Moscow recognizes Jewish projects

The mayor of Moscow recognized the president of a Chabad-led umbrella group for his efforts developing the city.

Alexander Boroda, the head of the Federation of Jewish Communities, developed a sprawling complex in the Marina Roscha district that includes the largest synagogue and Jewish community center in Eastern Europe, a medical and charity center, and an educational complex.

Plans call for a Museum of Tolerance in the district dedicated to Jewish history with a focus on Russia.

Mayor Yury Luzhkov noted Boroda's "great contribution to the development of the construction industry in Moscow and many years of dedicated work," according to the federation's Web site.

Luzhkov has deep connections to the booming real estate and development industries of Moscow. His wife, Yelena Baturina, Russia's only female billionaire, heads one of the largest construction companies in the capital.

Real estate analysts say it is nearly impossible to gain ground for any major development project without the city government's blessing.

The Kremlin's chief rabbi

MOSCOW - Any rabbi in Israel would be envious of Berl Lazar, chief rabbi Of Russia. From his spacious, wood-paneled office at the top of the Jewish Community Center that is located in the Marina Rocha neighborhood, he holds sway over more than 200 communities that comprise, according to unofficial estimates, more than 1 million Jews. The Kremlin considers him the leader of Russia's Jews and Lazar enjoys President Vladimir Putin's trust. He is likely to receive the same treatment from Putin's successor-elect, Dmitri Medvedev. He is backed by billionaire Lev Leviev, who sees the rehabilitation of Jewish religious life in Russia as his life's ambition.

These are good times for Lazar. The Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia (FEOR), which he heads, celebrated its 10th anniversary last week. After years of harsh struggles among the Jewish organizations in Moscow, FEOR has established its leading status. Fact: Even the president of the rival organization, the Jewish Congress of Russia (KEROOR), Arcadi Gaydamak, came to the anniversary celebration to offer his congratulations.

Only 10 years ago, the international Jewish organizations and the Jewish Agency thought the Jewish community in Russia had reached the end of its road. The best of its sons and daughters had immigrated to Israel or to the United States, and it seemed as though the handful who remained would close shop and leave. According to official data, there are currently 250,000 Jews in Russia, but the leaders of the community and many experts believe the real number of is closer to 1 million, half of whom live in Moscow.

Lazar, 43, came to Moscow from New York 18 years ago as the Lubavitcher Rebbe's emissary. Last Wednesday, he oversaw his son's bar mitzvah celebration at the Community Center. The Rolls Royces of the oligarchs who arrived as his guests, surrounded by bodyguards, packed the narrow street. In a city that worships political and financial power, Lazar is considered a significant locus of power.

But should he be envied? It is hard to think of a rabbi who in recent years has been the object of quite so much criticism - a level of vituperation reminiscent of the czarist era. He has been accused of everything: of using economic and political power to get rid of rivals, of forcing Chabad on Russia's secular Jewry, of serving as an "informer" and turning Jews in to the authorities and of whitewashing cases of anti-Semitism to curry favor with the regime. Even within his own movement, Chabad, there were those who said he had not advanced the interests of the religious in order not to damage his good relations with the regime.

Once a quiet life

"I didn't want to be elected chief rabbi," says Lazar in an interview to Haaretz in which he responds for the first time to accusations against him. "The heads of the communities approached me several times, and I said no. Before that, for 10 years I had lived a very quiet and satisfying life here, but they asked again and again and I gave in. I knew that a public figure does not have an easy life, but today I feel very comfortable with myself. It might have been possible to have achieved more, but these are things that could be done."

Why do you think that they are attacking you from so many directions?

"There are people who love success and are trying to blame other people. There are certain possibilities in this community, and we are trying to do the things that need to be done. In this country there is no other way to do this job."

