{"id":106058,"date":"2023-08-04T17:05:46","date_gmt":"2023-08-04T15:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=106058"},"modified":"2023-08-04T10:10:01","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T08:10:01","slug":"11-05-92","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=106058","title":{"rendered":"The Future of Russian Jewry"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>The Future of Russian Jewry<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

HILLEL KUTTLER<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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After more than three decades as Moscow\u2019s chief rabbi, Pinchas Goldschmidt left the country following the invasion of Ukraine. Now he\u2019s urging the Russian capital\u2019s Jews to leave, saying \u2018the future is not as bright as it was.\u2019<\/strong><\/span>
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Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt \/ ELI ITKIN<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt sat at the desk of his Jerusalem office on a scorcher of a July day. Wearing a suit and tie, his monogrammed shirt cuff peeking out, Goldschmidt seemed immune to the intense heat\u2014a quality hinting at how, of the 33 years he served as Moscow\u2019s chief rabbi, he might have weathered the last 22 during the presidency of Vladimir Putin.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But everyone has a boiling point, and Goldschmidt reached his when Russian authorities pressured him and other religious leaders to support Putin\u2019s war on Ukraine that began on Feb. 24, 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Goldschmidt publicly opposed the war, departed the country, resigned his pulpit in Moscow\u2019s Choral Synagogue, and resettled in Israel, leaving behind Russia and his and his wife Dara\u2019s work: regenerating the capital\u2019s Jewish community following seven decades of Soviet repression and building an orphanage, a school, and a kollel<\/em>\u2014an academy for Talmud study.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Last summer, he urged Russia\u2019s Jews to leave the country. This June, the country\u2019s Justice Ministry labeled him and several other visible opponents of the war \u201cforeign agents,\u201d affixing metaphorical targets to their backs.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nearly a year-and-a-half into Russia\u2019s aggression against Ukraine, Goldschmidt sees his condemning of the war and emigrating as correct. He\u2019d been silenced \u201cfor all the years under Putin,\u201d he said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t able to say a word.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Goldschmidt said he recognized the risk of opposing Putin. He cited Ecclesiastes 3:7: \u201cA time to keep silent and a time to speak.\u201d The time, he said, was right to speak.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe moment I knew that I\u2019d be criticizing the war, that I\u2019d be against the Russian government, I knew that I would have to leave my post as chief rabbi of the city, because the government would use its clutches to get me out or to close down the community,\u201d said Goldschmidt. \u201cIt was a decision I knew would have to result in my resignation in order not to endanger the community.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But leaving and urging others to follow didn\u2019t come easily. Goldschmidt said he spoke with friends, colleagues, and community leaders in Russia and abroad. He researched rabbis\u2019 contemporaneous responses to anti-Jewish agitation, pogroms, and the Holocaust. He sought clarity for what gnawed at him: Was the situation as dire as he thought?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI was questioning myself in the beginning if I did the right thing or not by leaving. But as the situation evolved, there was no other way,\u201d he said. \u201cI just feel that there\u2019s a moment when a communal leader has to tell his people that the future is not as bright as it was and we should think of other options.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As to what set his decision-making in motion, Goldschmidt recalled the events of 2022 this way: \u201cI went to sleep in Moscow on Feb. 23 and woke up in the morning in Tehran\u2014a different country with a different political system. I realized that under this new political reality, it would be impossible to speak for a Jewish future. It became almost impossible for a Jewish community to function.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It was a stunning end to a lengthy tenure that began when a classmate from his native Switzerland told Goldschmidt\u2014who, while living in Baltimore, had been ordained and earned a master\u2019s degree in computer science\u2014that Moscow\u2019s Jewish community wished to hire a rabbi.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When Goldschmidt, his wife, and their two small children\u2014the couple would have seven; three now live in Israel and four in the United States\u2014arrived in 1989, Russia was the behemoth of a Soviet Union at once disintegrating and evolving under the freedom-minded reforms begun by the glasnost and perestroika <\/em>policies of the USSR\u2019s leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and later extended by Russia\u2019s president, Boris Yeltsin.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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By reversing Russia\u2019s democratization and, later, invading Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022, Putin has yanked the country back to its Soviet days, Goldschmidt said.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That, he said, constitutes a physical and demographic threat to Russia\u2019s Jews, whose numbers aren\u2019t easily pinned down. (Goldschmidt cited estimates ranging from 90,000 to 350,000.) Approximately 100,000 Jews now seek to leave Russia, in addition to 100,000 who have already left since the war began, Goldschmidt said.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Goldschmidt in the Choral Synagogue \/ ELI ITKIN<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Rabbis arriving from abroad to serve Russia\u2019s Jewish communities \u201care being stopped at the borders\u201d and harassed, he said, their smartphones inspected and possibly implanted with eavesdropping devices, and the philanthropic funding of Jewish institutions has shriveled due to Jewish businesspeople emigrating.