The Jerusalem Report

December 26, 2005

David B. Green

For more than two months, Russian authorities refused to let the capital's chief rabbi return home. Is the mysterious saga of Pinchas Goldschmidt explained by Jewish infighting, a crackdown by the Kremlin, or perhaps a combination of the two?

When Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt first arrived in Moscow, in 1989, it was at the end of a long and bitter era, in which Jews had been refused the right to practice their religion or travel freely to Israel or other destinations. By the following year, the gates had opened, and over the next decade, as conditions deteriorated at home, up to a million Soviet Jews left for Israel.

When the Swiss-born Goldschmidt, the head of Moscow's organized Jewish community, landed at Domodedovo airport this past September 27, on a flight from Tel Aviv, he became a refusenik of another kind. An immigration official informed him that his visa was invalid, and he was put on a return flight to Israel. More than two months later, he was still locked out, and a variety of foreign governments and organizations had become enlisted on his behalf, in a case that has become a symbol of the turbulent status of human rights and due process in Vladimir Putin's Russia.

By the beginning of December, Goldschmidt seemed to be on his way back to Moscow, where his wife and five of his seven children have spent the autumn separated from him, and no one could say with certainty just why he had been turned away in the first place. But in attempting to understand the various possible explanations, one encounters a snake pit of relationships that reveal the dependency of Russia's Jews on the central government and on a number of fabulously wealthy "oligarchs," who found their fortunes in the sell-off of national properties that characterized the Yeltsin era. No less significant players are a network of non-governmental, often foreign, organizations, whose status in Russia is increasingly threatened by a regime apprehensive of falling victim to a popular revolt like those experienced by some of Russia's neighbors in recent years.

The most prevalent speculation about Goldschmidt's denied entry is that a lay leader of Russian Jewry, an oligarch, paid off a low-level official to put his name on an airport watch- list. The rabbi won't discuss his own theories, and in fact, when he met with The Report in the lobby of a Jerusalem hotel, the day before news arrived that he had been granted a 30- day visa to travel home, he was reluctant to discuss his situation at all. Understandably, his top priority was to see his nightmare ended, and as soon as possible.

The most popular explanation centered on Vladimir Slutsker, a banker and engineering tycoon who was, until mid-November, the president of the Russian Jewish Congress. Slutsker, so goes the theory, wanted to hurt Goldschmidt because of a real-estate dispute the two are involved in. Another pegged Rabbi Berl Lazar, one of Russia's two chief rabbis, who represents the Lubavitch-Chabad movement in the Former Soviet Union. As one knowledgeable observer explains, Chabad wants "to be the sole representative of local Jewry," and so is in fierce competition with non-affiliated rabbis and Jewish institutions. Just as two men, Adolf Shayevich and Chabad's Lazar, hold competing titles of "chief rabbi," there are also two organizations that presume to represent the entire Jewish community, the Chabad-aligned Federation of Jewish Communities and the Russian Jewish Congress. The latter was founded by Vladimir Gusinsky, the secular former press baron whose NTV station sharply criticized President Putin, and who in 2000 found himself driven into exile, partly in Israel. Throughout the fall, there was widespread speculation that Slutsker arranged for the invalidation of Goldschmidt's visa. In early November, Slutsker was pushed out of his RJC post in large part because of his fellow board members' suspicions. But both he and Rabbi Lazar have strenuously denied being connected in any way to Goldschmidt's difficulties.

It may never be possible to determine who gave the order to freeze Goldschmidt out, and in the long run it may not matter. What does matter is that, as an executive at one American Jewish organization told The Report, "what was intended to be a short-term shot across the bow became far more serious and complicated, becoming wrapped up in the U.S.-Russian bilateral relationship and the Israel-Russian bilateral relationship."

