Judaism: Pains of Prayer in Russia

The Kremlin has made it hard enough for Jews to worship together in the Soviet Union, but it seems that an equal obstacle is the reluctance of Russia's Jews themselves to press their faith openly in the atmosphere of an atheistic, totalitarian society. Their hesitance is wryly described in an article in the current U.S. Jewish monthly, Midstream. Written by an anonymous Hebrew living in Russia, the story is an account of an attempt by a retired bookkeeper, whose name is given as Yitzchok Kalman, to form a synagogue in an unidentified Ukrainian city.

Kalman explains that though under Jewish law...

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