Moscow’s Jewish community on Monday celebrated the return to the city’s largest synagogue of an annex requisitioned by the Soviet government 50 years ago for wartime use as a hospital.
Moscow Mayor Gavriil Popov headed a high-level city delegation at the event, which was the culmination of four years of efforts to persuade the country’s leadership to turn the facility over to the Choral Synagogue.
The ceremony was a formality. The building has, in fact, already been in use for several weeks as a yeshiva and Jewish cultural center.
“The relations between the state and the country’s different faiths have truly changed, and we can feel this,” Rabbi Adolf Shayevitch, Moscow’s chief rabbi, told the gathering.
“We are truly free now and do what we wish in accordance with religious laws,” he said.
“We cannot, of course, say that absolutely everything is well,” Shayevitch added. “But the main thing is good will on both sides. We now have a law on freedom of conscience. How things develop depends largely on us ourselves.”
Yuri Luzhkov, head of the Moscow City Council’s executive council, said the return of the annex illustrates his administration’s good relations with the 27 practicing faiths in the Soviet capital.
He presented Shayevitch with a symbolic key to the building, which was used in the postwar period as a medical institute.
“We sincerely believe that no one apart from a religious faith can take on the spiritual education of people, especially young people,” said Luzhkov.
“Our efforts have been consistently in this direction, and we hope they are effective. Let us hope they will continue to gain ground within our country,” he said.
Also attending the ceremony was Rabbi Arthur Schneier of New York, president of the ecumenical Appeal of Conscience Foundation, who consistently pressed for the return of the annex with top Soviet officials, including Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
His efforts were realized last year, when the City Council gave final legislative authority to effect the transfer.
Schneier, who affixed a silver mezuzah to the main entrance of the building, told the gathering he had seen the barred door to the annex on his first visit to Moscow in the 1960s and said it reflected the isolation of Soviet Jewry for many years.
Other guests at the official transfer ceremony included Israeli Consul General Arye Levin, U.S. Minister Counselor Joseph Hulings 3rd and the chairman of the Soviet Council for Religious Affairs, Yuri Christoradnov.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
