President Vladimir Putin and Russia's chief rabbi Berl Lazar officially opened a new Jewish Community Centre in Moscow on Monday.

"This is the first Jewish community centre in Eastern Europe", Putin said after cutting the ribbon in a ceremony that was attended by the chairman of Moscow's Beis Menahem Jewish Community Centre, Alexander Boroda, the president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, Mikhail Gluz, and many other dignitaries.

"I see that many women have brought their children with them here, which means that the centre already lives", the president said, drawing a round of applause from the guests.

Putin said the opening of the centre was "quite a remarkable event".

"The spiritual rebirth of our country is not possible without understanding that the culture of Russia is made up of the wealth of traditions of all people who have been living on this land for centuries. We will not be able to build out future or understand the present without leaning on them, without this vivifying link between times and cultures", he said.

"The history of Russia was created by the lives of all of its peoples. Each person, each people added unique colours of their own discoveries, energy and talent to the pallet of our common culture. The Jewish people have all of this and more", Putin said.

He expressed the hope that the centre will help promote the broadest ties between Russians who live not only in Israel but in other countries as well.

The president said it is very important and useful for Russia to maintain and develop relations with its diaspora of any nationality. "We understand that the role of the Russian diaspora in the development of economic and public ties with foreign countries is very big", he concluded.

 
FIRST JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER IN EASTERN EUROPE OPENS IN MOSCOW
Interfax Russian News, 18 September 2000

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday evening opened the Beis Menahem Jewish community center in Moscow, the first such center in Eastern Europe.

Before the opening ceremony, Putin met with Russia's Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar, Chairman of the Moscow Jewish Community Center Alexander Boroda and President of the Federation of Russia's Jewish Communities Mikhail Gluz.

At Putin's request, the hosts showed him round the new center.

Opening the center, Putin and Lazar cut a symbolic ribbon, an Interfax correspondent reports.

Addressing the public, Putin described the event as "remarkable." "Our country's spiritual revival is unthinkable without the understanding that Russian culture is a combination of the traditions of all the people who have lived in Russia for centuries," Putin said.

"Without their support and without this life-giving link between the epochs and cultures, we cannot build our future or understand present-day life," he said.

"An upsurge experienced by the Russian Jewish community is an integral part of the general revival of folk traditions and spiritual values in Russia. New cultural and religious centers are being opened and vast educational programs are being implemented. Today, we are opening the first Jewish community center in Eastern Europe," the Russian president said.

He said that in St. Petersburg, some time ago, he opened the first Jewish school for boys. Only recently, fearing emigration, "people were forced to study their native language secretly." "Who will live here in such conditions? The merger of cultures and the intertwining and development of national traditions is making our life more diversified and our country spiritually richer and more confident," Putin said.

He expressed the hope that the Center will help broaden relations with compatriots living in Israel and in other countries.

"Symbolically, the center has been built here, on the ground where the burnt synagogue stood- a place of prayers since the 1920s and a center of Jewish community life. Today, we are opening an artistic, educational, cultural and, most importantly, family center. Society largely depends on the emotional well-being of the family, on the succession of traditions passed from one generation to another," he said.

He said that educational activity is an important aspect of community life in general. "I think this allows us to understand the history and culture of the Jewish people better and create a favorable moral atmosphere in society. I would like to express special thanks to the Federation of Jewish Communities, which was set up only a year ago but has asserted itself as a constructive and influential organization," said Putin.

He said that the Russian leading structures "feel the influence of the Federation of Jewish Communities."

Putin said that Russia's history is created by all the people who live in it. "Every person and every ethnic group has been adding the colors of their own discoveries, energy and talent to the palette of our common culture," Putin said.

"As we know, the ideas of the good unite people. May guests always fill the Russian house of the Jewish community," said the Russian president.

MAMMOTH JEWISH CENTER OPENS
by Anna Badkhen
Moscow Times, 18 September 2000

With great pomp, rabbis proudly threw open the doors of Russia's largest Jewish community center Monday evening. President Vladimir Putin and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov joined several hundred guests at a ceremony opening the seven-story, 75,000-square-meter center, which had been under construction for four years.

"The rise experienced today by Russia's Jewish community (is a) natural part of the overall process of the revival of national traditions and spiritual values in Russia," Putin said.

The $ 12 million center contains a synagogue, a library, restaurants, a gymnasium, a fitness center, a theater, a computer lab, and two mikvahs, or ritual baths. It stands beside the Maryina Roshcha Lubavich synagogue. The synagogue was razed by a fire in 1993 and damaged by bomb attacks in 1996 and 1998.

Jewish leaders at the center hailed its opening and Putin's visit as a sign that semitism is fading.

"It's good for him (Putin) and it's good for Russia," Avraham Berkowitz, executive director of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia, which owns the center, was quoted by Reuters as saying. "The president's arrival heralds a new era for religious democracy in Russia." The center is the brainchild of Rabbi Berl Lazar, one of two rabbis vying for the leadership of the nation's Jewish community and the leader of the ultra -orthodox Chabad Lubavich movement. He also heads the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia, or FEOR, which is widely believed to be preferred by the Kremlin over the rival group Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations.

FEOR named Lazar the chief rabbi of Russia in June and said that the nation's chief rabbi since the 1980s, the congress' Adolf Shaevich, was an impostor.

The Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations, an umbrella group of more than 90 congregations, is allied with the Russian Jewish Congress, a secular group headed by Media-MOST founder Vladimir Gusinsky. Gusinsky, amid accusations that he was under attack from the Kremlin, was jailed for a few days in June on fraud charges.

Shaevich and other congress members did not attend the center's opening Monday.

One of the congress leaders, Pinchas Goldshmidt, said by telephone that the congress was "not honored with an invitation." Goldshmidt welcomed the opening but said that "even more people in the Jewish community would be rejoicing" had the FEOR not become "a weapon" in the hands of "circles within and close to the Kremlin." It was not clear Monday what role, if any, the Kremlin had played in the building of the center. Mikhail Chlenov, president of VAAD, another Jewish umbrella organization, said "state support" of the center is "obvious," although he doubted that the government had contributed financially to its construction.

The government has handed over to the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations 60 19th-century torah scrolls confiscated during the Soviet era or seized by Nazi forces during World War II, Itar-Tass reported late last week. The congress and FEOR had fought over the scrolls, which will remain government property.

Four scrolls have already been released and are being sent on a tour of synagogues, starting in Kaliningrad, an enclave on the Baltic Sea, and then to Samara, Saratov, Yekaterinburg and Irkutsk.

- Ana Uzelac contributed to this article.

PUTIN, MAKING A GESTURE TO JEWS, SLIPS INTO A FACTINAL MORASS
by Michael Wines
New York Times, 18 September 2000

Protected by hundreds of policemen who all but sealed off a Moscow neighborhood, President Vladimir V. Putin visited the site of a bombed-out synagogue tonight to dedicate a $12 million Jewish community center -- a stone-and-glass demonstration, he said, of a new era of tolerance in Russia.

It was a strong symbolic gesture of support by a Russian leader for a faith that suffered decades of persecution during Soviet times. But it also placed Mr. Putin once more in the middle of a bitter feud within Russia's reviving Jewish minority -- and raised questions among critics about his motives.

Mr. Putin spent about 90 minutes on the grounds of the Marina Roshcha synagogue, one of only two allowed in Moscow during Soviet times.

 In a speech, he praised what he called "the general revival of folk traditions and spiritual values in Russia," a trend he said would only strengthen the nation. And he decried anti-Semitic practices of the past, expressing bewilderment at one point that Russian Jews were forced by discrimination to hide their faith and study Hebrew secretly.

"Who will live here in such conditions?" he asked. "Our country's spiritual revivial is unthinkable without the understanding that Russian culture is a combination of the traditions of all the people who have lived in Russia for centuries.

"Every person and every ethnic group has been adding the colors of their own discoveries, energy and talent to the palette of our common culture," he said.

Mr. Putin's comments were all the more symbolic because the Marina Roshcha synagogue, which remained intact during Soviet rule, had been attacked three times after the Soviet Union's collapse, virtually destroyed by a 1993 fire and by bombings in 1996 and 1998.

The last attack was part of a wave of anti-Semitic protest, led by ultra-nationalists and supported by some of the Parliament's Communist majority, which was sharply denounced by President Boris N. Yeltsin.

The executive director of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Commonwealth of Independent States, Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, said Mr. Putin's attendance had "broken down a barrier that stood for 70 years" of Soviet control.

"We believe this will create an incredible wave of Jewish pride and awareness," he said. "We believe the government is not anti-Semitic, and we believe the government will help us to flourish and grow. The message here -- to all minorities of all religions -- is that they will be given the opportuniuty to grow in a new democratic Russia."

Tonight's ceremony, which was attended by the American ambassador, James Collins, was the most explicit Russian commitment to religious freedom since then.

But it was also notable because Mr. Putin effectively gave a government blessing to the Chabad Lubavich movement, the Hasidic sect that ran the synagogue, operates the community center and has a growing presence across Russia.

The movement has been locked in a murky feud with the more mainstream Russian Jewish Congress since last year, when it formed the Federation of Jewish Communities as a rival group.

Since then, the federation has elected a Lubavich rabbi, Berl Lazar, to be chief rabbi of Russia, a move to depose Rabbi Adolf Shayevich of the congress, who had long held that title.

Mr. Shayevich has said a senior Kremlin official pressed him to resign in favor of Mr. Lazar. Mr. Shayevich was also absent from Mr. Putin's inauguration as president in May, although representatives of the Lubavich movement were present.

Some in the Jewish congress have suggested that the government is trying to split Russia's emerging Jewish movement, and therefore weaken it.

Political experts here speculate that the Kremlin is actually taking aim at the president of the Russian Jewish Congress, Vladimir Gusinsky, the tycoon whose Media-Most journalistic empire is perhaps Mr. Putin's fiercest critic in the press, and who has been a regular target of Kremlin attacks.

For their part, Lubavich officials say the notion of favoritism is fantasy -- and in fact, the evidence to support it is mostly anecdotal.

In his speech tonight, Mr. Putin said the Federation of Jewish Communities had "asserted itself as a constructive and influential organization" that had already made itself felt in the Russian power hierarchy.

Tonight the mainstream chief rabbi of Moscow, Pinchas Goldschmidt, praised the Lubavich movement for its work in building the community center and promoting a revival of Judaism. But he said he had "strong reservations about their having let themselves be used by forces outside the Jewish community against other parts of the community."

"The whole federation is a creation of forces near or inside the Kremlin," he said. "It's unfortunate, but it's true."

Rabbi Lazar expressed surprise at that in an interview tonight. "I think we've proven that we're not planning on being used," he said.