A true follower of the Jewish faith, like those of other religions, cannot embrace communism. Marxism-Leninism is irrevocably opposed to all religious beliefs and all forms of worship, whether they be Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or Moslem. One of Lenin’s basic teachings is, “We must combat religion—this is the A.B.C. of _all_ materialism, and consequently of Marxism.... The Marxist must be a materialist, i.e., an enemy of religion....” In theory and practice the communists make no distinction among any of the world’s greater religions, as the leading Soviet crusader against religion, E. Yaroslavsky, makes clear: ... the priests of every cult have their own way of deluding the masses: the Jewish rabbi, the Roman Catholic priest, the Russian Orthodox priest, the Mohammedan mullah, the Evangelist, Baptist and other ministers of religion, each has his own way of fooling the people.... As to differences between one religion and another, they are of little, if any, consequence.... If there was ever any doubt that the communists were even lukewarm toward the Jewish faith, it was resolved by Yaroslavsky, onetime head of the League of Militant Atheists in the Soviet Union, who said: The Jewish synagogues were not granted any privileges whatsoever by the Russian state, but they were fully supported by the Jewish bourgeoisie. The Jewish rabbinate, like its sister priestcrafts, drew close to the side of the rich because the Jewish church had also incorporated in its _credo_ the justification of the existence of exploiting classes in society.... Karl Marx described Judaism as “anti-social” and an expression of Jewish “egoism.” Marx, better than any other communist leader, illustrates the gulf between Jewish tradition and communism. He could not be loyal to both, so in accepting the communist ideal, he was not content to reject Jewish tradition; he had to malign it and seek to destroy it with such bitterness as: “Money is the jealous God of Israel, by the side of which no other god may exist.... Exchange is the Jew’s real God.” The unrestrained emotional outbursts of Hitler against the Jews were reminiscent of the Marxian tirades against Judaism. The Marxian denunciation of Judaism is not limited to invective. From the earliest days when communism came to power in the Soviet Union, communists have conducted a systematic campaign to cripple and destroy organized Judaism. On January 23, 1918, the Soviets issued a sweeping decree “On the Separation of the Church from the State, and of the School from the Church.” All church property was nationalized; churches were denied rights of legal recourse; the teaching of religion was banned in public and private schools; the right of people to attend religious services on workdays was revoked; and records of births, marriages, and deaths were taken from the churches and put under the exclusive control of civil authorities.