Berel Lazar and the Kremlin

The relationship between Chabad rabbi Berel Lazar, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia and the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin

Berel Lazar and the Kremlin
Key figure	Berel (Pinchas Berel) Lazar (b. 1964, Milan)
Organisation	Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FEOR), reconstituted November 1999
Title	"Chief Rabbi of Russia" (FEOR, from June 2000; contested)
Rival	Adolf Shayevich (KEROOR / Russian Jewish Congress)
Main funders	Lev Leviev; Roman Abramovich (reported)
State honours	Order of Friendship (2004); Order "For Merit to the Fatherland", 4th class (2014)

Berel Lazar and the Kremlin describes the close relationship between the Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi Berel Lazar, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FEOR) and the Russian state under Vladimir Putin. In June 2000 Lazar was elected "Chief Rabbi of Russia" by a FEOR congress. The election came hours before the arrest of the media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky, president of the rival Russian Jewish Congress (RJC). Lazar's FEOR then displaced the RJC and the existing chief rabbi, Adolf Shayevich, as the Kremlin's main Jewish partner. The Times of Israel notes that he is sometimes called "Putin's rabbi". Critics see the relationship as state co-optation of Russian Jewish life. Lazar and Chabad present it as protection for Jews and freedom of worship.

Background

FEOR's official biography (a primary source) says Lazar was born on 19 May 1964 in Milan into the family of the rabbi of the Jewish community there. He studied at Tomchei Tmimim in New York and was ordained in 1988. He first visited Russia in 1988 and came to Moscow in 1989 with the Rebbe's blessing, becoming rabbi of the Marina Roshcha synagogue in 1990. In a Chabad-published interview Lazar recalled that "it was in 1990 that the Jewish Community in Marina Roscha invited me to assume the office of a rabbi. I came to the Rebbe: he was so happy for me, insisting that I had to accept this invitation". A Chabad-side history counts the Lazars among the Rebbe's "first permanent shluchim sent to the Soviet Union". It dates Lev Leviev's "active investment in Chabad's expansion in the former Soviet Union", through the Ohr Avner Foundation, to around 1993.

FEOR and the 2000 "chief rabbi" election

FEOR was reconstituted as an umbrella body in November 1999. JTA reported that it "immediately received clear-cut signs of support from the government, including a meeting between its leaders and Putin, who was then acting president". In May 2000 Shayevich, chief rabbi since the Soviet era and backed by Gusinsky's RJC, was not invited to Putin's inauguration; the Daily Telegraph reported that "his place was taken by representatives of Habad". Shayevich said Chabad leaders had urged him to stand down in Lazar's favour: "They offered me bribes, saying they had excellent ties with the Kremlin." He later called his charge of Kremlin pressure "a misunderstanding", but maintained that he had been pressed to resign. Lazar "strongly denied any involvement of his organization in pressuring Shayevich".

On 13 June 2000 a FEOR congress elected Lazar, then 36, chief rabbi of Russia. The Moscow Times reported that 25 rabbis voted, and that FEOR spokesman Borukh Gorin declared: "For the first time in history, a chief rabbi of Russia is elected." Lazar said: "It is not an honor, it is a responsibility." Gusinsky was arrested hours later. Shayevich called the two events "obviously part of one grand campaign". The paper added that FEOR "has been seen as an alternative to Gusinsky's congress and has appeared to have the support of Boris Berezovsky". Lazar and FEOR's lay head Mikhail Gluz denied any link to Berezovsky or the Kremlin administration. Lazar publicly called for Gusinsky's release. Moscow's chief rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt said his community would not recognise the title. The Moscow Jewish Community's director Pavel Feldblum said that, elected only by Lubavitch rabbis, Lazar "can only be the chief rabbi of Lubavitch in Russia".

The outcome was lasting. In 2007 JTA reported that KEROOR, Shayevich's organisation, had "lost the battlefield to its more affluent and politically connected rival", which was "mainly funded by Leviev and helped by federal authorities". One KEROOR official likened the comparison to "a gas station with British Petroleum". In 2022 the Times of Israel wrote that FEOR "gained ascendency over all other Jewish organizations in Russia in the early 2000s, helped by the land and funding it received from the Russian government".

Funders: Leviev and Abramovich

A 2017 Politico Magazine investigation went further. It alleged that "starting in 1999, Putin enlisted two of his closest confidants, the oligarchs Lev Leviev and Roman Abramovich ... to create the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia under the leadership of Chabad rabbi Berel Lazar". It said the purpose was "to undermine the existing umbrella for Russia's Jewish civil society, the Russian Jewish Congress".

Editor's note: Politico's claim that Putin personally "enlisted" Leviev and Abramovich to set up FEOR is its own characterisation and is not confirmed by the other sources cited. Leviev's funding is independently reported (JTA 2007). Abramovich's role here rests on Politico alone.