Indeed, the U.S. State Department and the foreign ministries of both Israel and Switzerland became involved in lobbying Russia on Goldschmidt's behalf, together with officials at some of the major Jewish organizations. Though in early November, the Internal Affairs Ministry informed the rabbi that he had been deemed a threat to national security, and would not be permitted to return, by month's end he was invited to re-apply for a visa. While all this was happening, Russia was considering a bill that would require all the NGOs operating in the country - there are estimated to be some 450,000 - to register with the central government. The bill, which passed the first of three required readings by the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, on November 23, would also force foreign NGOs operating in the country to reconstitute themselves locally. Masha Gessen, a prominent Moscow journalist and writer, says that foreign NGO employees, some of them working for religious organizations, have been encountering visa problems on "state security" grounds for years, and that the intensifying effort to reduce their influence was also aided by a recent law "that says anyone's visa can be revoked if they are caught making unflattering remarks about Russia."

President Putin, several observers told The Report, is convinced that Ukraine's Orange Revolution, which led to the election there of reformer Viktor Yushchenko last year, as well as similar regime changes in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, were inspired and funded by Western organizations (if not the CIA). And, says Mark B. Levin, executive director of the National Council on Soviet Jewry, "it is Human Rights Watch, the Soros foundations, Amnesty International and the Russian groups that are the primary targets of the draft law," not the local Jewish organizations, even though they too receive a very significant share of their funding from overseas. "Still," he continues, "just because they're not targets today doesn't mean they won't be targets tomorrow."

One Israeli familiar with the workings of the Jewish community in Russia explained that many of the Jewish organizations working there are now homegrown, even if they receive some funding abroad. And what is probably the largest outside supporter of Jewish life in the FSU, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, has already re-registered as a local organization, and taken other measures to establish itself as a legal local entity.

The same source also warns against interpreting Putin's authoritarian moves as a return to communism: "This is Russian nationalism, not communism. If you ask most people there, the Yeltsin period, which was marked by tremendous freedom, was a failure: There was crime, the rape of the economy by the oligarchs. Putin came in, and crime is down, and he's going after the oligarchs - at least by popular perception. A lot of people would argue that this is a necessary stage, to get the society functioning before you introduce liberalizing tendencies."

Jewish life in Russia operates at the sensitive intersection where civil society, the Kremlin and the oligarchs meet. The rivalry between Chabad and the Russian Jewish Congress is not about theology, but rather over who will represent Russian Jewry, both vis-?-vis the regime and inter-nationally. For Putin, it makes life easier to have to deal with only one address, someone who can serve as the link to Jewish officials abroad, who are still perceived as influential in Washington. For Chabad, says the source, Goldschmidt is seen as "a major stumbling block between them and hegemony."

Chabad Rabbi Berl Lazar's local patron is Russian-Israeli businessman Lev Leviev, who, in daring to challenge the De Beers diamond cartel, involved himself in every stage of diamond mining, processing and sale ("from mine to mistress" is the way he likes to describe the scope of his business). Leviev, who also has widespread interests in other businesses in Israel, is a follower of, and major contributor to, Chabad, and a close Putin ally. As one observer describes it, "If you're in Vladivostok and you have a problem with the local governor, and you've given money to Chabad, you call Leviev, he speaks with the Kremlin, and it's fixed."

The growing influence of Chabad has been accompanied by the weakening of the Russian Jewish Congress. Since Gusinsky was driven into exile, five years ago, it has had four heads, and a declining budget and range of activities. And although the Moscow Jewish Religious Community (MERO), which is headed by Goldschmidt, has traditionally had close relations with the RJC, when the two groups began to feud over the real estate, it had led to Goldschmidt going so far as to file a complaint against the RJC and Slutsker in a Jerusalem religious court. It was a few days later that he was turned away at the border in Moscow, and sent back to Israel. Goldschmidt first arrived in Russia in 1989, after receiving a call from a friend who asked him if he knew someone who might want to go to Moscow to work as a rabbi. At the time, Goldschmidt and his New York-born wife, Dara, were living in the Israeli town of Upper Nazareth, where he did outreach work. He says that he asked the caller "where he was calling from. He said Bnei Brak," the haredi city adjacent to Tel Aviv. "I laughed and said there must be thousands of rabbis there who could do that. He said that he thought if I was crazy enough to move to Upper Nazareth, maybe I'd be crazy enough to go to Moscow."