Lazar outright rejects the accusations that he whitewashes incidents of anti-Semitism to help Putin's regime. In the past, a document to this effect was prepared at Nativ but was never published. Lazar's opponents say it was his own lobbying that won him the administration's official recognition as the chief rabbi of Russia instead of Rabbi Adolf Shayevich who had held the position since 1980. Similar accusations were raised several weeks ago after FEOR published figures according to which during the past year there was a drop in the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Russia. The Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University claims, however, that it is possible there has even been an increase in anti- Semitism.

"We are living here every day, we are working with the courts and the police and we put pressure on the government in every case of anti-Semitism," says Lazar in defense of FEOR's record. "Every community knows it is necessary to inform us immediately of every incident; we have a special hotline and we are the first to know and publish everything. Check into the cases that other organizations report to the world, and you will see that their source is our report. There is anti-Semitism and xenophobia here and this is not good, but to say there is an increase in anti-Semitism is simply incorrect."

Aren't you playing into the hands of the authorities, who are perhaps trying to hush up the problem of anti-Semitism?

"Playing into their hands? Of course. If they deserve credit, they deserve it. And when criticism is deserved, we speak out. There's a carrot and a stick, and we mustn't use only the stick."

They say that Putin makes calculating use of the Jews in order to advance his agenda. Are you convinced his affection for the Jews is authentic?

"I have no doubt. There are reasons for this that have to do with his childhood. Jewish teachers helped him very much and he had Jewish neighbors and friends. I once showed him a picture of the synagogue in St. Petersburg. He told me it couldn't be the right building because he remembers how as a boy he would go in there with a friend and eat the leftover matzas. I explained to him that we had simply renovated the building."

Putin is now saying in talks with Jewish leaders that one of the greatest mistakes of the Soviet leadership was that Jewish community life, as well as contact with world Jewry, were perceived as a threat to the regime. Even those who are among Putin's harshest critics, like former minister Natan Sharansky, believe this.

"I have serious complaints about his behavior," Sharansky said last week, "but I believe that in his attitude towards the Jews he is telling the truth."

Lazar: "Until now there has been good work done with the Russian administration regarding restoring assets and rebuilding community institutions. Now they also need to support the spiritual process and the restoration of the Jewish knowledge that was lost during the years of Communism. Putin understands this - a few months ago, he announced a donation of a month's salary to the establishment of the Jewish Museum."

Perhaps he is doing this only in order to gain points in the international arena?

"He doesn't need points in the United States."

What the Russian people wants, says Lazar, is stability "so a person knows that he can open a business without being afraid that someone is going to take it away from him."

And will Medvedev provide this stability?

"He is a very intelligent and open individual, who cares about Russia's future and the relations with the Jewish community. This can be seen in his visit here in the community, three days before it was announced he was the candidate. All of a sudden, he showed up at the synagogue for two and a half hours. Afterward, when Putin announced he would be the candidate, what they showed on Russian television were the pictures from that visit."

As for rumors spread by nationalist and anti-Semitic circles concerning Medvedev's Jewish roots, he prefers not to respond.

Criticism within Chabad

Not only slander has been Lazar's lot during his years in Russia. He was sent by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, as one of the first Chabad emissaries to Russia at the end of the 1980s. His mission was to revive religious life in Moscow and in Russia. During the first years, his large family lived in a small, decaying apartment. His eldest daughter came down with spinal meningitis, and after suitable medical treatment was not found for her in Russia the family went to Finland and from there to Israel, where the child eventually died.

Lazar's devotion to the movement, and the fact that during his years in the country the Chabad rabbis established their nearly exclusive control of established Jewish life, do not render him immune to criticism within the movement. Some of the factions in the Hasidut are not pleased with the nearly total control that Lazar has obtained in Russia, with the backing of Leviev, who is currently the most significant donor to Chabad activity.

An especially fraught issue is the fate of the Chabad Library, a large collection of antique books that belonged to the previous Lubavitcher rebbe and were confiscated by the Communists. Before his death, the Rebbe appointed four personal emissaries to deal with the issue, in order to pressure the Russian authorities, who relate to the library as a national asset and are refusing to hand it over to them. Some Chabad officials say Lazar prefers to see to his personal connections with the Putin government rather than help restore the library. His supporters, however, say that the four emissaries made every possible mistake and succeeded only in increasing the anti-Semitism in Russia through their actions.

