US Senate holds hearing regarding return of Jewish texts seized by Communist Russia

A group of rabbis and human rights advocates has urged the US government to step up efforts to help reclaim a collection of religious texts held for two decades by the Russian government. At a hearing of the US Helsinki Commission, rabbis affiliated with the Jewish Orthodox Chabad Lubavitch movement said Russia's refusal to return the works despite years of negotiations violated international law and deprived them of part of their cultural heritage. Senator Sam Brownback, chairman of the Helsinki Commission, held the hearing to call greater attention to the Chabad community's attempts to retrieve the texts. Most of the texts were seized over 80 years ago from Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson as part of a Soviet crackdown on religion after the Russian revolution. The hearing is the latest chapter in Chabad's 20-year effort to reclaim the collection. Last month, all 100 US senators signed a letter urging the Russian government to return the works to Chabad. Russian officials have been reluctant to return the collection, fearing it would lead to claims by others whose assets were confiscated by the Soviet state and ended up in state-run cultural institutions.