Because he does not support the war against Ukraine, Moscow’s Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmid has to flee abroad. Now the priest is calling on the Jews who remain in Russia to follow his example – while they still can. His concern: The Kremlin could direct the dissatisfaction of the population to the Jewish community.
Moscow’s former Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt has called on Jews living in Russia to flee the country. Jews should leave Russia while they still can, before being made scapegoats for the misery caused by the war in Ukraine, Goldschmidt said in an interview with Britain’s The Guardian newspaper.
“If you look back at Russian history, you can see that whenever the political system was in danger, the government tried to direct the anger and discontent of the masses towards the Jewish community. We saw that in the tsarist era and on seen the end of the Stalinist regime,” Pinchas told the newspaper.
“We are witnessing increasing anti-Semitism as Russia returns to a new kind of Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain is lowered step by step,” the rabbi added. “Therefore, I believe that the best option for Russian Jews is to leave the country.”
Goldschmidt is chairman of the European Rabbinical Conference. In July, after refusing to support the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he was forced to resign from his position as chief rabbi of Moscow, which he had held since 1993, and to leave the country.
Also in July, the Russian Ministry of Justice applied for the dissolution of the Russian branch of the organization “Jewish Agency for Israel”. She helps Jews move to Israel. Russia’s Jews have emigrated in the tens of thousands over the past 100 years, first to Europe and America and more recently to Israel. As “The Guardian” reported, citing the 1926 census, there were 2,672,000 Jews living in the then Soviet Union, 59% of them in Ukraine. Today, only about 165,000 Jews live in Russia – out of a total population of 145 million.