Lazar himself is very cautious when he relates to this matter: "The Rebbe sent four rabbis to deal with the matter of the library. This is their mission. When they contact me, I will look into what can possibly be done about the matter. I have never been asked by them to deal with this. This is a matter of a decision by the Chabad center."

But the library is peanuts compared to the emotions that were stirred at the Chabad centers around the world in the wake of the arrest of 13 youngsters, Chabad yeshiva students, in the town of Rostov. The Tomkhei Temimim Yeshiva is one of the few Chabad institutions in Russia that is not under Lazar's control. Four months ago, the police raided the yeshiva a few hours before the start of the Sabbath. Thirteen students, citizens of the United States and Israel, were arrested. They were held under arrest over the Sabbath and afterward, and were then deported from Russia along with the local Chabad rabbi.

At Kfar Chabad in Israel, people accused Lazar of acting as an "informer" and of giving the authorities information to the effect that the students did not have valid visas. Lazar, who usually answers every question with a smile, tenses when he is asked about the affair and firmly refuses to relate to it. At the time he sent a letter to the rabbis of Kfar Chabad in which he refuted the accusations. "It is open season on me everywhere," he wrote. "My blood is being spilled like water in public."

Lazar claimed at the time that the students had been arrested because they had not updated their visas, despite clear instructions to do so.

But Lazar knows that on this issue he has entered sensitive territory. The accusations are similar to those raised against him several years ago. That was when one of his local rivals, the chief rabbi of Moscow on behalf of the Jewish Congress in Russia, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, was arrested upon entering Russia and deported. At the time, too, people accused Lazar of involvement in the affair. Lazar sighs again when these issues are raised during the course of the interview. Such is the price of success in Russia.

