Start of B’nai B’rith Branch Seen Impossible ‘Even a Year Ago’ : 1st Soviet Chapter of Jewish Organization Gets Charter

At a meeting that would have been prohibited as “anti-Soviet” a few years ago, 50 Jews gathered here Tuesday evening to receive their charter as the first chapter in the Soviet Union of B’nai B’rith, the international Jewish organization.

“Much has changed for Jews in the last two years, and much has not,” said Alexander S. Shmukler, one of the organizers of the Moscow chapter. “With the help of B’nai B’rith, we frankly hope to be able to change more.”

Horace A. Stern, a senior vice president of B’nai B’rith International, promised the organization’s help in deepening the sense of Jewish culture, in combatting anti-Semitism and in assisting the emigration of Jews.

‘Tremendously Exciting’

“To be here, presenting a charter to the first B’nai B’rith chapter in Moscow, is a tremendously exciting and significant moment for Soviet Jews as well as for B’nai B’rith,” Stern said. “Even a year ago, it would have been impossible, and I think that means a year from now other things, even more important things, will be possible.”

Although long vilified by Moscow as a key part of the “international Zionist conspiracy,” B’nai B’rith sent a delegation led by its president, Seymour Reich, to Moscow in December for preliminary discussions with Soviet officials. It received permission for a second delegation this month and is planning a follow-up visit in the spring.

“We are looking toward the establishment of a whole range of activities, contacts and exchanges, including the opening of a B’nai B’rith International office in Moscow,” said Daniel S. Mariaschin, the organization’s public affairs director. “The window is opening here. We are not sure how wide, but we want to find out.”

The establishment of the B’nai B’rith chapter follows the opening this month of the first Jewish cultural center in the Soviet Union in more than 50 years, as well as formation of more than 10 Jewish cultural groups in other cities.

Today, the first center for Jewish religious studies in more than half a century will open in Moscow as part of an international cultural institute established by the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Most of the students are expected to study for the rabbinate under Israeli, American and other teachers.

“We hope that our B’nai B’rith chapter will draw together all Jews--those who are planning to emigrate, those who have been refused (permission to leave), those who intend to stay and those who are uncertain,” Shmukler said. “What is important is a sense of identity as Jews as well as an opportunity to deepen our understanding of Jewish culture. . . .

“Attention has been focused for a long time on those who are emigrating, and more than half a million have left in the past 15 or 20 years, but well over a million Jews remain, and intend to remain, in the Soviet Union. What of them? To stay, they will need a stable situation, one where they are free to live their lives fully as Jews if they wish, and one where there is none of the past anti-Semitism.”

Through the provision of Jewish literature, tours by Jewish speakers and assistance in organizing seminars and other programs on Jewish themes, the international B’nai B’rith expects to help the new Moscow chapter, Mariaschin said. Help will also be offered to Jewish communities in outlying cities to establish their own B’nai B’rith chapters, he added.

New Opportunities

The Moscow chapter hopes to draw on the long experience of B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League in fighting anti-Semitism.

“We may have new opportunities under perestroika and glasnost (political reform and openness), but so do some strongly anti-Semitic organizations,” Shmukler said. “The mood is such, in fact, that we cannot speak too loudly about this new B’nai B’rith chapter--or we might find ourselves literally under attack. So, many things have changed, and others definitely have not.”