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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Former Soviet Jewish Dissident Lashes
Out at Graham Religious Freedom Remarks
NEW YORK (JTA) — A
former Jewish dissident
who emigrated from the
Soviet Union five years ago
has criticized the Rev. Billy
Graham for his conduct dur-
ing and following a controv-
ersial trip to the USSR last
week.
The former dissident,
Mark Azbel, confronted
Graham during a panel dis-
cussion last Sunday on
ABC-TV's- "This Week With
''avid Brinkley," following
i interview with the
minister that was televised
by satellite from London.
Azbel's appearance was
> _,33 broadcast from ABC-TV's
studio in Washington, D.C.
Graham, whose trip to the
Soviet Union has been de-
nounced by critics as a
propaganda triumph for the
Soviet government, had
beers invited there tos attend
a Soviet-sponsored world
gathering of religious lead-
ers opposed to nuclear war.
The minister was feted
by Soviet officials and at
Christian churches,
where he preached the
gospel of Jesus. Tradi-
tionally an outspoken
- critic of the Soviet Union,
Graham suggested to the
press in Moscow that
some religious freedoms
are enjoyed in the USSR,
pointing to what he said
were the large numbers
of people who attend
church services there.
In a bitter interchange
with Graham, the former
Soviet dissident challenged
the minister's authority "to
tell what goes on with free-
dom of religion in Russia
. . .
Repeatedly interrupting
attempts by Graham to re-
spond, Azbel attacked the
minister's suggestion that
his meetings with "the
Jewish leadership" in Mos-
cow and with the city's chief
rabbi was anything more
than a sham.
"The Jewish leadership
does not want to talk about
— has nothing to do with
Jews in Moscow or any-
where," he told Graham.
"The chief rabbi in Russia
is not even qualified to be a
rabbi. You don't know that."
Azbel, whose emigra-
tion from the Soviet
Union was permitted
only after a five-year
battle with the
authorities, was a found-
ing member of the Mos-
cow Sunday seminar, es-
tablished for scientists,
')ose positions had been
, joked by the govern-
) ment upon their applica-
tions for emigration
visas, as a way of updat-
ing one another on de-
velopments in their
fields.
Azbel pressed Graham to
acknowledge that his trip to
the USSR did not provide
him with authoritative in-
formation on the state of
religion and religious prac-
tices in the Soviet Union. In
a lengthy statement, Azbel
said:
"Would you mind putting
it straight? You met lead-
--
L
ers. You bring the message
from leaders who are op-
posed to the people, and this
is the only thing you know
of. You do not know the
opinion of the people in Rus-
sia. Have you met 10 com-
mon Jews who pray, 10
common persons who pray?
Have you met people who
are in prison? Do you have
any knowledge but the
knowledge of the official
who approached you? And if
not, can you speak in the
name of the people who are
desperate in Russia without
you undermining their
- plight?
The minister, interrupted
at every pause, insisted that
"there are millions of people
in the Soviet Union that go
to church on Sunday," but
he conceded that "restric-
tions" on religious practice
have been in existence since
the revolution. Referring to
Soviet worshippers affected
by these restrictions,
Graham added, ". . . some-
times they become stronger;
sometimes they become
less."
Currently on . sabbati-
cal leave from Tel Aviv
University, Azbel is a
professor at the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania's
department of physics.
He appeared on Sunday's
television panel together
with Methodist Minister
Edmund Robb, chairman
of the Institute on Reli-
gion, and Democracy. Al-
though Robb's comments
were less emotive than
Azbel's sharp tongue-
lashing, he was no less
critical of Graham's visit
to the Soviet Union.
In his syndicated column
Tuesday, William F. Buck-
ler, Jr., lashed out sharply
at the religious leader. He
stated in part:
"My sadness cannot com-
pare to the awful misery of
millions of Russians. Ale-
xander Solzhenitsyn, read-
ing the accounts of
Graham's pilgrimage, must
feel about as Simon Wie
senthal would have felt if
Rabbi Stephen Wise had
traveled to Germany in
1939 to announce that he
found no real difference in
race relations under
Nazism than at home . . .
"Although one cannot ex-
pect even the pope to travel
to a foreign land and there
to criticize Caesar, it is a
profanation to praise such
Caesars as are engaged in
mounting what the jour-
nalistic Henry Kamm of the
New York Times once de-
scribed as the most sus-
tained assault against the
human spirit in human his-
tory, and to affect ignorance
about the condition of reli-
gious liberty in the Soviet
Union.
"Billy Graham told re-
porters that the churches
he had visited in Moscow
were as crowded as those
in Charlotte, N.C. The
Washington Post's Dusko
Doder revealed that one-
third of the congregation
in the churches Graham
entered comprised KGB
agents and one-third in-
ternational participants
in the disarmament con-
ference (one-third older
women).
"Asked to comment on a
banner protesting the lack
of religious freedom in Rus-
sia a Russian woman had
fleetingly unfurled before
being carried off by the
police, Graham said that,
after all, people are arrested
all over the world "for all
kinds of reasons." In his own
church, he said, some people
"have been taken out by the
police" for "causing distur-
bances." Right. In America,
it is a disturbance to inter-
fere with someone who
preaches the word of God. In
the Soviet Union, it is a dis-
turbance to preach the word
of God.
"Asked whether he
agreed with the assertion of
the metropolitan of the Rus-
sian Orthodox Church that
there is complete religious
freedom in the Soviet
Union, Graham replied that
he just didn't 'know,' he had
been only in Moscow for a
few days, and 'the churches
that are open, of which
there are thousands, seem
to have liberty to have wor-
ship services.'
"Billy Graham made
these statements just one
hour's travel time from
Zagorsk, the spiritual home
of Russia, one of the three
surviving seminaries, re-
duced in number after death
of Joseph Stalin. There in
Zagorsk they anount a
dozen ministers a year — to
serve 250 million Russians.
Rather like eyedropping
holy water into hell.
"Soviet practice outlaws
most religion; the Soviets
ban proselytizing religion
among anyone under 18
years of age; and Soviet
dogma holds religion to be
the opiate of the masses. If
these facts aren't known to
the schoolchildren of Char-
lotte, N.C., then the schools
in Charlotte are stricken by
the same incubus that has
paralyzed the moral intelli-
gence of Billy Graham."
Friday, May 21, 1982 47
Summer Israel Tour for Attorneys
NEW YORK — A two- week of touring and one
week "law tour" to Israel, week of morning seminars
designed especially for °at- at the Hebrew University in
torneys, lawmakers, politi- Jerusalem.
cal scientists and others in-
terested in church-state re-
lations and minority rights,
will be conducted by the
American Jewish Congress
DISCOUNT
in August.
The trip will combine one
20%
On Due Bills
Navon Expresses Concern
Over Plight of World Jewry
TEL AVIV (ZINS) Con-
cern about assimilation and
the dimunition of Jewish
communities throughout
the world was expressed re-
cently by Israel's President
Yitzhak Navon.
At a meeting with
Lubavitcher representa-
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only 23 percent of the world
Jewish population of 12 mil-
lion currently resides in Is-
rael.
The Israeli president
commented on assimilation
and mixed marriages, un-
derscoring the fact that
some 750,000 Jewish chil-
dren in the United States
receive no Jewish education
at all.
The number of mixed
marriages in America has
reached 60 percent, accord-
ing to Navon. "By the year
From
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in Applegate Square
Cali
2000 there will probably be
only eight million Jews in
the world," the president
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