Moscow rabbi urges return of sacred Jewish books

MOSCOW,
February 1
(RIA Novosti)

- The rabbi of a Moscow synagogue has asked Russia's authorities to return thousands of "Jewish sacred objects" seized by Soviet authorities.

"There are 12,000 books of the Lubavitcher Rebbe nearby, in the Lenin Library. This is the heritage of Lubavitcher Hasids," Yitzhak Kogan told a news conference in the synagogue. The books should be moved back into the possession of Hasidic Jews, he said.

Kogan was referring to the Schneersons' library in Lubavichi (on the territory of the present Smolensk Region), which was the center of a branch of the Hasidic movement.

Most of the items from the library, built up by the Schneerson dynasty over a 200 year period, were confiscated by Soviet authorities and have since been kept in the Lenin Library.

In the early 1990s Jewish activists held regular pickets near the library in an attempt to get the manuscripts back. They are reported to believe that the manuscripts would give them new mystic evidence, as well as prophesies about the future, and would help them to extend the influence of the Lubavitcher movement worldwide.