A Lifestyles Exclusive: Lev Leviev The Benefactor

Lifestyles

BY GEORGE EDELSTEIN

NEW YORK, USA - For many, the name Lev Leviev is synonymous with the most beautiful and rare colored diamonds in the world. Lifestyles Magazine was granted an exlusive look recently at the man behind the image. What we saw was that Leviev, 51, is an active philanthropist, donating more than $50 million annually with a special and passionate commitment to Jewish causes and heritage, which has provided the spiritual compass in his life. "A lot of very rich men wait too long to give their money away," Leviev told The New York Times Magazine recently. "Bill Gates is a young man, and he's already giving to help the world, That's the right way to do it."
Leviev's philanthropy is an extension of who he is and what he can do, representing the art of the possible. Growing up as an impoverished immigrant in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, Leviev attended a yeshiva but only stayed for a few months; he readily admits that it wasn't in his destiny to become a rabbi like his father. He wanted to start a business. Soon after leaving yeshiva, he traveled to the headquarters of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Brooklyn, New York, for guidance on whether to leave home and set out toward his goal.
"I spoke to the rebbe in Hebrew. I asked him, 'Should I go or not?' recalled Leviev in the Times. "He answered me in a kind of antique Russian. He said: 'Go. Go to Russia and do business, but don't forget to help the Jews. Remember your family tradition.”
More than three decades later, Leviev - a member of the Lubavitch community-has followed that advice.
As the chairman of the Leviev Croup of Companies, he heads a fast-growing multibillion-dollar global group of companies that encompasses diamonds, real estate, construction and infrastructure, energy, industries, financial services, tourism and leisure, telecommunications, fashion, and high-tech. He is ranked among the wealthiest men in the world and he is admired as the leading Israeli entrepreneur. But Leviev is also making a name for himself for his generosity.
Like his business ventures, Leviev's philanthropy is global. He is the president of the FJC (the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS (Common-wealth of Independent States)), which supports Jewish communities in Russia and the CIS, Israel, Germany, and the United States, funding Jewish schools, synagogues, orphanages, as well as an international group of 10,000 employees and collaborators around the world. Leviev's philanthropic activities have also touched U.S. cultural institutions, such as the Musei of the City of New York, and U.S. char ties, such as the annual Angel Ball (which raises money for cancer research;, the Carousel of Hop Ball (one of the most prominent and influential charitable even of its kind), and Oxfam America.
Guiding Leviev's charity is a belief that philanthropy should build communities. In Queens New York, which is home to thousands of immigrants, Leviev has brought this community closer by founding educations ventures, inter alia, a school for 1,000 students. "All I want is for people in these places to know they are Jewish and to learn about their history," Leviev said in 2003. In the Ukrainian village of Zhitomir, Leviev rebuilt the area's only synagogue, restoring pride for the residents. And in Dresden, he established a school to educate nonreligious Jewish emigres about Judaism.
As one of his earlier philanthropic missions, Leviev established the Ohr Avner Foundation in 1992 in memory of his father Rabbi Avner Leviev, a leader ir the Bukharan Jewish community in Uzbekistan and Israel. The foundation, which has started over 100 schools, universities, kindergartens, and camps in former Soviet states and Easts European countries, is the largest supporter of the Jewish communities in the region.
Supporting the cultivation of Jewish culture has also been the aim of his work as president of the FJC. The group formed after the breakup of the Soviet Union to restore Jewish life and culture to Eastern Europe and represents 500 Jewish communities in the former Soviet republics and Eastern European countries. Like Ohr Avner, FJC funds schools, public kitchens, and orphanages in these communities. The schools, in particular, have helped to revive the Jewish community in an area where anti-jewish restrictions were prevalent prior to the fall of communism.
Leviev is also a generous giver to the Chabad-Lubavitch community, supporting the work of their shluchim (missionaries) who are sometimes sent to the farthest corners of the globe to establish communities where there is little or no Jewish life.
Lev Leviev’s career as a leader in the diamond industry started when his family escaped the yoke of Communism in Uzbekistan and moved to Israel in 1971. Leviev, then 15, took a job as an apprentice diamond cutter through a family friend. Although it was an industry tradition never to teach anyone all 11 steps of the diamond-cutting trade, Leviev was driven to learn and persuaded colleagues to teach him each step. Within six years of starting as a diamond cutter, he achieved his goal of working for himself. He set up his own diamond-cutting business and grew it to a dozen small factories. His success over the next decade caught the attention of De Beers, which invited Leviev to be among its 150 sight-holders—an elite group of individuals who have access to De Beers's diamond supply. Though considered a privilege to join the group, Leviev had bigger ambitions. In 1989, he seized an opportunity to purchase state-owned mines in Russia, It was the first of many mines he has purchased over his career.
