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One hundred Russian Jewish notables urged Benjamin Netanyahu to ignore recent pleas by American Jews calling on the Israeli prime minister to cede land for peace. In an open letter from Russia published Tuesday, the Russian Jews wrote that their message was a reaction to the April 3 letter initiated by the dovish Israel Policy Forum by 100 American Jews, including philanthropists Charles Bronfman, Danny Abraham, Lester Crown and Stanley Gold, and former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Dov Zakheim. Among the signers of the Russian letter were the president of the Russian Jewish Congress, Yuri Kanner, and businessman Mikhail Fridman,...

his post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global-news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in Le Temps. (MOSCOW) - A recently opened exhibition in Moscow's State Historical Museum is shedding some light on a long-guarded Russian secret: the origins of Soviet founding father Vladimir Lenin. Lenin's maternal grandfather, the exhibition revealed, was born Jewish. This fascinating morsel of information, gleaned from declassified KGB files, is not a minor detail in a country where anti-Semitism was a recognized state doctrine for decades. Starting in the 1930s, the Soviet...

Reporting from Moscow -- Two and a half years ago, a young Orthodox rabbi from New York set down in the port city of Vladivostok, family in tow. Yisroel Silberstein came with a mission, and he expected to stay for good. Out on Russia's rough and tumble eastern frontier, Silberstein set out to revive a Jewish life that, he says, had almost disappeared. He reached out to several thousand local Jews, organizing services, holiday parties and a summer camp where children learned about Judaism and swam in the Sea of Japan.

JERUSALEM - In a case that would seem unthinkable in the Jewish state, police said Sunday they have cracked a cell of young Israeli neo-Nazis accused in a string of attacks on foreign workers, religious Jews, drug addicts and gays. Eight immigrants from the former Soviet Union have been arrested in recent days in connection with at least 15 attacks, and a ninth fled the country, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, in the first such known cell to be discovered in Israel.

These days, even Jews who have never been to a synagogue are happy to assert that separateness: they are rossiiskiye, Russian citizens, but not russkiye, “Russians”. As many as 100,000 Russian-Israelis have gone back to Russia, says Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, the director of the Lubavitch-run Federation of Jewish Communities, one of Russia's two main (and rival) umbrella groups. In a fast-growing market with a population over 20 times the size of Israel's, they often get better work. Today, a Russian Jew in Moscow will be more expensively dressed than his cousin in Tel Aviv: a big reversal from ten years...

Alexander Koptsev, who was found guilty in March of attempted murder motivated by ethnic hatred in a January knife attack at Moscow's Choral Synagogue MOSCOW (EJP)--- A 21-year-old Russian man who stabbed nine people in a Moscow synagogue said at his retrial Thursday that he had been "zombified" by anti-Semitic literature he had read online, Russian news agency ITAR TASS reported. "You can say that I was zombified by ideas I read on the Internet," said Alexander Koptsev, who was found guilty in March of attempted murder motivated by ethnic hatred in a January knife attack at Moscow’s Choral Synagogue....

When Israeli director Eitan Anner attended a wedding a few years ago, he saw two Russian children ballroom-dancing. Impressed by the serious way in which they tackled the cha-cha and the rumba, he got the spark of an idea for a film about Israel's immigrant community. That film, whose English title is "Love&Dance," is taking part in the main competition of this year's Moscow International Film Festival, and the director is coming for the premiere. "I wouldn't miss it for the world," he said by telephone from Tel Aviv on Tuesday. Starring a 13-year-old actor who was born in Russia,...

02 March 2006, 17:50 Two major Jewish organizations in Russia hold talks on coordination of their efforts Moscow, March 2, Interfax - The Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia (FJCR) and the Congress of Jewish Religious Organizations and Associations in Russia (CJROAR) are holding talks on coordination of their work, representatives of both structures have informed Interfax on Thursday. In mid-February, the FJRC Chairman Alexander Boroda sent a letter to the CJROAR proposing to merge into one organization to become legally and actually the only representative of orthodox Judaism in Russia. ‘According to this plan, each side is to contribute...

Moscow, January 27, Interfax - The number of Russian who condemn anti-semitism has increased by almost 10% for the last year. According to the Obschestvennoye Mnenie (Public Opinion) Foundation data published on Friday, its poll concerning the recent attack on the Moscow synagogue has shown that the proportion of Russians who have negative attitude to anti-Semites has increased from 34 to 42%, while the proportion of those who claim to be indifferent to them has decreased from 47 to 38%. The distrust and dislike of the Jews, according to the poll, was stated by 7% of the respondents, while only...

Moscow, January 27, Interfax - Members of Russia's Public Chamber and human rights activists have proposed that a list be compiled of extremist literature whose dissemination should be formally banned. According to the report of an Interfax correspondent, together with Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Civil, Criminal, Arbitration and Procedural Legislation Pavel Krasheninnikov, they considered the proposed amendments enhancing the criminal and administrative responsibility for extremist activity at a round-table conference in Moscow. ‘The most productive result of today's discussion was the unity of opinion on the need for a list of extremist literature,’ Genry Reznik, a well-known...

