(HAGADAH)

World Union of Jewish Students

London

n.d. (1970s)

Russian-language Hagadah printed for the Jews of Soviet Russia. * With: Typed Letter Signed by W[inston] S. Churchill to “Refusenik” Sacha Roitburd on stationery of The House of Commons. Dated 3 August 1976, complete with envelope embossed House of Commons

Intended to spark Jewish pride behind the Iron Curtain. Besides tidbits of traditional rabbinic commentary and Midrash, this distinctive Hagadah includes Jewish nationalist or Zionist poetry such as A. Shlonsky’s “Shir ha-Partizanim ha-Yehudim” [Song of the Jewish Partisans] (p. 74) and Meir Gertner’s “Ha-Teliyot be-Baghdad” [The Hangings in Baghdad] (p. 29), as well as quotations from Theodor Herzl (p. 47) and Moses Hess (p. 63). The copyright is in the name of Harris Schuldenfrei, a resident of G olders Green, London. Winston S. Churchill (b. 1940), grandson and namesake of Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, was elected to the British Parliament in 1970. In his personal letter to Sacha Roitburd, Moscow, Churchill expresses the “hope that in the context of the Helsinki Agreement of 1975 the Soviet authorities will release your father and allow you all to go to the country of your choosing.”