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  • A Jewish Renaissance in Russia

    A Jewish Renaissance in Russia
    by Michael Mainville, Special to the Star

    The Toronto Star, Ontario, Canada
    May 1, 2005 Sunday

    Moscow

    When she fled the Soviet Union for Israel with her family as a
    teenager, the last place Irina Azanyan expected to end up 15 years
    later was in Moscow.

    "My parents were desperate to get away and we went as soon as we
    could," she says. "I loved Israel, even before I'd ever been there. I
    don't know why, maybe it was in my genes."

    Yet here she sits in her fifth-floor office at the Moscow Jewish
    Community Centre, switching effortlessly between Russian and Hebrew
    as she fields calls for Russia's chief rabbi, Berl Lazar.

    Two floors down, a cleaning woman is sweeping out the massive banquet
    hall in preparation for this weekend's dinner marking the end of
    Passover.

    The chorus of a group of pensioners studying Hebrew emanates from
    a nearby classroom as bearded young men in broad-rimmed black hats
    stroll the halls with books under their arms.

    Azanyan and her family fled the repressive Soviet regime at the tail
    end of a massive wave of emigration that saw about 1 million Soviet
    Jews settle in Israel by the mid-1990s. But now she is among the
    estimated 100,000 who have come back - the strongest sign yet of a
    startling revival of Jewish life in a country that has one of the
    worst records of Jewish persecution in history.

    "It's absolutely extraordinary how many people are returning," says
    Lazar, who has been Russia's chief rabbi since 2000.

    "When they left, there was no community, no Jewish life. People felt
    that being Jewish was an historical mistake that happened to their
    family. Now, they know they can live in Russia as part of a community."

    Last week also marked a turning point for Russian Jews with President
    Vladimir Putin's historic visit to Israel, the first by a Russian or
    Soviet head of state. Asked if he thought five years ago that he would
    ever accompany a Russian president on a trip to Israel, Lazar laughs.

    "Honestly, I didn't think two months ago that this would have been
    possible," he says. "There has been a sincere change in the official
    attitude to Israel and the Jewish community in Russia."

    During his visit, Putin paid tribute to the Jewish community's
    contributions to Russia and spoke out against anti-Semitism while
    touring Jerusalem's Holocaust History Museum.

    "Today, we must state clearly that there can be no place in the 21st
    century for xenophobia, anti-Semitism or any other manifestations of
    ethnic and religious intolerance," said Putin.

    "This is not only our duty before the memory of the millions of people
    killed by bullets or in the gas chambers, it is also our obligation
    to future generations."

    Lazar says the visit was a testament to how far Russia has come since
    the days when Jews were largely barred from public worship and faced
    open discrimination in jobs and education.

    Russia has a long history of anti-Semitism, dating back to the
    establishment of the Pale of Jewish Settlement when the country
    absorbed large populations of Polish and Ukrainian Jews in the late
    18th century.

    For nearly 150 years, Jews required special permission to live in
    Russia proper and faced a host of other restrictions. Anti-Jewish riots
    were common and a wave of pogroms in southern Russia in the early 1880s
    prompted about 2 million Russian Jews to immigrate to North America.

    By the early 20th century - radicalized by generations of repression
    - Jews were at the forefront of revolutionary activity in Russia.
    Jewish activists played a prominent role in the Russian Revolution
    and actually outnumbered ethnic Russians in the first Communist
    Central Committee.

    One of Lenin's first actions as Soviet leader was to abolish the Pale
    of Settlement and grant freedom of worship. In the next few years,
    40 per cent of Soviet Jews left the Pale and settled in large Russian
    cities. But early hopes for emancipation were dashed by the rise
    of Stalin, who grew increasingly paranoid and anti-Semitic during
    his rule.

    Many of the most prominent victims of his purges - including Leon
    Trotsky, Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev - were Jewish. Many
    historians contend that, at the time of his death in 1953, Stalin
    was preparing for a mass deportation of Soviet Jews to the so-called
    Jewish Autonomous Zone in the Siberian wastelands north of China.