Moscow, January 9, Interfax - Russia's chief rabbi Berel Lazar has urged Jews to pray for the health of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "Jews have a custom that if a person falls badly ill, especially if this person is between life and death, all his friends go to the synagogue and pray to God to grant full recovery to this person. Even if doctors see no hope, we still ask the Almighty to make a miracle and return the sick man to full life," a Monday message of the rabbi states. The message says Jews in Russia have especially...

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political observer Marianna Belenkaya.) -- Even now, representatives of all Jewish organizations celebrating Hanukkah in Moscow are unanimous in saying that the real miracle is that Russia has this holiday. Only fifteen years ago no one would have believed it possible to openly celebrate Jewish holidays in this country. The Jewish community in Russia today is a living proof that miracles did not happen only in ancient times and can occur even today. For several successive years, a hanukiah, or a nine-candle menorah, has been placed in the heart of Moscow, in Manezh Square near the Kremlin....

MOSCOW, Russia – Chanukah celebrations get underway in Moscow on the evening of Sunday, December 25th at 4:30 PM. At that time, Manezhnaya Square, located just opposite the Kremlin, will feature the lighting of a giant 24-foot Menorah, ushering in the holiday in Russia. The Menorah lighting ceremony will be graced by the presence of Moscow Mayor Yuri Lushkov, Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar and Federation of Jewish Communities President Lev Leviev, along with other celebrities, dignitaries and hundreds of Moscow Jews. The Menorah lighting will be followed by a festive Chanukah concert, which has already been sold out,...

Russia - After 70 years of Communism, building a Sukkah in public in Russia is actually like the thawing of the snow at the end of the winter. Even in the farthest reaches of Siberia it warms the Jewish heart. In the last 15 years, Judaism has come to life across Russia—and when it comes to Sukkos it is really a open miracle, since this holiday was almost completely forgotten because of the dangers and risks of attempting to put up a Sukkah or obtain a Lulav and esrog. To understand how Sukkah is celebrated today in Russia, and not...

MOSCOW, Russia – A new major Jewish educational complex has been constructed adjacent to the Jewish Community Center in the Marina Roscha district of Moscow. The 6,000 square meter school building and complex will mark its grand opening this Sunday, October 9th. This will be a historic event since this constitutes the newly-constructed Jewish day school in Russia to be inaugurated since prior to the revolution in 1917. This building will house an Ohr Avner Chabad Day School for over 300 children, as well as serving as an educational center for extra-curricular programs, to be held after school hours, for...

MOSCOW, Russia – The new U.S. Ambassador to Russia, William Burns, met with Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar on Tuesday at the Marina Roscha Jewish Community Center in Moscow. Also participating in the meeting were Amy Scanlon, the second secretary of the US embassy, and Avraham Berkowitz, Executive Director of the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS. Rabbi Lazar took this opportunity to get acquainted with Ambassador Burns and to familiarize him with the needs of the Jewish community in Russia. The Chief Rabbi also told the diplomats about the extraordinary revival of Jewish life across the country...

Moscow, August 9, Interfax - Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar believes the Earth will soon see the coming a Messiah to reward everyone according to his deserts. ‘We know that he (Messiah - IF) is very near at hand, but he needs not only to be born but also to come. The Messiah may well have been born already, but unless he is ordered by God he cannot reveal himself with God’s help and change the world for the better’, the rabbi said in an interview published by the Gazeta daily on Tuesday. Lazar explained this assumptions about the imminent...

MOSCOW, Russia - How significant have been for the country the appeals the opponents of Jewish organizations have sent one after another to the Procurator's Office in the recent months? How has Russia changed in the eyes of Jews living both inside and outside Russia? These and other questions are treated in his interview to Interfax-Religion by one of the direct participants in and witnesses to the revival of Jewish life, Russia's Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar. - Why did you choose Russia to work in? Was it difficult to get used to life in a new country? In your opinion,...

Jewish leaders in Russia said Tuesday that anti-Semitism and xenophobia were persistent in Russian society and they criticized law enforcement officials for not doing more to punish nationalist crimes. Borukh Gorin, spokesman for the Federation of Russia's Jewish Organizations, said an investigation by prosecutors into whether an ancient Jewish religious text was inciting religious hatred "was a sign of a serious illness of our society." Last week, prosecutors dropped the inquiry into whether the Russian translation of a 19th century summary of Jewish religious laws called Kitsur Shulhan Arukh provoked religious hatred. The inquiry had been prompted by a complaint...

The pioneers came in the late 1920s, lured to the uninhabited Siberian forests and mosquito-infested swamps by a mixture of communist ideological fervor and their dream of a Jewish homeland. They pitched tents and planted farms. They were followed by thousands of others -- cobblers and barbers, haberdashers and milliners -- fleeing famine and the Nazis, hoping somehow to make a better life. Josef Stalin encouraged settlers in the Jewish Autonomous Region to develop a community that would keep alive traditions such as the Yiddish language and Jewish songs and dances. But the religion itself -- synagogues, holidays, formal worship...