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chap t eR el ev en Financing Religious Activities The broad literature published in the West on religion in the USSR, and even publications on the subject in the former USSR, scarcely addresses the sources of funding for religious activities. This seems to be due to the paucity of direct documentation on the subject: even the SRA representatives had little trust in the records of income and expenditure that, by the 1929 regulations on religious affairs, all religious associations were required to maintain, including congregations.1 Yet on the assumption that donations to a congregation (synagogue) also represent some sort of expression of identity, this chapter is aimed at investigating the subject to the extent possible. Revenue sources In discussing revenue sources for congregations, we must divide the years under discussion into two periods: 1945–1954 and 1955–1964. During the first period the congregations did not, to the best of our knowledge, receive material support from abroad, except for isolated congregations that had packages sent to them; this is the period to which most of this discussion will be devoted. By contrast, during the second period many tourists came to the USSR and the Jews who did so regularly visited synagogues and donated their own money or funds transmitted by others. These donations for the most part benefited congregations in the large cities that were open to foreign tourism, while the burden of supporting congregations in small and midsize towns fell entirely upon the local Jews. When the campaign against religion expanded in the late 1950s, the authorities sought to reduce these sources of income as much as possible. One effort involved tourists’ cash donations in foreign currency. In such cases, for instance, the Ukraine SRA representative directed all the congregations in the republic to transfer such cash to the Soviet representative who would deposit it in the bank in a state account.2 The 1918 law of separation of church and state dictated that all religious activity had to be funded through private donations and not by public or government bodies or property incomes. This restriction was very significant for the churches but marginal for Jewish religious activity, which even before the 141 Financing Religious Activities Revolution had been based largely on donations. Such donations came first of all from the wealthy, who bore most of the financial burden of the congregation . Yet this class was destroyed in the Revolution, and even the small shop owners who in the 1920s could afford to donate significant sums disappeared in the 1930s when private commerce was eliminated. We thus cannot speak of a Jewish middle class in the post–World War Two USSR that was capable of covering the main expenses of the congregations; financing came mostly from the small contributions of many Jews. Fundraising in the period under discussion was done in seven primary ways, the first of which was collections from synagogue attendees. A law of April 1929, valid also in subsequent years, stated: Members of religious associations are allowed to raise funds among themselves [proizvodit' skladchiny] and to collect voluntary donations in the prayer house and outside it only from members of the religious association and only for the purpose of maintaining the house of prayer, maintaining the ritual property and paying the salary of the religious service providers and the executive board [of the religious association]. It thus follows that funds could be raised outside the prayer house walls only from members of the religious association, which is to say, from the “twenty” who signed the agreement to maintain the prayer house or those who signed the request to register the congregation or open a synagogue. These people were usually elderly—pensioners with very small incomes—many of whom needed material assistance themselves, and whose ability to financially support the activities of the congregation was quite limited. It was permissible to collect donations for the congregation from those attending the synagogue on a daily basis, and perhaps those who attended only on the Sabbath also contributed. But weekday attendees numbered a few dozen at most, and their ability to contribute to the congregation was limited. In this respect they were not substantially different from the synagogue activists. Fundraising outside the prayer house from those not considered “members of a religious association ” was allowed under certain conditions, as specified in the October 1, 1929, directives of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) of RSFSR (which applied in effect to the entire USSR): Collection of voluntary...

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