About 80 rabbis from around the world gathered here last week for a historic conference aimed at charting the future of Jewish life in the former Soviet Union.
Outreach activities, education and kashrut were the main discussion topics at the Oct. 10-12 meeting, which brought together religious leaders from countries including Ukraine, Georgia, Russia, Belarus and Azerbaijan as well as France, Germany, Italy, Venezuela and the United States.
It was the first rabbinical get-together of this size and scope in Russia since the start of perstroika in 1987, according to Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, chief rabbi of Moscow.
The conference combined meetings of the Standing Committee of the European Conference of Rabbis, which includes the chief rabbis of 15 European countries, with sessions of the Conference of Rabbis from the Former Soviet States.
The meetings were marked by cooperation among leaders of several competing Jewish religious organizations.
“The conference united all the rabbinic leaders, without exception. We were able to build consensus and establish a common denominator for our work,” said Goldschmidt.
On a practical level, members of the conference passed a number of resolutions to improve and expand kashering facilities in the former Soviet Union.
On an ideological level, a recurrent theme was the need to expand outreach. The rabbis agreed that the euphoria over the newfound religious freedom in the former Soviet states is waning. “As the country becomes more and more Westernized, the community will look more and more like Western communities,” said Goldschmidt.
“We’re dealing with a very assimilated community. As it becomes easier to get local money for the local community structure, and as Jews find it easier to lead a Jewish life, they have much less time and interest in experiencing Judaism and learning about Judaism,” he said.
Some of the financial backing for the conference came from the Jewish Agency for Israel, which is supporting the activities of a number of rabbis in the former Soviet Union.
The involvement of the Jewish Agency signals an important shift, according to Goldschmidt. “There’s been in the past a notion, mostly of Israeli organizations, that building the structures of community will hamper aliyah,” he said.
These days, he noted, the understanding is just the opposite: that people associated with the Jewish community are more likely to go to Israel.
The conference took place at the Novotel hotel near Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.
It was a major step forward for rabbis who formerly associated meetings in the former Soviet Union with lumpy beds, broken toilets and imported kosher food, Goldschmidt said.
With pride, he noted that all the kosher food for the conference was produced locally.
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