NEWS STORY: Synagogue opening masks concerns of Russian Jews

c. 1998 Religion News Service MOSCOW _ President Boris Yeltsin’s appearance Wednesday (Sept. 2) at the opening of a newly built, $10 million synagogue at Moscow’s huge war memorial complex was an unqualified triumph for Russia’s Jews. The money for the project came entirely from the Jewish community, and Yeltsin _ who shoehorned the opening […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

MOSCOW _ President Boris Yeltsin’s appearance Wednesday (Sept. 2) at the opening of a newly built, $10 million synagogue at Moscow’s huge war memorial complex was an unqualified triumph for Russia’s Jews.

The money for the project came entirely from the Jewish community, and Yeltsin _ who shoehorned the opening into a schedule made tight by his summit meeting with President Clinton _ made a surprise speech in which he paid tribute to the thousands of Soviet Jews who perished during World War II.”The fact that Yeltsin went there was extraordinary. That is the first time the president of Russia has ever been at a Jewish event,”said Moscow Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt.”He made very strong statements against fascism, against anti-Semitism.” But for Russia’s estimated 550,000 Jews, Wednesday’s Memorial Synagogue triumph may be short-lived. From here, some Jewish leaders say, the road ahead leads downhill because of Russia’s deepening financial and political crisis.


Already there is talk both here and in Israel of a new mass exodus of as many as 60,000 Russian Jews this year alone. In addition, there is concern that increased anti-Semitism _ long a hallmark of economic crisis in Russia from the days of the tsars _ is virtually inevitable.

Should a new mass emigration of Russian Jews begin, it would rob the community here of its vibrancy and threaten its future.

The wealthy businessmen who financed the synagogue project _ chiefly Most Bank’s Vladimir Gusinsky _ have been hit hard by Russia’s worsening economic crisis. Moreover, disgruntled Russian nationalists and communists are blaming Jews for their nation’s current problems.”Unfortunately, some Jewish bankers are associated with corruption in the new system, and right now we have a dangerous confluence of elements that could lead to anti-Semitism,”said Yosef Abramowitz, president of the U.S.-based Union of Councils for Soviet Jews.”The level of grassroots anti-Semitic activity in Russia has skyrocketed.” The most dramatic recent anti-Semitic incident came in May when a powerful bomb at Moscow’s Maryina Roshcha Synagogue blew a hole in the building’s side and injured two construction workers. At the time, one communist representative in the State Duma suggested the bombing was staged by Jews themselves. Another Duma deputy suggested it was an expression of public anger at the disproportionate number of Jews in government. Even with a $10,000 reward, no one has been arrested.

Despite these concerns, Wednesday’s synagogue opening was a festive occasion.

In addition to Yeltsin, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov; Israeli Trade Minister Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident; Israeli Labor Party leader Ehud Barak; Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress; and Mel Salberg, president of the Conference of Major America Jewish Organizations, were also on hand.

The box-like Memorial Synagogue includes Russia’s first permanent exhibit acknowledging the Nazi Holocaust, which claimed the lives of 2.9 million Jews on the territory of the former Soviet Union. In joining a Russian Orthodox church and mosque at the war memorial park, the new synagogue becomes a clear symbol that Russia’s Jews are a religious and political force to be reckoned with.

Leaders of the U.S.-based Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic community, which operates the Maryina Roshcha Synagogue, had hoped Clinton would visit the now-repaired building during his visit this week.

But a tug-of-war over the U.S. president developed as other Jewish leaders, including some in the United States, lobbied for Clinton to attend Wednesday’s inauguration of the Memorial Synagogue. As a result, Clinton went to neither place.


Instead, Clinton met Wednesday at the U.S. Embassy with American Jewish leaders in Moscow for the synagogue opening.

The episode highlights the friction within Russia’s community of religious Jews. The Memorial Synagogue, constructed under the auspices of the Russian Jewish Congress headed by Gusinsky, was designed to bridge some of the differences.”It is Gusinsky’s baby and he started it to bring Jews together, so no one group could say it is their synagogue,”said David Karpov, a Chabad-Lubavitcher who is one of Moscow’s very few rabbis with Russian citizenship.”It is a synagogue designed to unite all Jews.” The irony is that largely because no one _ neither Jews nor anyone else _ lives in Park Pobedy, site of the war memorial complex, the simple, modern synagogue will host religious services only on holidays. The rest of the time it will serve as a museum for the hundreds of thousands of people who visit Park Pobedy each year.

Most significant, however, is that the synagogue will house in its basement Russia’s first Holocaust exhibit, a groundbreaking effort to educate the general public about Nazi atrocities against Jews. Until 1994, the Russian government _ and before that, the Soviet Union _ never officially recognized that the Nazis were bent on specifically exterminating the Jewish people.

Ilya Altman, vice president of the Russian Holocaust Foundation, said the governments’ reluctance was rooted in Soviet wartime propaganda, which sought to mobilize the entire population by not publicizing the Nazis’ stated aim of killing already unpopular Jews.

IR END BROWN

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