Last year it rained in Moscow on Simchat Torah. Nevertheless, thousands of young Jews and Jewesses were not deterred; they came and they sang and they danced for hours. We who have come this evening are determined to do no less. We shall not let the rain dampen our spirit, even if it drenches the flesh. I think you will agree with a bargain I am willing to strike with the Almighty: keep open the floodgates of Heaven and let it pour tonight – provided you also open wide the doors of Russia and let our fellow Jews stream out in their hundreds of thousands. Indeed that is precisely why aroused representatives of New York Jewry are here assembled under the auspices of the New York Conference on Soviet Jewry and its 34 constituent organizations. The adult organizations, together with the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and other concerned youth groups, express their solidarity with Russian Jewry, and especially its reawakened youth. We are here to express three central themes: sorrow, solidarity, and protest. Unfortunately, there is much to be sorrowful about. Fifty years of Russian repression have taken their toll of this once magnificent, creative Jewish community of three million souls. Now, we do not want to indulge in exaggerations. Unlike the Soviet representatives who, in this complex of buildings of the United Nations, cheapen the coin of international rhetoric, debase civilized discourse, and desecrate the martyrdom of Hitler’s victims by comparing Israel’s so-called “atrocities” to the barbarous crimes of the Nazis, we shall not turn the tables and be guilty of the same vulgar extravagance. We acknowledge openly: Soviet repression of Judaism is not identical with or in any manner as severe as the Nazi oppression of Jews. What is the difference between them, between Nazi persecution and Russian repression? It is the difference between fire and ice, between burning and freezing. The Nazis burned Jews. Six million Jews were consumed in the flames of hatred, in …

Rabbi Lamm, Mr. Riseman, Senator Goldin, Theodore Bikel, Ladies and Gentlemen: Tonight should be a time of celebration – for the Jewish community of New York, and of the world. Yet we meet tonight in sorrow – and we meet in anger, too.Tonight we should be gathering to mark our rejoicing over the Laws of God, enriched by the work of man. Yet we gather here to speak out – to speak against a continuing, unjustifiable insidious desecration of one of the supreme laws of the spirit – the right to worship our God by the dictates of our conscience.Tonight, even as we meet, thousands of Jews will gather in the streets of Moscow -- to worship, to sing, to express their own sense of joy. We gather in freedom - they do not. For the Soviet Union has made clear that it does not intend to permit its Jewish community to nurture its traditions and to survive. And thus these brave men and women celebrate their faith at great risk. We are here tonight to let them know that we stand with them in the streets of Moscow -- and we stand with them in their struggle to remain free in spirit.We know the burden they bear. Their cultural heritage is threatened by official sanction and hidden intimidation -- they are effectively forbidden to develop schools, federations, journals, the whole range of tools for the preservation of a rich cultural heritage -- a heritage which lives and thrives today in every part of this city and this country. We know, too, that by heavy-handed persecution of Jewish writers and thinkers, the Soviet State has raised an unmistakable warning - a warning which says that to remain a free Jew in Russia is to put your career and your freedom in jeopardy.The courage of the Soviet Union’s Jewish community, in the face of this threat of cultural genocide, is inspiring. They have raised their voices in protest; they have publicly asked for their rights; and tonight, in celebration of the Law of God and man, they will in effect be saying "no" to the threat of state-sanctione…