After nearly a year of relative calm, Moscow’s largest synagogue was the target of a second attack in less than a week.
Seven shots from a BB gun were fired at Moscow’s Choral Synagogue at about 11 p.m. on Oct. 12, coming four days after the Oct. 9 attempted bombing of the shul.
Four of the shots pierced the glass windows of the synagogue’s vestibule.
In the Oct. 9 attack, a Molotov cocktail was hurled into the synagogue’s entranceway but failed to explode. Synagogue staff members subsequently called the police, and a bomb squad arrived to retrieve the unexploded Molotov cocktail. Police have so far failed to locate anyone responsible for either of the attacks.
The two incidents correspond roughly with the beginning and end of a recent conference that brought 80 rabbis to Moscow from all over the world to discuss the future of Jewish life in the states of the former Soviet Union.
“There might be some connection,” said Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, chief rabbi of Moscow and spiritual leader of the Choral Synagogue.
“I also know the police were very concerned about the October memorial days (commemorating last year’s fight for control of the Russian government, when Russian tanks fired on the Parliament). So it might be connected to that, or to the upheaval in the financial markets. Anything is possible,” said Goldschmidt.
He said these attacks were the first since last November, when vandals threw stones that broke a number of windows at the synagogue.
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