RUSSIA RELIGION NEWS


Jewish scholar and prominent rabbi kicked out of Russia

TULA COURT DECIDES TO DEPORT TO ISRAEL CHIEF RABBI OF THE CITY

Portal-credo.ru, 31 December 2014

 

Zeev Vagner, the chief rabbi of Tula, will be deported from Russia to Israel; this was the decision reached on 26 December by the Soviet district court of the city. He was found guilty of violating the rules for staying in Russia after he had indicated that the goal of his entry into the Russian federation was tourism, the local publication Tsentr71 reports.

 

According to the attorney of the accused, Mikhail Pera, the rabbi does not intend to file an appeal but he does not agree with the sentence and he denies in every way the charges made, insisting that the goal he indicated upon entry into Russia corresponds to reality. The publication maintains that according to the indictment, he "began to conduct preaching in the city."

 

After considering the materials of the case, the court found that Vagner's guilt had been proven and it sentenced him to an administrative fine of 2,000 rubles and expulsion from the Russian federation, the article says.

 

According to information from the Moscow Jewish Community Center, Zeev Vagner, a citizen of Israel, was appointed rabbi of Tula in May 2012; before that he had been appointed chief rabbi of the Central Federal District of Russia. Vagner was one of the pioneers of the Jewish movement in Russia in the 1970s. He participated in publication of the magazine Tarbut, one of whose goals was religious enlightenment. Vagner was repatriated in 1976 and founded a yeshiva in Israel, edited the religious philosophical magazine Vozrozhdenie, and collaborated with the publication Shamir, which publishes religious literature in the Russian language. He has spent much time in Moscow since 1989, where he managed a number of religious and cultural projects. Vagner is the president of the academic foundation Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia and he is deputy editor of the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia [or Encyclopedia of Russian Jewry—tr.], and he also is a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. (tr. by PDS, posted 2 January 2015)


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