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It is likely that REK and MERO will break ground in September
2000 for the planned Jewish community
center across the street from the Choral Synagogue. Groundbreaking
was delayed until September in the hope that the new President
of Russia, who will be elected in June 2000, will participate
in the ceremonies.
Rabbi Goldschmidt believes that the future
of European Jewry lies in the large cities. It is likely,
he said, that viable Jewish communities will remain only in Paris,
Antwerp, Berlin, Geneva, London, Moscow, and, possibly, Kyiv.
European Jews will be considered in relation to the cities in
which they live, rather than in terms of the countries in which
they live. He is newly optimistic about the ability of Reform
Judaism to endure; now, he observed, the Reform movement
cares about Jewish survival, whereas their previous priority seemed
to focus on combating antisemitism.
20. Rabbi Berel
Lazar is the chief representative of Chabad
in Russia. The writer met with him at the Marina Roscha synagogue,
a structure that sustained serious damage in a bomb blast in 1998.
The synagogue was repaired shortly after the attack, but the perpetrators
have not been found. Few believe that the case ever will be solved.
Rabbi Lazar began the meeting by taking the writer
to task for alleged distortion of facts in a report about her
1998 visit to Moscow. He disagreed with the writer’s contention
that he, rather than Rabbi Goldschmidt,
had been the major source of tension between Chabad and activities
and groups associated with Rabbi Goldschmidt. He reiterated his
opposition to participating in organizations [such as KEROOR]
or projects in which the Reform
movement also participated. Everyone has the right to hold his
own views, he said. In his opinion, “It is ruining the Jewish
community to bring in Reform here [in Russia].” Reform Judaism,
he said, is “watered-down Judaism.”67
Rabbi Lazar estimates the Jewish
population of Moscow at 500,000 individuals or 130,000
Jewish families. So far, Moscow Chabad lists 21,000 families on
its Moscow Jewish data base.
Chabad sends news about Jewish holidays, full-color Jewish calendars,
menorahs, birthday cards, and yahrzeit messages to these families.
Local Jews realize that Chabad cares about them, said Rabbi Lazar,
and many call Chabad when they need material or spiritual assistance.
Chabad representatives soon will begin a program of visiting each
of the 21,000 families in their own apartments in an effort to
assess individual and community needs. Three hundred young adults
are being trained to conduct these interviews. They will bring
presents to each family.
Twenty-five hundred people attended Rosh
Hashana services in the semi-finished seven-story Chabad
Jewish community center adjacent to the synagogue.68 It is
likely that construction of this center, which has been delayed
due to fundraising problems following the 1998 collapse of the
Russian ruble, will be completed in the spring of 2000.
In addition to the Marina Roscha synagogue and
community center, Chabad operates a number of other institutions
in Moscow. These include: two additional synagogues, two preschools,
a day school, a heder, a yeshiva, a women’s college, a technical
college for young men, and a camp with heated buildings that can
be used throughout the year. Rabbi Lazar said that 750 youngsters,
most of whom are enrolled in no other Jewish programs, attended
one of the summer camp sessions. Chabad hopes to start a weekly
program for these children during the school year. The summer
camp also operated a special 10-day session for youngsters from
Moscow school #1311, also known as the Lipman Jewish day school.69
The camp is used during the school year for shabbatonim, most
of which are designated for specific groups, such as adolescents,
families, or elderly people.
Moscow Chabad also sponsors a student club, a
young adult educational center (offering classes in several subjects,
including English and computer technology), an amateur theater
group, a family club, and activities for single adults. Anti-missionary
work will be intensified soon with the addition to the Chabad
staff of a specialist in this area.
Rabbi Lazar said that Moscow Chabad would like
to purchase a well-equipped three-building sanitarium located
near their camp. It would convert the complex into an assisted
living and nursing care center for
Jewish elderly. Ideally, he continued, children and young
people at the camp would interact with older Jews at the center.
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Many more Moscow Jews are seeking welfare
assistance (from Chabad and other organizations) now than
previously, declared Rabbi Lazar. Inflation is causing major difficulties.
People cannot afford to buy meat or fruit. They are unable to
replace clothing that is old or that their children have outgrown.
Medicine and hospital care are beyond the means of many individuals
and families.
Rabbi Lazar believes that antisemitism
is not a serious problem in Russia. Some extremists create specific
difficulties, but their overall impact is limited. The appeal
of extremist organizations to adolescents reflects the need of
adolescents to belong to something, to feel part of a larger group.
Most adolescents leave extremist organizations as they mature,
said Rabbi Lazar. Notwithstanding the limited influence of extremist
organizations, he would like the Russian government to “crack
down” on their activities. It is not a question of suppressing
freedom, he said, because such freedom exercised by extremists
is “freedom of the jungle,” i.e., inappropriate for
modern society.