With his own stones from his mines, he was no longer dependent on De Beers. Leviev streamlined the diamond process under his company— from "mines to misses" as he has been known to say. In 1995, he broke off from the De Beers Group and has since expanded his holdings in the industry. Leviev owns mines in Russia, Angola, Namibia, and other countries, and has the distinction of being the largest diamond cutter and polisher in the world, supplying several of the world's luxury jewelry brands with thousands of diamonds. In his own words, Leviev has said that "nothing is stable unless you own your own mines." When he spoke to Women's Wear Daily recently in a feature story announcing the new Leviev diamond boutique on Madison Avenue, he noted the importance of the diamond structure he has created; "We feel that our complete control from production to retail, entailing an unsurpassed inventory, coupled with extremely high levels of design, workmanship, and service, will place us in a unique position to market directly to serious diamond buyers."
The "crown jewel" of Leviev's work in the diamond industry has been Leviev diamonds. The brand has been chosen by celebrities like Drew Barrymore, Salma Hayek, as well as by cognoscenti. As a rigorous supporter of the U.N.-mandated Kimberly Process, which ensures that rough diamonds are not obtained from war-torn regions, Leviev has also upheld the industry's top standards. When the first Leviev store opened on Old Bond Street in London last spring, it caused a sensation. Newspapers called the store a blazing "fireworks display of colored diamonds." This fall it opened its 6,200-square-foot New York store with more than 4,000 carats of diamonds ranging from the purest whites to the deepest blues, and the most precious of all colored diamonds, green and red. According to Thierry Chaunu, the president and chief operating officer of Leviev, as in London, it contains more carats than all the other jewelers on Madison combined. "It's like building an extraordinary art collection," says Chaunu. "Just as you can't have just one beautiful painting, you can't have just one beautiful diamond, especially when it comes to colored diamonds."
The stores have been designed to have the feeling of a private salon, with a soft pink, cream, and platinum decor accented by crystal chandeliers. Other Leviev store openings in cities such as Dubai, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, and Beverly Hills will follow, but at a pace consistent with the brand's hyper-exclusivity.
All of this has made the public focus on Leviev and his diamonds. But Leviev continues to focus on the work his groups have done to improve communities and help them realize their Jewish heritage and faith "I am a believer; I believe in G-d. I believe that we, as people, have to do good acts." Indeed, in the Jewish community, there is a tradition that whatever charily one gives will be rewarded in multiples.
Leviev prefers to keep a low profile even as he is so active, attending global roundtables, like the World Economic Forum last year in Davos. He grants few interviews and though he circulates among world leaders like Russian president Vladimir Putin - whom he calls a "true friend"- he stays close to his home in Israel, where he lives in a modest house with his wife, Olga, and nearby their nine children and several grandchildren. Leviev likes to be the force behind change rather than the face of it. But there are times when Leviev can't escape the appreciation. He has been described as being in "a class by himself" when it comes to supporting the Jewish community. In 2004, when the government in Baku, Azerbaijan, threatened to close down all private schools – including a local Jewish school - because a growing number of madrassas were becoming influential in the area, Leviev flew to the city to speak with the Azerbaijani president and convinced him to keep the school open. It's actions such as this that have made Leviev a hero in many communities. When he returns to communities in the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, or anywhere else to visit philanthropical projects he funds, he receives a warm welcome. Last month, Leviev traveled to New York City to receive the Partners for Democracy
Award from the America-Israel Friendship League. The award recognizes individuals who have worked to develop the U.S.Israeli relationship.
Leviev works to transform the communities he reaches out to like the many stones he has transformed into jewels. He has stayed true to his faith and to the advice given him by the Luabavitcher Rebbe as he develops his businesses and expands his philanthropy. "In the Holy Book, King Solomon said a man is born to work hard, to maximize himself, and to achieve something," Leviev told the London Times last year. "I believe that if I can work hard, as the Holy Book says, and do good things for others with my money, that's my mission in life."

