of the persecution nobody would dare persecute. A resolution of ”protest and condemnation” was sent to President Hoover and Senator Borah of the Foreign Relations committee.

Other business of the convention: Judge William M. Lewis, Chairman of the United Palestine Appeal announced that $339,617 had been raised for reconstruction work in Palestine. Manhattan’s Louis Lipsky was elected president of the organization. A motion to raise the dues from $6 to $8 was voted down.

When first the Russian Communists started to undermine the power of the Russian Orthodox Church they welcomed into their country Baptists, Methodists, helped thereby to create factions in the Orthodox Church and weaken it. In time however, the Baptists grew so strong that not only was Russian Orthodoxy threatened but also Russian Atheism. The Soviet Government, therefore, has lately passed several laws intended to weaken Baptist activities (TIME, April 22). Last week, Russian Baptists, still strong, conducted a mass and total Baptism in the Moscow River. Horrified the Soviet Working Moscow editorialized: “Right here in Moscow! With the All Union Atheist Convention just ended and the delegates not yet back home— with the Soviet Congress not a month ago having passed a resolution limiting religious propaganda—and what do we see? An incredible proceeding—a mass Baptism by a religious cult in the Moscow River— in the heart of the proletarian section of the city—under the very walls of the Triangle Brewery!! [Such things are] incredible! . . . Inexplicable! . . . Intolerable!!”