Mazel Tov, Comrade!

As the World Conference on Soviet Jewry got under way in Brussels last week, the testimony presented by five Jews who were recently allowed to leave Russia proved depressing but hardly surprising. The Soviet Union's 3,500,000 Jews, they said, are facing increasing discrimination. Many of them are jailed or placed in insane asylums soon after they apply for visas to emigrate to Israel.

The only major fireworks at the conference were touched off by Rabbi Meir Kahane, leader of the militant Jewish Defense League, who had just been convicted of "obstructing governmental administration" and disorderly conduct for his role in a Manhattan demonstration against Soviet diplomats. Kahane wanted to address the 750 delegates. Anxious to keep the proceedings orderly, the conference leaders refused him permission. Burly Belgian plainclothesmen packed Kahane off and subsequently put him on a London-bound plane. Some of the delegates were outraged. Movie Producer Otto Preminger said the conference, in its treatment of Kahane, was "as contemptible as the Russian Communists or the Nazis." Later, when he had cooled off, Preminger apologized. Playwright Paddy Chayefsky, who also defended the rabbi's right to be heard, dismissed the conference as "a Wednesday night Hadassah meeting."

Evidently Moscow thought the 27-nation parley was more important than that. First the Russians tried to pressure Belgium into canceling it, calling the conference "an anti-Soviet provocation." When that failed, Moscow dispatched six men to Brussels; ostensibly they were well-assimilated Soviet Jews whose mission was to counter any anti-Russian remarks. In a news conference at the Brussels Press Club, the Moscow group contended that there was no official persecution or mistreatment of Jews in the Soviet Union. Later, in an interview with TIME'S Friso Endt, the group's ranking member, Colonel General David Dragunski, raised doubts about his own Jewishness. When Endt asked whether he spoke Yiddish or Hebrew, Dragunski replied that he spoke neither, which is not unusual among Soviet Jews' But he also insisted that there was no difference between the two languages, which is not a mistake that many Jews would make. Then Endt tossed the general a Yiddish phrase that almost any Jew would recognize, even one with no formal training in the tongue. "Mazel tov [Good luck]" said Endt as he left. The general, grinning foolishly, was at a loss for words. Finally he replied simply, "Da."

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