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May 21, 2004/Sivan 1 5764, Vol. 56, No.35
Day marks Russian Jews' progress
LEV KRICHEVSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
MOSCOW - For many decades, Isaak has lived on an apartment block next to the Choral Synagogue in Arkhipova Street here, just a stone's throw from the Kremlin.
But he never went inside the synagogue, nor did he join the crowds that in Soviet times gathered in front of the building on weekend nights and on Jewish holidays to celebrate their Jewish identity.
"You have to understand me: I was a Communist, I had a good job - why would I need all this?" said Isaak, 78, a retired engineer who used to work for the City of Moscow, and who asked that his last name not be used.
But Isaak, who later moved to the outskirts of the Russian capital, took a trip to the downtown synagogue May 16 to take part in celebrations for Israel's 56th Independence Day. "I wanted to see how many Jews are left in Moscow," he said half-jokingly.
There are quite a few, actually: Moscow is home to between 100,000 and 250,000 people with Jewish heritage, but most of them are not involved in community affairs. Still, the celebration showed just how far thecommunity has come since the collapse of Communism, when many Jews were afraid to acknowledge their heritage.
The Jewish Agency for Israel organized the event together with the Russian Jewish Congress and Moscow's Jewish community. Some 5,000 to 7,000 attended.
Organizers chose the venue for the festival because it had a significant historic meaning for Israeli-Russian relations. In the fall of 1948, a visit by Golda Meir, Israel's first ambassador to Moscow, to what was then Moscow's only synagogue sparked a spontaneous pro-Israeli demonstration of some 40,000 Soviet Jews. In the 1970s and 1980s, this street was the center of Jewish life in Moscow. It was the only place where thousands of Soviet Jews - under the surveillance of KGB agents, of course - could openly express their Jewish identity and their desire to immigrate to Israel.
But Jewish life has changed since Soviet times.
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