Ukraine Native Staying Home to Keep Jewish Tradition Alive

VANO-FRANKOVSK, Ukraine, Jan. 30 (JTA) -- As an observant Jew, Moishe Leib Kolesnik admits he thinks about moving to Israel and the ease of living a religious lifestyle there rather than staying in this Western Ukraine city.

But Kolesnik just can't leave his hometown, which he serves as spiritual leader and keeper of all things Jewish.

"Leaving the community for some time is very difficult for me," he acknowledges.

Kolesnik, 50, is rare among the Orthodox spiritual leaders, mostly from Chabad-Lubavitch, serving in Ukraine. For one thing, he can speak the native tongue fluently.

In a country where Jewish tradition was nearly obliterated by the Holocaust and communist anti-religious persecution, reviving Jewish tradition today has relied almost entirely on foreigners, mainly Israelis or Americans.

Had it not been for Kolesnik's interest in Judaism, Ivano-Frankovsk might not have any spiritual leadership.

More than 80 percent of its Jews emigrated when communism ended -- only about 700 Jews remain, Kolesnik estimates, in a city of 200,000. In 1995 he had to close a small yeshiva, or religious school, that he opened due to a lack of students. Most of the remaining Jews are secular and rarely attend his services.

But Kolesnik nonetheless has become the ultimate source of information on Jewish matters. He has traveled the region in his efforts to preserve its rich Jewish history.

They call Kolesnik rabbi in Ivano-Frankovsk, though he has no formal ordination.

"When I need anything concerning Jews, our rabbi always has a response," says Olga Markus, a local Jewish activist and director of the Magen Avot charitable group here. "He is the best archival database."

Kolesnik has what he calls a "federation smicha," the authority given to him by the Chabad-led Federation of Jewish Communities -- the largest Jewish group in the former Soviet Union -- to perform rabbinical duties.

"Rabbi Moishe Kolesnik revives Jewish life successfully, and thanks to his knowledge hundreds of Galicia Jews became closer to their roots," said Rabbi Azriel Chaikin, one of three chief rabbis of Ukraine. "Thanks to his energy, fluent Ukrainian and good knowledge of the mentality of Ukrainian society, he succeeded in resolving many issues."

Kolesnik also has a blessing from his religious mentor, an elderly Holocaust survivor named Yehudah Goldscheid who had a rabbinical background from when the area was part of prewar Poland.

Reb Yidl, as Goldscheid's followers affectionately called him, "taught me all concerning traditional Jewish life and Judaism," Kolesnik says.

Although he was raised in a non-observant home, Kolesnik says he's always had a strong Jewish identity, and Yiddish was often heard in his family. Still, he had prepared himself for a different career.

Kolesnik attended a university in his hometown, graduating with a degree in Russian philology. In the early 1980s he took a job as the language teacher at a secondary school in Kolomya, a small provincial town an hour's drive from Ivano-Frankovsk.

Perhaps it was the spirit in Kolomya that led to the increased importance of Judaism in his life. Kolesnik notes proudly that the founder of Chasidism, Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, used to pray there.

Kolesnik says he first encountered religious Jews in the early '80s when he visited Kiev and Moscow. That's when he became involved in underground religious activism: the learning and teaching of the Torah, underground prayer services and organizing funerals in accordance with Jewish tradition.

Before World War II, when Ivano-Frankovsk was called Stanislavov and was the center of a province in eastern Poland, the approximately 50,000 Jews there comprised half of its population. Most of them were killed in the Holocaust.

Although little today remains of Ivano-Frankovsk' s prewar Jewish past, Kolesnik believes he has a mission to preserve as much of it as he can.

"I have traveled to towns and villages throughout the region, met with local Jews and people often showed old Jewish books and documents" still preserved in their homes, says Kolesnik, who is married.

Over the years he has built a rich collection of old books, mostly in Hebrew, a language few people in the region understand. Kolesnik says he was particularly fascinated by the handwritten notes found in many of the books he came across.

Today the library he collected from these trips includes more than 1,000 Hebrew books, as well as community records and photographs from dozens of towns across the region. He keeps these treasures in the town's historic synagogue, an impressive two-story building that stands like a silent testimony to the past importance and prosperity of the local Jewish community.

Built in 1898 as one of some 60 Jewish houses of prayer in town at the time, the synagogue was confiscated by the communist authorities in 1941. It was returned to the community -- mainly thorough Kolesnik's efforts -- after Ukrainian independence in the early '90s.

In his travels, Kolesnik drew maps of many Jewish cemeteries, a priceless resource for foreign Jews who often come to this region searching for their roots.

But for local Jews their spiritual leader is a no less trusted authority.

"He was born here, and we speak the common language, both in direct and in figurative sense," says Yankel Berezin, 72, a member of the local Jewish community.

In addition to the synagogue, there is a small Jewish day school in town run by the Chabad-led Ohr Avner Foundation that has 30 students, a Hebrew school for 20 children and a kindergarten with nine students. The synagogue also houses a mikvah, or ritual bath, a women's club and an Israeli cultural center.

Aware of his vital role in the community, Kolesnik sees his mission as staying as long as possible. Asked about the community's future, he prefers not to speculate.

"Making prognoses is a ludicrous business," he says. "The main goal today is to preserve" what is left of the community.

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