Reform Loses out to Chabad in Battle for Moscow Synagogue

The head of the world movement of Reform Judaism has charged that Chabad used underhanded tactics to gain control of a disputed synagogue in Moscow.

“Chabad spread lies and acted irresponsibly throughout this entire affair,” said Rabbi Richard Hirsch, executive director of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, which is based here.

“They are trying to keep the Reform movement from being established in the Soviet Union, but they won’t succeed,” he said.

But in New York, a spokesman for Chabad called the Reform movement’s charges “completely unfounded.”

“It displays a degree of desperation on their part and reminds me of the saying, ‘When your argument gets weak, yell as loud as you can,'” said Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, spokesman for the Lubavitcher Hasidic movement.

The dispute, which was resolved by the Moscow City Council on May 7 in favor of Chabad, involves the former Moscow mansion of Eliezer Poliakov.

Poliakov was a wealthy banker and railroad magnate of the pre-revolutionary era, and his home included a private synagogue. The building was seized before World War I by the czarist government when Poliakov’s enterprises failed. In recent years, it was occupied by the All-Union House of Folk Arts.

Late last year, Hineni, the Reform congregation of Moscow, received permission to use the synagogue, which had been turned into a theater. Reform services on Friday nights drew crowds of several hundred people.

Orthodox leaders in Moscow, including Chabad rabbis and the leaders of the Great Synagogue, objected to this arrangement and pressured the city authorities to keep Hineni from using the building.

A PUBLIC SCANDAL

Reform and Orthodox leaders fought over the building for several months in numerous meetings with the Moscow authorities.

Rabbi Hirsch, who visited Moscow in April, charged that Chabad “lied to the authorities. They said we were a political and not a religious movement, and that the Poliakov synagogue had belonged to the Hasidic community.

“Chabad acted irresponsibly,” he charged, “by making a public scandal over the building in front of the authorities. This makes the Jewish community look terrible.”

But in New York, Krinsky of Chabad said the accusations were “very vituperative, convoluted and distorted.” He said the Reform leaders should “really be a little more sophisticated and respectful in their statements.”

Krinsky maintained that Poliakov and his family were “very prominent Lubavitch Hasidim who supported the work of Lubavitch in Russia” as far back as the early 1900s.

“Eliezer Poliakov gave the house to Lubavitch Hasidim to pray in before the revolution, in the early 1900s, and they used it constantly for decades,” he said. “It was taken away in 1938 or ’39, confiscated by the Communists, who changed it into some kind of cultural center.”

“The Reform sect never had any Reform temple in Moscow before World War II,” he said. “I have no idea why it was given to Reform or taken by them in the meantime. This has nothing to do with the rightful ownership of the building.”

But Hirsch said, “We have a letter from the Jewish Historical Society of Moscow attesting to the fact that the building was never a Hasidic synagogue.”

The Moscow City Council resolution says that another building will be provided for the Hineni congregation. Chabad is supposed to bear the costs of renovating the Poliakov building and moving the present occupants to other quarters.

(JTA staff writer Debra Nussbaum Cohen in New York contributed to this report.)