New Beginnings,For years, the names Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa held sinister undertones for the Jewish nation, but the long, chilly history of Eastern Europe’s intolerance for Judaism has begun to thaw, and a new generation of Jews is once again openly studying Torah. Mishpacha gained a close-up glimpse of the blossoming of Torah in the former Soviet Union, and the impact of an innovative new learning program that brings the Chofetz Chaim’s words to life in the very country where he wrote them.
The calendar says it’s springtime but in Moscow spring can be indistinguishable from winter. Snow is falling and even though it’s not sticking a workman sprinkles salt from a black bucket onto the sidewalk so pedestrians will keep their traction.
It is just past “rush hour” in this city of 10 million people so no one seems to be in a hurry any more. Moscow’s famed traffic jams have cleared up as blue-and-white electric buses whiz by sharing the same lane with cars. It is hard to tell who has the right of way if anyone. After a snowy winter most license plates are barely legible splattered as they are with a mixture of frost soot and exhaust fumes.
Russia like many other nations of the former Soviet Union (FSU) has traversed a spiritual distance from the earth to the heavens since Communism fell twenty years ago. Moscow Kiev and Odessa were once places where Torah learning could mean jail exile to Siberia or worse. Today the same venues are home to vibrant Jewish communities where Torah is learned openly — even in Red Square in full view of the Kremlin.
I felt as comfortable wearing my black hat here as I would in any US city. When I commented about this to Moscow’s Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt he said I shouldn’t have been surprised. “It is safer for a Jew to wear his yarmulke on the streets of Moscow than in Brussels or Paris” he said. Personal safety notwithstanding the survival of Jewish communities in the FSU is remarkable and their growth is measurable.
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