Former Chief Rabbi of Moscow Urges Jews to Leave Russia 'While They Can'

Moscow's chief rabbi in exile says Jews should leave Russia while they still can before they are made scapegoats for hardship caused by the war in Ukraine. The edition told in more detail The Guardian.

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“When we look back on Russian history, whenever the political system was in danger, you saw how the government tried to redirect the anger and discontent of the masses to the Jewish community,” said Pinchas Goldschmidt. “We saw this in tsarist times and at the end of the Stalinist regime.”

“We are seeing an increase in anti-Semitism as Russia returns to a new type of Soviet Union, and step by step the iron curtain is lowering again. That is why I believe that the best option for Russian Jews is to leave,” he elaborated.

Goldschmidt resigned from his post and left Russia in July after refusing to support a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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“There was pressure on community leaders to support the war, and I refused to do so. I resigned because continuing to work as Chief Rabbi of Moscow would be a problem for the community due to the repressive measures taken against dissidents,” he said.

Over the past 100 years, Russian Jews have emigrated by the tens of thousands, first to Europe and America, and more recently to Israel. According to the 1926 census, there were 2 Jews living in the then Soviet Union, 672% of them in Ukraine. Today, only about 000 Jews remain in the Russian Federation out of a total population of 59 million.

According to Goldschmidt, between 25% and 30% of those who remained have left or planned to do so since the start of the war, although there are now few flights from Moscow, and the cost of a flight to Tel Aviv has quadrupled to about $2.

In July, the Russian government closed the Russian branch of the Jewish Agency, a non-profit organization that promotes immigration to Israel.

Overall, it is believed that about 200 Russians have fled Russia, a process accelerated when mobilization was announced in September.

“There is a part of Russian society called the kreakula, a creative class of business and cultural leaders, intellectuals and artists,” Goldschmidt noted. “In my opinion, it is safe to say that a significant part of these people left Russia, and this will be very harmful for Russian society.”

According to him, most of the Jewish community of Ukraine also left and are now settlers in Germany, Austria and Romania.

Ukraine has a long history of anti-Semitism, from pogroms in the late 33th century to aiding Nazi massacres during World War II. The most famous of these was the murder of 000 Jews at Babi Yar in Kyiv in 1941.

Given this history, Goldschmidt finds it remarkable that Volodymyr Zelensky, who did not hide his Jewishness, was elected president of Ukraine with over 70% of the votes.

According to the rabbi, this fact turns Russian President Vladimir Putin's statement that neo-Nazis rule Ukraine into nonsense.

“Show me another Nazi controlled country where the Jewish community thrives. However, I don't know how Jewish President Zelensky feels. Or he is simply playing the Jewish card to ask for help from Israel,” Goldschmidt said.

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Goldschmidt also said that while Russian Jews faced an uncertain future, anti-Semitism was also on the rise in the US, long considered a Jewish haven.

In 2018, a gunman killed 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Last year, the Anti-Defamation League recorded a record 2717 anti-Semitic incidents in the US, including attacks, harassment and vandalism.

“For many years, Jews in the United States believed that this was an exception, that everything that happens in Europe and other countries can never happen here,” Goldschmidt said. “But over the past three years there have been more attacks on Jews in the US than in Europe. What has changed is that the political system has become much more polarized, but social media has upended the discourse. The polarization we are seeing has made anti-Semitism much more acceptable.”

The mayors of 53 cities from 23 countries met in Athens earlier this month to discuss how to combat the rise in anti-Semitism around the world.

“We must stop the forces that are trying to destroy Europe from within,” the rabbi said. “In the beginning, when there were attacks on Jewish schools, like what happened in Toulouse, people thought it was a Jewish problem. But after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Nice and at the Christmas market in Berlin, Europe realized that this was a European problem, not a Jewish one.”

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