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe fact that at any communal gathering, you have two or three characters who show up uninvited\u2014you know right away these are FSB characters,\u201d Goldschmidt said, referring to the security service that succeeded the KGB. \u201cWe are back to the Soviet era. The question is: Do Jews want to live in the Soviet Union? The answer is no.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As the situation further deteriorated last summer, Goldschmidt said, he and other Jewish officials grew concerned by two major developments: a possible military mobilization of Russian men, including Jews; and the government\u2019s closing of the Jewish Agency, a Jerusalem-based organization that helps Jews in scores of countries to prepare to move to Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Russia\u2019s Jews, he sensed, would, as in the Soviet era, be squeezed both if they remained and attempted to leave.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That\u2019s when Goldschmidt called on them to emigrate.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI feared that as a result, it\u2019s going to be much more difficult to cross the border,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Goldschmidt\u2019s son Benjamin, a congregational rabbi in Manhattan, considers his father \u201ccourageous\u201d for urging Russian Jewish emigration. His parents had \u201cput their whole lives\u201d into rebuilding Moscow\u2019s Jewish infrastructure, but \u201ca rabbinic judge must rule based on the facts in front of him,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no rabbinical commandment that says you have to live in Russia.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe Jews have to be optimists,\u201d Pinchas Goldschmidt said when asked whether he can imagine living again in Moscow. \u201cOne day it\u2019ll be possible to return, but when it is I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Returning his pulpit is complex, too.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to see what percentage of the community is still there. Number two, what the new political realities are, the economic realities,\u201d he said. \u201cBased on that, it is going to be possible to make an educated decision.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Meanwhile, in Israel, he remains busy. He leads classes online on Jewish topics, including in Russian. He\u2019s writing two books: on how Jewish law views civil marriages and on his time in Moscow. He visits his father, Sol, 91, a retired businessman who lives nearby and has dementia. And he spends much of his time in Munich, the headquarters of the European Conference of Rabbis, which he serves as president.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In that role, Goldschmidt opposed Scandinavian countries\u2019 efforts to outlaw circumcision and kosher slaughter.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cOver the years, he hasn\u2019t been afraid to speak his mind,\u201d said Mark Levin, the Washington, D.C.-based CEO of the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry, who has known Goldschmidt since before the latter served in Moscow.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The issues on which Goldschmidt has made an impact both in Moscow and with the ECR is \u201ca long list,\u201d Levin said.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cHe\u2019s one of the\u2014I say this in all sincerity\u2014important international figures in Jewish life in the last 20-something years,\u201d Levin said. \u201cHe\u2019s a rare combination of a diplomat and an advocate. It demonstrates his ability to meet and address all challenges.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Now, Moscow\u2019s Jews face the new reality without their spiritual leader, although synagogues, the Russian Jewish Congress, and other key organizations continue to function. Goldschmidt maintains contact with many Muscovites, while others, he said, \u201care afraid to talk to me\u201d now.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe fear of Big Brother\u2014this has come back. It\u2019s part of life in Russia today,\u201d Goldschmidt said. He\u2019s less concerned by \u201cstreet antisemitism,\u201d and more by government pronouncements, such as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in May 2022 comparing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Hitler and claiming that Hitler was partially Jewish.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After Lavrov\u2019s statement, Goldschmidt said, he received reports from Moscow of \u201can avalanche\u201d of antisemitic posts on social media.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe system, which became so anti-Western and so insular\u2014it\u2019s impossible that the system isn\u2019t going to bring with it manifestations of antisemitism,\u201d he said. \u201cPutin is not an antisemite. But the moment there\u2019s a sign coming from above that from now on it\u2019s [antisemitism] allowed, I would be very worried about the security of Jewish institutions and every single Jew.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He\u2019s led fundraisers to assist Ukrainian Jews and visited Ukrainian Jewish refugees in Romania, Hungary, Austria, and Germany. Zelensky invited him to Ukraine, and he may lead an ECR delegation there.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Its goal would be \u201cvery simple,\u201d Goldschmidt said: \u201cto support the Jewish community.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe great tragedy of this war,\u201d said Goldschmidt, \u201cis that two Jewish communities are being destroyed: the Jewish community of Russia and the Jewish community of Ukraine.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Hillel Kuttler<\/strong>, a writer and editor, can be reached at hk@hillelthescribecommunications.com.<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Future of Russian Jewry HILLEL KUTTLER After more than three decades as Moscow\u2019s chief rabbi, Pinchas Goldschmidt left the country following the invasion of Ukraine. Now he\u2019s urging the Russian capital\u2019s Jews to leave, saying \u2018the future is not as bright as it was.\u2019 . Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt \/ ELI ITKIN Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106058"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106058"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106069,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106058\/revisions\/106069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}