Word: riga
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ELIEZER HALFIN, 24, was a wrestler who emigrated from Russia four years ago. A Tel Aviv garage mechanic when he was not practicing wrestling, Halfin, a bachelor, was the only son of a Latvian father who had lost his first wife and children in a Riga ghetto during World...
...Soviet ambassador back to Tel Aviv.*The government, Eban said last week, is "ready for any proposal and willing to have these relations take any form the Russians suggest." Israel has been sending out other signals to indicate its receptiveness. The conviction of Soviet Jews in Leningrad and Riga on skyjacking charges brought vigorous protests from Israel; the trial of nine other Jews at Kishinev last week on similar charges was met with official silence. "We've been castrated and we do not know why," said one Israeli official who had been orchestrating the anti-Russian propaganda protests...
...immediately after the would-be skyjackers were picked up at Leningrad's Smolny airport. If other Soviet citizens had similarly supported another country, very probably the same would have happened. An unknown number were released after months in prison. But five are scheduled to be tried soon in Riga, another nine in Kishinev, and one in Odessa. The trials, however, are apparently not having the effect that the Kremlin intended. After the sentences were announced last week, a dozen or so Jews in Leningrad and several other cities marched around the main streets in protest...
Other immigrants are at first disenchanted by life around them. "They envision the Israeli soldier as a superman," says Yaacov Yannai, a Sovietologist born in Riga, "and they are terribly disturbed when they see that some soldiers are undisciplined and sloppy. Dirt in the street bothers them as does the brusque, discourteous manner of some of our people. Their puritanism is dealt a blow when they go to a Tel Aviv movie and see naked women on the screen." Many complain about the relatively high price of tickets for operas, concerts and plays (rarely more than $3 for first-rate...
...accomplish only so much. The problem is that Soviet Jews can do even less-unless they are willing to take grave risks. That point was dramatically illustrated last week when Amsterdam's daily De Telcgraaf arranged to telephone, in a still undisclosed manner, a Jewish family in Riga. Realizing that the KGB might well be recording the call, the paper's reporter asked: "Aren't you afraid they are going to use all this against you?" Said a woman at the other end: "They have given us so much misery we are not afraid any more." When...