    For the remainder of the Soviet period, Jews - their ethnicity clearly
    marked on internal passports - faced a range of state-sponsored and
    unofficial anti-Semitism. Universities were allowed to accept only a
    small number of Jewish students and many jobs, especially government
    positions, were closed to them.

    In the years after its founding in 1948, Israel's emergence as a close
    Western ally led to the persecution of many Soviet Jews as alleged
    Zionist sympathizers. The few token synagogues still in operation
    were under open police surveillance.

    Azanyan's experiences were typical. Growing up in the Ukrainian
    capital Kyiv, she knew little of her Jewish heritage, except for a
    few words of Yiddish and the names of important holidays.

    Fearful of persecution, her grandfather had changed his last name
    from Eisenberg to the Armenian-sounding Azanyan after World War II.

    This would come back to haunt the family when Soviet leader Mikhail
    Gorbachev opened the doors for Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel in
    the 1980s. Without an obvious Jewish name, the family was repeatedly
    denied the right to leave the Soviet Union. Thirteen-year-old Azanyan
    nonetheless began studying Hebrew and learning all she could about
    Israel.

    The Azanyans were finally able to emigrate as the Soviet Union was
    disintegrating in 1990. They touched down in Israel on Azanyan's
    16th birthday.

    "It was like a dream come true," she recalls.

    After finishing high school and her two years of mandatory military
    service, Azanyan studied history and archaeology at the Tel Aviv
    University. In 1998, she followed a Russian Jewish boyfriend back
    to the former Soviet Union and found a job at the Israeli embassy
    in Moscow.

    While there, she was stunned to be dealing with hundreds of other
    Israelis who were returning to Russia.

    "People were coming back for many different reasons," she says.

    "Some people saw economic opportunities in Russia. Some people were
    worried about security in Israel. And some people came back because
    they weren't ready to go to Israel.

    "They expected too much and didn't realize how much work it would be
    to start a new life in a different country."

    After leaving the embassy in 2001, she decided to stay in Russia and
    took the job as Lazar's assistant.

    "I still love Israel and I'd like to go back some day," she says.
    "But for now, I'm happy here."

    Like Azanyan, most of those who've returned have kept their Israeli
    passports and, in some cases, maintain homes in both countries.

    Rabbi Lazar says it's irrelevant whether returning Jews are planning
    to stay in Russia permanently or some day go back to Israel.

    "They don't know how long they're going to stay. Two years, a year,
    six months, what's the difference? The fact that they're coming back
    at all is a strong statement."

    Which isn't to say that anti-Semitism is no longer a problem in
    Russia. In fact, some observers believe that the community's increasing
    profile has sparked a backlash from nationalist Russians.

    In January, 19 nationalist lawmakers sent a letter to Russia's
    prosecutor-general, asking him to outlaw all Jewish organizations on
    the grounds that they foster ethnic hatred against Russians.

    Two months later, several Russian cultural figures, including former
    world chess champion Boris Spassky, sent a similar letter backed by
    a petition signed by 5,000 Russians. Among other accusations, the
    letter accused Jews of being "anti-Christian and inhumane" and of
    "committing ritual murders."

    Nationalist politicians - a growing force in Russian politics -
    rant openly about Jewish conspiracies to control the Russian economy,
    pointing out that many of Russia's billionaire oligarchs are Jewish,
    including former Yukos oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is in jail
    awaiting a verdict in his long-running tax-evasion and fraud trial.

    Defending the letter in a February appearance on one of Russia's most
    popular political talk shows, State Duma deputy Albert Makashov spoke
    for nearly an hour about the allegedly illegal privatizations that
    left much of the country's wealth in the oligarchs' hands.

    "All I am saying is that most oligarchs come from one diaspora:
    Jewish," he said. "They stole everything God gave us."