Although problems related to the economy are “acute,”
Rabbi Lazar believes that Jewish life in Russia has a “big
future.” There is much potential
for Jewish community development in Russia, he said.
21. The Federation of Jewish Communities
of the C.I.S. (Федерация
еврейсих общин
СНГ), founded as a 501(c)(3) organization
in New York in 1997, is a U.S.-based support organization for
post-Soviet Jewish communities. Technically, it is independent
of specific denominational affiliations; in reality, it is strongly
associated with the Chabad movement and it supports various programs
and projects operating under Chabad auspices. Its Executive Director
is Mendel Goldshmid, who
is based in New York. The writer met with Mr. Goldshmid when he
was in Moscow and subsequently spoke with him by telephone in
the United States. Also attending the Moscow meeting was Rabbi
Dovid Mondshine, Director of Ohr
Avner (see below). Rabbi Mondshine appears to be a de
facto executive of FJC as well.
The mission statement of the FJC is as follows:
The Federation of Jewish Communities of the
CIS is the central organization of the Jewish communities of the
Former Soviet Union. Our mandate is to restore Jewish life, culture,
and religion in the Former Soviet Union. The FJC provides programming
and funding to member Jewish umbrella organizations in these fifteen
countries throughout the Former Soviet Union. These 15 organizations
encompass 300 Jewish communities, all of whom are helped by the
FJC.
The FJC assists the member organizations in
rebuilding Jewish infrastructures, institutions and programs in
their catchment areas. The FJC provides humanitarian assistance
to these organizations for distribution to their communities.
The following is a list of established Funds
run by the FJC on behalf of their member Jewish umbrella organizations:
Camp, Education, Children, Chanukah, Passover Matzah, Humanitarian
Aid, Synagogue and Community Security, Medical Aid, Emergency
Food Relief, Welfare, Religious, Culture, Synagogue Restoration,
JCC Building, Publishing, Holiday, Community Development.
The FJC partners with other international organizations
to maximize programming. The FJC also works with local governments
to restore to the Jewish Communities, Jewish properties confiscated
by the Communists and Nazis. 70
The FJC annual budget for
all of the post-Soviet states is $20 million. Levi
Levayev continues to be its most generous donor, contributing
more than $6 million to FJC through his Ohr
Avner foundation (see below), which focuses on Jewish education.
Several other families and organizations contribute an aggregate
of about $8 million annually, most for designated projects, such
as summer camps, humanitarian aid programs, or specific training
seminars. Chabad rabbis themselves raise about $6 million, some
of it locally and some from foreign donors.
In smaller Jewish population centers, the immediate tasks of
the local FJC representation are: to establish a Jewish address
for the community and equip a community office with telephone
lines and a computer; to designate a community leader and appoint
a local community board; to create a community data base; and
to develop a Sunday school and organize holiday seminars, the
latter often in partnership with JDC. Welfare operations, day
schools, and other services follow as infrastructure development
permits. National or regional offices of FJC extend legal assistance
in registering the representation with appropriate authorities
and in opening bank accounts. Rabbi Mondshine said that, in general,
younger people are more likely to step forward for lay leadership
positions now than several years previously. It is easier to work
with younger leaders because they are less likely to be “Soviet”
in their approach to governance issues.
The Federation of Jewish Communities
of Russia, which is directed by Rabbi Berel Lazar, has
seven regional offices: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Volgograd, Far
East (Vladivostok), Siberia (Krasnoyarsk), Urals (Yekaterinburg),
and Volga River (Samara). FJC in Russia has made four new rabbinic
placements during the past year: Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Ufa,
and Novosibirsk. Noting the small Jewish population in some of
these cities, Rabbi Mondshine said that an earlier policy of assigning
rabbis only to those cities with a Jewish population of 5,000
or more has been superceded by guidelines that encourage rabbinic
placements in smaller Jewish population centers if local support
for a rabbi is forthcoming. In Krasnoyarsk, Rabbi Mondshine noted,
a local non-Jew contributes funds to all religious groups in the
city, including Jews.
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67.
Wishing to avoid a confrontation, the writer did not challenge Rabbi
Lazar’s comments.
68. In
an interview in October 1998, Rabbi Lazar said that 5,000 people
had attended Rosh Hashana services that year. Some reduction in
attendance from 1998 to 1999 would have been expected because the
1999 holiday occurred immediately after one of the apartment house
bombings in Moscow and several weeks after a Jewish activist was
stabbed in the Moscow Choral Synagogue
69. Grigory
Lipman, principal of school #1311, described its religious orientation
to the writer in a 1998 interview as modern Orthodox or “stronger
Conservative.”
70.
Reprinted as is, from FJC News,
Chanukah 1999, p. 8. The reader will note that the mission statement
makes no specific reference to Chabad or to Ohr Avner.
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