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From: martillo@mit-athena.UUCP (Joaquim Martillo)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Soviet Gems
Message-ID: <68@mit-athena.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Feb-85 10:03:27 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-athe.68
Posted: Wed Feb 20 10:03:27 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Feb-85 07:13:57 EST
Organization: MIT Project Athena
Lines: 29

From the New Republic, 18/2/85:

P 13.

Hebrew is "officially" taught  only  to  Russian  Orthodox  priests  and
government "Jewish experts...."

Comment:   A  few  months  ago  Mike  Cherepov  disagreed with me when I
claimed legally studying  Hebrew  in  the  Soviet  Union  was  basically
impossible.   Of  course  he  would  never have tried and therefor would
never have run into the obstacles which the Soviet government  has  made
for such study.

P 14.

The  Soviet  government  now openly disregards the formal distinction it
once insisted upon  between  "anti-Semitism"  and  "anti-Zionism."   The
result  is anti-Jewish propaganda as apoisonous as that put out by Libya
or Iraq, or, for that matter, by *Hitler*.  The official youth newspaper
Komsomolskaya  Pravda,  for  example,  declared  in  March 1983 that the
meaning of Zionism is "to turn every Jew, no matter where he lives, into
an agent of the Jewish oligarchy, into a traitor to the country where he
was born."  A few weeks later,  the  Leningrad  party  daily  Leninskaya
Pravda  described  Israel as a "money-grubbers' paradise" and concluded:
"Let us be frank.  The appeal to Hebrew ... is far from cultural, but is
strictly political .... How does Zionism extend its tentacles? ... First
of all, with the aid of religion, and Hebrew."

Yehoyaqim Martillo 'A`jemi