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6 | Public Displays of Jewish Identity: Demonstrations in the Synagogue Square
- Brandeis University Press
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chapteR s iX Public Displays of Jewish Identity deMonst Rat ions in t he synagogUe s Q Ua Re During the “black years” of 1949–1953 the synagogue served as an important center for the public display of Jewish identity. On the Jewish New Year and especially on Yom Kippur, genuine demonstrations were held around many synagogues, a practice virtually unheard of previously in the USSR. One of the government’s goals was to “atomize” the Jewish public—that is, to isolate its component members—and yet in those dark days thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of Jews would assemble in mass demonstrations in front of the synagogues. The authorities seem to have been aware of this role of the synagogue, as may be hinted by the secret memorandum “On the Autumn Festivals of the Jews in 1949” sent to Klement Voroshilov (who headed the USSR’s SRA file, covering religious Jewish affairs) and to Mikhail Suslov (a Communist Party Central Committee secretary and editor of the Pravda newspaper—one of the decisive figures on the “ideological front”). This memorandum stated, among other things: This year a special awakening is noticeable in the activities of the Jewish religious congregations with respect to preparation and organization for the holidays. The activities took place and were supported not so much out of religious motives as from the desire of the nationalist-minded clerics and other persons who play upon the nationalist sentiments of the Jewish population, who were interested in drawing as many Jews as possible to the synagogue irrespective of their religious views. . . . Thus, for example, in the town of Nikolaev, Rabbi Fuks, eighty years old, paid daily visits to the houses of religious and nonreligious Jews to remind them of the approaching holidays and ask them to attend the synagogue to memorialize their relatives who died or were killed [in the days of the Holocaust].1 Indeed, the SRA chairman had to admit: The number . . . of attendees this year [1949] in the synagogues during those days [the New Year and Day of Atonement] was larger than last year. At the memorial 82 From Leniency to Oppression for the dead on October 3 at the main synagogue in Moscow, no fewer than 10,000 people came. The synagogue was packed full and in addition, religious people crowded into part of the Spasko-Galishchenskii Lane next to the synagogue, and as a result interfered with pedestrian and bus traffic. . . . [I]n Kiev . . . on Yom Kippur, not only was the synagogue full of religious Jews, but also the yard and part of the adjacent street. . . . [T]he number present at the synagogue that day is estimated at 8,000–10,000, two or two and a half times more than in the previous year. There was also a similar significant increase in the number of worshipers in those days in the synagogues of Leningrad, Odessa, Kishinev, Riga and Tbilisi.2 The increase in attendance at the synagogues of religious Jews this year was seen not only at the synagogues mentioned above . . . but also in the much smaller synagogues such as those of Tashkent, Prunze, L'vov, Chernovtsy, Zhitomir, Berdichev and other cities. . . . [In Irkutsk] more than a thousand people attended at the time of prayer. . . . [A]t the back of the synagogue one could see people whom you meet during work hours in Soviet offices: in the courts, in the prosecutors’ offices, in shops, offices and the like. . . . [M]ost of the attendees of the synagogues were elderly and middle aged, but young people also attended, and in certain synagogues the number of young people grew significantly from last year. This phenomenon is particularly noticeable in the synagogues of Moscow and Leningrad. . . . [I]n certain synagogues, especially in that of Leningrad, the presence of Navy persons was felt . . . and MVD [security services] personnel. In certain synagogues, members of the Communist Party and the Komsomol attended.3 Describing the atmosphere of the Odessa synagogue during the High Holidays of 1949, the Ukraine SRA representative noted that those assembled held lively discussions about the necessity of unity with the state of Israel, with one attendee openly declaring: “I am not religious but I am a Jew and I cannot fail to appear [at the synagogue for] the Jewish holidays.”4 The SRA representative of the Poltava district therefore pointed out: [The] Jewish congregation [of the city] numbers sixty individuals, mostly pensioners and very elderly people. How therefore to explain . . . the number of visitors in...