The Bnei Brak friend had pegged Goldschmidt, whose businessman father met with refuseniks in Moscow in the early 1970s, correctly. On both sides, his family has a distinguished record of religious service and of bravery in the face of injustice. A great- grandfather on his father's side was chief rabbi of Zurich, and that man's father was a rabbi in the Dutch colony of Suriname. Another great-grandfather, on his mother's side, was a rabbinical judge in Vienna. Goldschmidt's paternal grandmother journeyed to the Gestapo headquarters in Frankfurt in 1938 to arrange for the safe passage to Switzerland of Jewish children living in German orphanages. A great-uncle was a hero of the French Resistance.

Until age 11, Goldschmidt tells me when we meet, he lived in Zurich, but, "I was a big troublemaker, so my parents sent me to Israel," where he studied in yeshivah for the next six years. From Israel he went to Baltimore, where he enrolled in the Ner Israel Rabbinical College. While working toward an MA in 1985 in Talmudic law there, he also earned an MS in computer science from Johns Hopkins University.

The job that initially brought the rabbi to Moscow was at a yeshivah newly founded at the time by Jerusalem Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. A year later Goldschmidt was appointed to head Moscow's central shul, the Choral Synagogue. He has been the head of MERO since its founding in 1996, and today oversees a network that includes a rabbinical court, burial society and two cemeteries, the city's largest day school (opened in 1991 by the rabbi and his wife, and now accommodating 400 pupils), two yeshivot, a branch of New York's Touro College, two kosher restaurants, three soup kitchens, and something called the Dvar Torah seminar, of which he is especially proud.

The seminar was organized a little more than a year ago at Moscow's Jewish Cultural Center, on Bolshoya Nikitskaya St., by the journalist and political science professor Yevgenia Albats. Each Thursday night, the group, which usually numbers not more than 50, meets at the center to hear an analysis by one of its members of that week's Torah portion. That dvar Torah is followed by an hour's discussion among the group, whose participants can include journalists, academics, businesspeople (a recent talk on the portion "Lekh Lekha," from Genesis, was presented by oligarch Mikhail Friedman, the chairman of Moscow's Alfa Bank), "99 percent of whom," says Albats, "have never read Torah before, let alone discussed it." At the end of the session, Rabbi Goldschmidt provides a traditional perspective on the parshah.

Mikhail Kaluzhsky, editor of Community Life magazine, which is sponsored by the JDC, says that in his comments, Goldschmidt will "quote Talmud, Gemarah, any text that fits the proposition," and suggests that the sessions are "perfect: a place where non-religious or quasi-religious can mix or meet with the religious." During Goldschmidt's absence, Kaluzhsky explains, British-trained Reform Rabbi Nelly Schuman has been providing the rabbinical commentary.

Albats, too, is very admiring of Rabbi Pinchas, as she calls him, describing him as "one of the most educated Jews who ever existed in this country." Like Kaluzhsky, she says that he brings not only great knowledge but also great authority. "He's very good with people, charismatic. And he's very capable in explaining difficult things to people who are ignorant. It's a great gift for us that he, who could have served anywhere in Europe, has been sharing his life with Russian Jewry."

On December 2, Goldschmidt received word that a new one-month visa had been approved, and he prepared to leave Jerusalem, to resume sharing his life with the Jews of Moscow. It's hard to say what the future of that community will look like. Mikhail Kaluzhsky is afraid that if the NGO bill is enacted, it could spell the end of the flow of all foreign funds to Jewish institutions in Russia. He says it has occurred to him, however, that if and when the law does pass its final reading, it could still be vetoed by a cynical Putin, because, "for him and his cronies it would be a perfect chance to demonstrate their commitment to democracy. It's happened before."

Albats, author of a 1994 book on the KGB, believes her country has "an authoritarian regime that is getting harsher and harsher every day." She also says that anti-Semitism in Russia "is a question of everyday life," explaining that "on November 4, we had 2,000-plus people, fascists, marching through the streets of Moscow, saying 'Zionists, get out of our land,' and 'Russia is for Russians.'"

I ask Rabbi Goldschmidt how he feels when someone who's been educated or active in one of the institutions he's involved with informs him that he or she has decided to move to Israel. "I laugh with one eye," he responds, "and cry with the other."

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