Soviet Jewry

As most students prepare for midterms, Jeffrey R. Mendelsohn '84, chairman of the Harvard Hillel Coordinating Council, is packing his bags for Jerusalem.

Mendelsohn will participate in the three day long World Conference on Soviet Jewry, which will work to improve the status of Soviet Jews and loosen tight emigration laws. The conference begins on March 15, the sixth anniversary of the arrest of Soviet dissident Anatole Scharansky.

Mendelsohn--the only delegate from Harvard--will join approximately 40 other American high-school and college students at the conference. Several hundred representatives of Jewish organizations and students groups from around the world will attend. Mendelsohn said in an interview this week.

The conference, the third called by the World Council on Soviet Jewry in the past 12 years, will address the "degeneration of the conditions of Soviet Jewry," Mendelsohn said.

Only 81 Jews were allowed to leave the Soviet Union in January while tens of thousands of citizens--called "refusniks"--were denied visas.

Mendelsohn explained that Jewish organizations are developing several projects which will focus on the plight of the refusniks. In one of the programs being considered, college campuses will "adopt" a college-age refusnik, admitting him or her to the college "in absentia" and establishing contact by writing letters and cards.

"I'm not sure this will accomplish anything other than awareness," David Shein, a high-school junior from New Jersey representing the Frisch School in Teaneck, said this week.

But David M. Morris '84, former associate chairman of the Hillel Coordinating Council, disagreed, saying. "This is a morale booster because it shows that people all over the world care, in addition to being a great way to come up with ideas."