by Paul Berger - Forward
Rabbi Berel Lazar casts his vote at the Moscow mayoral election on Sunday, September 8, 2013.

Rabbi Lazar: Suing Russia Will Never Recoup Library

When Vladimir Putin offers you a gift — you accept it.

That’s according to Rabbi Berel Lazar, Russia’s chief rabbi, who said he had to accept Putin’s offer to move a contested Jewish library to a new Jewish museum in Moscow controlled by Chabad in Russia.

The Schneerson Library, a collection amassed by the early rabbinic leaders of the Chabad Hasidic movement, has been at the center of a decades-long legal battle between Chabad’s American leadership and the Russian government.

Putin’s decision to entrust the library to Chabad in Russia pitted the Hasidic movement’s representatives in New York against its brethren in Moscow, sparking a testy war of words earlier this year. But Lazar said he had no choice.

“The president didn’t ask us, he just told us” to accept the books, said Lazar, who is himself a Chabad rabbi. “Saying no to the Russian president, in general, is not something done in Russia.”

Lazar spoke about the library during a wide-ranging interview at the Forward’s New York offices on August 30, in which he also discussed the health of Russia’s Jewish community.

Although Lazar, who has close ties to the Kremlin and to Jewish oligarchs, is probably the most powerful religious Jewish figure in Russia, he is personable and unassuming. He arrived at the Forward offices without an entourage and interrupted the interview several times to take phone calls about his hat and coat, which he had left in a rented car, and to talk to his children in Yiddish.

His answers were straightforward. Mainly, he criticized America’s belief that legal and political pressure could force Russia to change. He said that Americans failed to understand Russian culture, society or the Russian soul.

Sometimes, the chief rabbi rejected Kremlin initiatives too. He dismissed Russia’s 2010 census, which reported just 156,000 Jews in Russia. He said the number is artificially low because census workers only asked people for their nationality. And many Jews and people with Jewish backgrounds, he said, answer simply “Russian.”

“We believe there are probably around a million” Jews in Russia, Lazar said, by which he meant people with a Jewish parent or grandparent.

He also scorned a recent Russian announcement of financial incentives to lure more Jews to the Jewish autonomous region, Birobidzhan.

Lazar said there are few opportunities for young people in Birobidzhan and the freezing climate is terrible. “We are going to support Jews there until the last one leaves and then shut the light,” Lazar said.

Lazar played down his links with the Kremlin. But there is little doubt that Chabad has been wildly successful in Russia and other former Soviet republics thanks to close ties with business and political elites.

On August 28, Lazar attended the opening of a new $4.5 million community center and synagogue in the center of Novosibirsk. The synagogue, which Lazar said was financed mostly by domestic donors, is the first ever to exist in the town.

“It is the pride of the Jewish community that even in Russia we are able to build such buildings,” Lazar said.

Moscow’s new Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, which opened in November, cost $50 million and was partly funded by oligarchs with ties to the Kremlin. Lazar said books from the Schneerson Library are being transferred to the museum each month. It will take about six months before the transfer is complete.

Putin’s proposal, made in February, was denounced by lawyers acting on behalf of Agudas Chasidei Chabad, the umbrella organization of the international Chabad-Lubavitch movement, based in New York.

Aguch, as it is known, maintains that the library, which was nationalized by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution, belongs to Chabad in America.

Two years ago, Royce Lamberth, a federal judge in Washington D.C., ruled that the collection had to be returned to Chabad. In retaliation, the Russian government instructed museums to stop lending artwork to their American counterparts in case they were seized by Chabad’s lawyers.

In January, Lamberth imposed a $50,000-per-day fine on Russia for each day it did not return the books. Russia’s Ministry of Culture and the Russian State Library retaliated by filing a lawsuit in a Moscow court against the Library of Congress.

The suit seeks the return of seven books from the Schneerson Library that it loaned to the Library of Congress during the mid-1990s.

Aguch is also suing Russia for the return of the Schneerson Archive, a collection of books, manuscripts and handwritten documents of the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe, which was seized by the Nazis during World War II and then captured by the Red Army. Lazar said that Russian officials have suggested that the archive too might end up in the Moscow museum, but no decision has yet been reached.