    Asked to call in their support for either Makashov or his opponent in
    the debate, more than 53,000 of about 100,000 callers chose Makashov.

    Attacks on Jews also remain a problem. The Moscow Bureau of Human
    Rights reported this month that 27 anti-Semitic attacks occurred in
    Moscow in 2004 and the first three months of 2005.

    In January, six thugs shouting anti-Semitic slurs attacked a group
    of Orthodox Jews in a Moscow underpass. Two young boys and one man
    escaped, but Rabbi Alexander Lakshin was left beaten and bloodied.

    When he tried to ask employees at a local shop to use their phone to
    call the police, they refused and told him to leave.

    Yet even Lakshin is encouraged by recent developments in Russia. In
    the weeks since the attack, police arrested three suspects, two of
    whom are now facing charges that could land them in jail for years.

    "No country in the world can boast of having no anti-Semites," he
    says. "It's how a society reacts to these kinds of attacks that's
    important.

    "Yes, it was a sad thing that happened. But when I think about how
    much tremendous change there has been in Russia since I was a boy,
    when I see groups of young people walking about unafraid, it makes
    me so happy."

    At the seven-storey, $25 million Moscow Jewish Community Centre built
    five years ago, there's a growing sense that the Jewish renaissance
    is irreversible.

    Stretching over two city blocks, the centre includes a synagogue,
    library, fitness centre and kosher restaurant, all built with
    donations from abroad and the local community. Record numbers of
    Jewish families are signing up for its free services and this year's
    Passover celebrations have been the biggest in memory.

    Down the street, a $125 million complex - which will include Russia's
    first Jewish museum, a medical centre and a school - is being built on
    land donated by the city of Moscow. Smaller centres, most featuring
    the first local Jewish schools in decades, are being built across
    the country.

    In the past five years, the number of distinct Jewish communities
    in Russia has swelled from 87 to more than 200. Fifteen years ago,
    there was not a single Jewish school in all of Russia. Today, more
    than 15,000 students attend such schools.

    Lazar says that of the estimated 1 million Jews who remained in
    Russia following the exodus to Israel, very few were once prepared
    to even identify themselves as Jewish. But today, about 120,000 Jews
    are fully involved in the community.

    "Nowhere in the world have we ever seen a Jewish community of this
    size reviving from essentially nothing."

    Avraham Berkowitz, executive director of the Federation of Jewish
    Communities in the former Soviet Union, says he felt the change most
    acutely during Passover this year.

    Every year, the FJC co-ordinates a campaign to send kosher food
    products used in making Passover dishes to Jewish communities across
    the country.

    This year's campaign was the largest ever, with 1.2 million pounds
    of matzo and 250,000 bottles of wine distributed nationwide.

    "More and more Jews are coming out of the woodwork and they're not
    afraid to say so," muses Berkowitz.

    "The change in Russia from 15 years ago to today is nothing short of
    a miracle."

    Michael Mainville is a Canadian journalist based in Moscow.

    In the past five years, the number of distinct Jewish communities
    in Russia has swelled from 87 to more than 200. Fifteen years ago,
    there was not a single Jewish school in all of Russia. Today, more
    than 15,000 students attend such schools

    GRAPHIC: LUKE TCHALENKO PHOTOS, ABOVE AND TOP RIGHT EMILIO MORENATTI
    ap Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned anti-Semitism and "any
    other manifestations of ethnic and religious intolerance" during his
    historic visit to Jerusalem's Holocaust History Museum last week.
    Photos at left and top show a prayer service at Moscow's $25 million
    Jewish Community Centre.EMILIO MORENATTI ap Russian President Vladimir
    Putin condemned anti-Semitism and "any other manifestations of ethnic
    and religious intolerance" during his historic visit to Jerusalem's
    Holocaust History Museum last week. Photos at left and top show a
    prayer service at Moscow's $25 million Jewish Community Centre.
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