Posted to Picture of the Day on

Picture of the Day: Shliach Attends Putin Inauguration

Shturem

Vladimir Putin was sworn in today as Russia’s president, continuing his reign as Russia’s undisputed leader since his first election to the presidency in 2000. Attending the ceremony was Chabad Shliach and Russia’s chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, who was positioned in the front row, along with the ministers, generals and admirals of Russia’s inner circle.

Related Articles

10 Comments

  • i spy

    and that looks like a blonde sheitel in the first row audience!!!

  • Yossi

    When will Rabbi Berel Lazar use his influence with President Putin to get back the Rebbes library?

  • Ex Moscow

    When the clowns from Neturei Karta, who are nothing and nobody, visit with Ahmadinejad, we are horrified.

    When this rav mi-taam serves as a fig leaf for and is therefore honored by the regime that sells nuclear material to Ahmadinejad, we think it is a great honor.

    Oy, me haya lanu! We have a MUSHPA rather than a MASHPIA in Russia.

    As for the library – this rav mi-taam has NO influence with Putin. Putin is the one who influences HIM and manipulates HIM like a puppet master manipulates a puppet on strings, and the rav mi-taam would be very pleased if he is able to get his own hands on the sforim and stick them in his own library which would in essence be a branch of the State Library and remain under government control.

  • AA

    #5, and who says he hasn’t been trying? There is a limit how much he can push, though – too far, and Putin may just decide that Russia doesn’t need so many shluchim, G-d forbid.

  • Mendel Feller

    Please remove comment 6. It is not a kiddush Hashem… and the layyered points raised which are issues possibly for discussion at another forum are a chilul Hashem publicly…

    caveat and full disclosure (I’m related (by marriage) to Rabbi L.

  • M.M. de Baer

    I fully agree with number 6.
    Please remove comment number 8, he is obviously biased.
    The truth hurts sometimes.

  • Ex-Moscow

    If Putin were to decide Russia does not need so many shluchim,” there would be a reduction of unneeded personnel in Moscow and each Chabad branch would simply be independent of the rav mi-taam. That is how Russia is developing anyway.

    The rav mi-taam could not even prevent the deportation of some of his own shluchim (at the time they were his de facto employees) when they ran afoul of regional governors who got bigger bribes from parties like the Sochnut that wanted Chabad out.

    Putin does not care about Chabad one way or the other. He is not a friend of Yidden or an anti-Semite. He is a power-hungry dictator like his friend Chavez or Castro. He simply needs a rabbi to join his imam and his galach in showing that there is religious freedom in Russia while they all cover for his dictatorship. Most of all, he now has a rabbi from a Chassidus that is supposed to care about threats to Yidden in EY covering for him as he sells nuclear material to der nayer Homon.

    What is more, when Putin is gone, Chabad could go down with him because people are sick of Putin and they see Chabad as too allied with the Putin dictatorship. Russia has many alternatives to Chabad, and they are growing fast. Russia is also rebelling, slowly but surely, against Putin and his corrupt dictatorship.