Lazar said he would rather see the library and archive return to America, but for now, Chabad’s museum was the best option. Although his decision to accept the Schneerson Library has been unpopular among some Chabad rabbis in America, Lazar said that Rabbi Avraham Shemtov, chairman of the Aguch, advised him to accept the books and “was supportive of the idea.”

Lazar said that pressuring Russia would never succeed and that he has repeatedly advised the Aguch to drop its legal action. “As long as there is a lawsuit… Russia [is] never going to give back the books,” he said.

 

10 Comments

    • Court Jew

      Very nice sitting here in USA surfing the internet all day and making snide remarks about people who are way above you.

      Millhouse, all you do is put your wisecracks all over the internet.

      Rabbi Lazar is a person of extreme mesiras nefesh. When he first came to Moscow he absolutely nothing. Not even food to eat.

      He worked very hard to get to where he is today.

      You should be ashamed of yourself with your empty surfing and empty snide remarks.

    • Milhouse

      Yes, whoever wrote #1 (which was NOT me), Rabbi Lazar is a Court Jew. Or, as we say, a Shtadlan. That is a very honourable and important position. So important, in fact, that halacha gives a shtadlam generous heterim to do many things that are forbidden to most people, because their job is that vital. Let nobody look down on the shtadlan.

      At the same time, one must never take the shtadlan’s public pronouncements at face value. The first and most important heter he has is from “midvar sheker tirchok”. On the contrary, his job often involves shading, bending, spinning the truth, and it would be disastrous for him to say exactly what he thinks.

  • declasse' intelelctual

    #1–you are out of your tree.
    Given the circumstances and the nature of the Russian culture, especially with Putin in control, you accept what he gives. Rabbi Lazar is right. You have the collection under Chabad supervision and then take the next step when it become opportune. Perhaps a few years down the line, then some of the books will make it way to new York, but until then at least we have somewhat of a control over them. No law suits or rants and rave will convince Putin to change his mind–it will only serve to make him more recalcitrant.
    As far as your misguided crack about court Jews, just remember that the late Rabbi Rosen of Romania was able to use his position and influence to help how many thousands of Romanian Jews emigrate to Israel because of his association with the Communist leadership.
    In today’s world you have to know how to play the game. And those Chabad personnel in New York have not the littlest clue.

    • Milhouse

      Yes, Rabbi Rosen was the consummate court Jew, and used his position wisely and well, not just to help people emigrate but to preserve yiddishkeit in Romania itself. He could have left himself any time he wanted, but he remained in that dangerous position in order to help others. It was his shlichus and he did it with dedication and mesirus nefesh.

      Bear in mind, though, that when he spoke about how good the regime was, nobody in their right mind believed him, and he didn’t want them to. A shtadlan often has to be a liar.

      (The same applies to apologetics; not everything the Ramban said in his vikuchim can be taken at face value.)

  • Didn't the Rebbe say?

    Back in the 70’s, when even moderate Jewish groups (e.g. “Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry”), would have peaceful demonstrations in front of Soviet Embassies, wasn’t the Rebbe against this? He, too, for sure, knew the Russian mentality, and favored diplomacy. So, isn’t a lawsuit, kind of, like challenging the “Bear” in a way that can make things worse?

    Rabbi Meir Kahane, HY”D, succeeded in embarassing and threatening Soviet interests in such a way – forcing the Russians to allow some Jews to emigrate. But, didn’t the Rebbe say that while it did bring some desired results, back in Russia, behind the scenes, they would take revenge against the Jews remaining?

  • Take stock

    All those chachomim living in comfort without any fear of government reprisals should just shut up.
    The shluchim in Russia, especially Rabbi Lazar, who have the interest of the Rebbe and Chabad in their hearts and minds as much as the critics, and perhaps even more, know what and how to handle things.
    So don’t mix in where you are not needed nor wanted.
    Have a gmar chasimah tova and concentrate on your own issues and work on them!!

  • Moscow resident

    For all of us here in Russia our lives are at stake. If theres something you wld like to do to make the situation better- daven. Stop playing with other ppl’s lives and mind your own!!

  • Kal V'Chomer

    If, with the situation with Soviet Jewry- Jewish lives, religious needs, livelihood, etc.- yet, the Rebbe insisted on diplomacy. So, if this was the Rebbe’s position with jewish lives, how much more so should we do the same when it comes to “inanimate” (yes, most Kadosh, but..) sefarim!