Moscow’s Chief Rabbi Goldschmidt is in exile

“I don’t define myself as a rabbi in exile. I’m a rabbi who doesn’t live in his community.” That’s what Pinchas Goldschmidt, chief rabbi of Moscow, said recently to the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot.

On Thursday it was announced that Pinchas Goldschmidt is no longer chief rabbi of Moscow. Officially, the departure after almost three decades in office was justified by the expiry of Goldschmidt’s contract, as reported by Russia’s state news agency Tass.

At the beginning of June, Goldschmidt was confirmed in office for a further seven years. The election took place in his absence at the Choral Synagogue in the Russian capital. Goldschmidt, who was born in Zurich in 1963, hasn’t lived in Moscow for several weeks. He left the country in early March, shortly after Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine began. He is now in Israel with his wife. Before the election, leading Israeli rabbis called on Russian Jews to continue to respect Goldschmidt’s authority. According to the Jerusalem Post, there had been efforts in Moscow to replace Goldschmidt as chief rabbi.

Superficially, it was said that Goldschmidt had not returned to Russia because of his elderly father, who was in a hospital in Jerusalem. But that political reasons also played a role was assumed and confirmed by Goldschmidt’s daughter-in-law.

American journalist Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt tweeted on June 7 that her in-laws had been pressured by the Russian authorities to publicly support the war against Ukraine, but did not want to do so. The journalist went on to say that the in-laws now live “in exile from the community they love so much, which they built and in which they raised their children”. The pain and fear in the family over the past few months have been indescribable.

Goldschmidt moved to Moscow in 1989 to establish Jewish communities

The local Jewish newspaper “Tachles” characterizes Goldschmidt as “very Swiss diplomatic”. Possibly it is this diplomatic style – coupled with the fear of repression that threatens all critics of Kremlin policy in Russia – that has prevented the 58-year-old from becoming the loudest critic of the war of aggression. Even though the father of seven children has repeatedly expressed his concern, as here in an interview conducted just before the start of the Ukraine war: “We are very worried and very much hope that, despite the threatening signs, there will be no war, for it would be devastating to all. We pray for peace. There’s not much more we can do in this situation.”

Goldschmidt’s paternal ancestors had immigrated to Switzerland via France during the First World War. His maternal grandmother came to Switzerland from Vienna in 1938. Many relatives on the mother’s side were murdered in Auschwitz.

Goldschmidt, who studied in Israel and the USA, moved to Moscow as early as 1989, also at the request of the then Soviet government. The rabbi was there to revive Jewish life, which had been taboo in Soviet times – for example, the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust could not be publicly remembered. He did pioneering work in the development of communal structures from kindergartens to rabbinic schools. He was also involved at the political level, such as the creation of the Russian Jewish Congress. In 1993 he was elected Chief Rabbi of Moscow. An estimated 150,000 people of the Jewish faith live in Russia today.

Fight against anti-Semitism, criticism of the burqa ban

As the longstanding chairman of the European Rabbinical Conference, Goldschmidt repeatedly drew attention to rampant anti-Semitism and the precarious security situation in Jewish communities. For example, he commented on the subject of shafts.

He saw the burqa ban in Switzerland as an attack on the human right of religious freedom and expressed himself in clear words: “The main reason for such populist movements is a primal Swiss fear: it is the fear of the foreign, it is against refugees, migrants and in Switzerland living religious minorities.”

Jewish communities in Russia under pressure

It is not the first time that Goldschmidt cannot return to Russia. In 2005 his residence permit was revoked. Only after several weeks of international pressure did he get a new visa for Russia. At the time, officials justified this vaguely with “national security issues”. Power struggles with the Chabad movement led by Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar may also have played a role. Close friends of Vladimir Putin Lazar has the war criticized in Ukraine, but continues to linger in Russia.

What is certain is that the Russian war of aggression has not only had an impact on the Jewish communities in Ukraine, many of whom are forced to flee abroad. It also threatens to destroy the years of work that Pinchas Goldschmidt has done to build up Jewish communities in Russia.

Another Moscow rabbi, Motl Gordon, who fled the country with his family on February 24, said in a report by the Times of Israel many Jews had already left Russia before the war. And he too acted when the war began: “I felt that Jewish life in Russia, as I knew it, was coming to an end.”

It is possible that Goldschmidt thinks similarly.