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.