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With the liquidation of the Zionist Movement and the dissolution of the Jewish Democratic Committee, the religious communities (kehillot) were the only organized bodies left in Rumanian Jewry. The legal foundations for their activities were laid down even before other Jewish frameworks were destroyed. In 1945 the "Regulations on Nationalities" were passed and declared the formal equality of members of all national minority groups before the law. Regulations of the activities of the recognized religions, including Judaism, were set down in the Aug. 4, 1948 order of the presidium of the Grand National Assembly (which also served as the presidency of the state). The regulations of the Federation of Communities of the Mosaic Religion, which were approved by the Assembly's presidium on June 1, 1949, were based upon this order. The Federation's scope of activity was limited to the area of religious worship alone. In the first years of the Communist regime and its complete dependence upon Moscow, Jewish Communists infiltrated into the Federation, but afterward their participation in Jewish religious bodies decreased, although it did not cease altogether. The Federation of Communities was responsible for maintaining synagogues and cemeteries and supplying religious objects, unleavened bread for Passover, kosher food, and the like. It was not authorized to deal in matters of Jewish education, however, although it did have the right (according to a decision of the department of religions on Nov. 13, 1948) to set up seminaries for training rabbis, and for a few years it maintained a yeshivah in Arad (Transylvania). According to the registration of 1960, there were 153 communities throughout Rumania that maintained 841 synagogues and battei midrash (56 of which were no longer in use), 67 ritual baths, 86 slaughterhouses, and one factory for unleavened bread (in Cluj). From 1956 the Federation also published a tri-language biweekly (in Rumanian, Yiddish, and Hebrew) entitled Revista Cultului Mozaic Din R.P.R. ("Journal of (Rumanian) Religious Jewry"). From 1964 the chief rabbi officiated as the chairman of the Federation and was also a member of the National Assembly. Thus the Federation became the general Jewish representative in the country.
Source:
[N.Kr.]
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* History: Romania
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