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August 27, 2004/Elul 10 5763, Vol. 55, No. 49
Synagogue donor among Russian crash victims
LEV KRICHEVSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
MOSCOW - One of the main funders of a renovation project at a Moscow synagogue was among at least 89 people killed in a plane crash this week in Russia.
"Who was he? He was a good Jew," Yitzhak Kogan of Moscow's Bolshaya Bronnaya Synagogue said of Tengiz Yakobashvili of Moscow.
Yakobashvili's friend and business partner, David Cohen of St. Petersburg, also died in the Aug. 24 crash of a flight bound from Moscow to the southern Russian city of Volgograd.
A second flight, from Moscow to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, crashed a few minutes later.
The cause is still to be determined, but officials were not ruling out a possible terrorist connection - per-haps to separatist Chechen rebels, who have been fighting a prolonged war with Russia.
Both of the confirmed Jewish victims were of Georgian descent, and both reportedly held Israeli citizenship.
Cohen reportedly had lived in Israel for several years. Yakobashvili's wife and children are believed to live currently in the Jewish state.
Cohen was a well-known, active member of the Georgian Jewish community here, Menachem Mendel Pevzner, St. Petersburg's chief rabbi, told JTA. He was in his early 50s.
The two passenger liners vanished from radar screens at the same time, around 11 p.m. on Aug. 24. Several hours later, the remains of the Volgograd-bound plane were discovered near a village in Central Russia's Tula region.
The remains of the second plane were recovered later near Rostov-on-Don.
A happy coincidence spared the life of Zalman Yoffe, a Chabad rabbi in Volgograd who said he was supposed to be on one of the flights that crashed.
Yoffe had a meeting with donors in Moscow scheduled for Aug. 24, and then was due to return home. He re-scheduled his return flight when the meeting was postponed by a day.
"Thank God I was saved, but this doesn't make the tragedy any smaller, because dozens were killed, including two Jews," he told JTA.
Yoffe said he would take the same flight Aug. 25 so he could console victims' relatives, Jewish or non-Jewish.
"This is our common tragedy," he said. "We as Jews shouldn't be indifferent to other people's tragedies."
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