C lem of Choosing USSR Chief Rabbi
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Friday, December 17, 1971-37
xpected to Develop Into Dire Consequences
GREEN-8 SiliGRBAN
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NEW YORK (JTA) — R abb I
Arthur Schneier of Park East Syna-
gogue, president of the Appeal of
Conscience Foundation, warned
that any delay in naming a suc-
cessor to the late Chief Rabbi
Yehuda Leib Levin of Moscow"
couldhave 'tire" consequencei
for Russian Jewry. Rabbi &limier
attended funeral services in Mos-
cow on Nov. 21 for Rabbi Levin
who died Nov. 17 at the age of 78.
At a press conference called by
ewish Protection
Group Organized
NEW YORK (JTA) — Plans to
create a "national community se-
curity council," to protect "the
rights" of threatened Jewish com-
munities have evoked- a "remark-
able" response, Rabbi Wolfe Sel-
man, executive vice president of
the Bahbinical Assembly said.
He is one of the organizers of
the new agency, which has elected
as its first president Dr. Seymour
Siegel, a faculty member at the
Jewish Theological Seminary, the
Conservative school.
A "statement of principles" for
the new organization Mailed to
several hundred Jewish" leaders
said that the organizers had be-
come convinced that "efforts must
be expended to preserve neighbor-
hoods and voluntary ethnic and
religious associations." When a
neighborhood faces a threat, "it
stands alone. We intend to form
a network of communities so that
when one locality needs help, it
can call upon the resources of alL"
The statement asserted that
communities "are threatened by
disintegration through careless
social.engineering, lack of con-
sideration for neighborhood as-
sociations, inadequate communal
institutions and the failure to
consult the residents of the com-
munities most directly affected."
Continuing, the statement pro-
claimed that "we feel it therefore
necessary to mobilize all who are
concerned to express their con-
cern through political action and
educational efforts."
Rabbi Selman said that the
"we" in the statement included
himself, Dr. Siegel, and David
Sidorsky, a Columbia University
philosophy professor active in Jew-
ish affairs.
,
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i ihe
Appeal of Conscience Toon-
datioe, Rabbi Schrager said 'that
Moscow's Jewish community "can-
not remain feaderlas for long."
The death of Rabbi Levitt, be said,
meant the cessation of all religious
f one tko n s_ requiring rabbinical
guidance, including marriage and
divorce for the nearly half million
Jews in the Soviet capital.
Rabbi Scheeler said that can-
didates for the UP post in Russian
Jewry
ar
e "spectacularly"
few,
due to the dismantling of Jewish
religious and cultural institutions,
including the closure of the Yes-
hiva rabbinic seminary in 1962.
That, and the advance age of the
few remaining rabbis, contributes
to the grave shortage of Jewish
spiritual leaders in the USSR, he
said.
Rabbi Ekinteler said there are
less than a dozen rabbis in all
of the Seriet Union, most of them
aged. Three are Sephardic 'Wink-
kamim" who speak Hebrew and
Russian but not Yiddish, thus
ruling them out, he said.
Rabbi Lubanov of Leningrad, a
renowned Talmudic scholar, is 91
and gravely ill. Kiev has been
without a rabbi for at least four
years and men such as Rabbi
Schwarzblatt of Odessa and Rabbi
Openstein, of Kubashov would
leave their own communities lead-
erless if given the Moscow post,
Rabbi Schneier observed.
He said the process of selecting
a new chief rabbi was outlined to
him in Moscow by Pyotr V. Mak-
artsev, deputy chairman of the
Council on Religious Affairs. "Since
there is no central organization for
Jews in the Soviet Union, the se-
lection will be made by the 20
members of the governing council
of Moscow Synagogue. The two
smaller congregations in Moscow
have no choice in the selection,"
he said. Although known as Chief
Rabbi, Rabbi Levin was only the
rabbi of Moscow's Choral Syna-
gogue.
Rabbi Schneier said that in dis-
cussing the possibility of a suc-
cessor from outside the Soviet
Union, Makartsev told him that
Within the central cities of the
10 Standard Metropolitan Statisti-
cal Areas (SMSA) in Michigan,
black population increased 39.6 per
cent while the white population de-
clined 17.3 per cent. Eighty-two
per cent of the black population
in Michigan lives in the central
cities.
"the candidate would have to be
a Soviet citizell." Ah -outsider or
someone not in the Soviet orbit
would have no chance, Rabbi
Schneier said. He said the strong-
est possibility was the selection of
a successor from among the four
or five ordained rabbis in the So-
viet Union who are not in the ac-
tive rabbinate for one reason or
another.
According to Rabbi Scheeler,
the Soviet official agreed that it
was in the interests of all con-
cerned to choose a person who
would lend prestige to the office.
1
himself.—Epicurus.
-
STIJ
/NWT;
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I. F. Stone Shuts
His Weekly in DC
WASHINGTON, DC — After 19
years of publishing the famous, or
notorious, I. F. Stone Bi-.Weekly,
the controversial 63-year-old editor
has decided to stop writing his
one-man newsletter.
Stone will not stop writing, how-
ever. He is moving over to the
leftist-leaning New York Review of
Books where he will assume the
role of contributing editor and con-
tinue his crusading at a less hectic
pace.
A perennial pain-in-the-neck of
politicians, bureaucrats and other
Washington, types, Stone is well-
known for his leftist politics. He
was a staunch supporter of the
Arab-Soviet position during and
after the Six Day War.
Most recently, President Nixon's
son-in-law, David Eisenhower, re-
fused to attend his own commence-
ment exercises at Amherst College
because Stone was the speaker.
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