Relationship with Putin

Lazar was given Russian citizenship in 2000. FEOR's biography says that in 2001 he joined the presidential Council for Interaction with Religious Associations. A presidential decree of 31 March 2004 awarded him the Order of Friendship "for merits in the development of spiritual culture and strengthening friendship between peoples" (за заслуги в развитии духовной культуры и укреплении дружбы между народами). In April 2014 he received the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland", 4th class. Lazar recalled that Putin personally attended the opening of the Moscow Jewish Community Centre in September 2000, which he called "convincing proof that the authorities would never let anti-Semitism occur at the official level".

At a meeting on 14 April 2014, according to the Kremlin transcript, Putin praised "the marvellous museum that you planned and created – the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre". Lazar told him that "it is thanks to you that we feel at ease and at home in Russia today, and that we can enjoy the highest degree of freedom of worship". The Times of Israel reports that Lazar "officiates regularly at Kremlin-sponsored events" and "gave Putin a tour of the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 2012".

Crimea, 2014

At the same April 2014 meeting, held a month after Russia annexed Crimea, Lazar told Putin that FEOR was "working actively in Crimea" and that "Simferopol, Sevastopol and Yalta will all hold big celebration events" for Passover. According to the Times of Israel, "in 2014, when Russia effectively annexed the Crimean peninsula, Lazar denounced fellow-Chabad Ukrainian rabbis who opposed the move and told them to remain quiet about the 'activity of politicians'". The Israeli Russian-language site NEWSru.co.il reported that he was responding to a 5 March 2014 letter to Putin from Ukraine's Jewish umbrella body VAAD. The letter had warned: "Your policy of inciting separatist tendencies and harsh pressure on Ukraine threatens both us and the entire Ukrainian people."

Ukraine, 2022

After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Lazar took a different line. He wrote: "God expects every believer to do everything in their power to save human lives. Personally, I am ready for any mediation, ready to do anything I can and beyond to silence the guns and to stop the bombs." The Times of Israel called this "a major break from Lazar's previous stances". His statements did not name Russia as the aggressor. A September 2022 statement by Russia's Chabad rabbis called to "end the suffering" without mentioning Ukraine. JTA described Lazar and his deputy as "engaging in a delicate balancing act aimed at maintaining safety and access to Jewish life for the country's Jews". Meanwhile the Kyiv-based Chabad rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman "explicitly called on Russian Jews to act to end the war".

Comparison with Pinchas Goldschmidt

Goldschmidt, Moscow's chief rabbi since 1993 and not affiliated with Chabad, left Russia in March 2022. His daughter-in-law said he had been "put under pressure by authorities to support the 'special operation' in Ukraine - and refused". Goldschmidt later stated: "As the terrible war against Ukraine unfolded over the last few months, I could not remain silent, viewing so much human suffering." He added that "the Jewish community of Moscow would be endangered by me remaining in my position". RFE/RL noted that Lazar "remains in Russia despite publicly opposing the conflict in Ukraine. It was not known whether state officials have asked him to publicly support the war." JTA reported that some read the Chabad rabbis' September statement as "a veiled critique" of Goldschmidt. In it Lazar stressed that "a rabbi should always be with" his Jews.

Messianism

The historian David Berger, a critic of Chabad messianism, cites Lazar as "a clear illustration of the ongoing effort to mislead outsiders". Lazar had told a friend of Berger's that he abandoned belief in the Rebbe's messiahship in 1994, but Berger holds "a photocopy of a 1998 letter in Rabbi Lazar's own hand in which he refers to the Rebbe as melekh hamashiah". Berger also notes that Lazar's secretary called his signature on a messianist halakhic ruling a forgery, but that "there is no record of Rabbi Lazar's objecting to its use". See Chabad messianism.

Assessment

Critics, including the RJC camp in 2000 and later Politico, see FEOR's rise as a Kremlin project to replace an independent, Gusinsky-funded Jewish leadership with a loyal one. The Daily Telegraph wrote in 2000 that Putin had backed Lazar, "whom he hopes will be more compliant". Chabad sources stress state protection, freedom of worship and the growth of Jewish institutions. The historian Galina Zelenina of the Russian State University for the Humanities treats FEOR as "a nation-building project". In her account, from the early 2000s it became "a self-proclaimed speaker for Russian Jewry". It moved away from "the traditional lachrymose concept of the Jewish nation" towards "Jewish and Russian Jewish success, achievement, and heroism", in parallel with Russia's "rising from its knees". She calls FEOR's "effective and continuous alliance with the Kremlin" the "cornerstone" of its dominance. In her view this alliance follows a traditional Lubavitch path and also reflects "the traditional Russian idea (inherited from Byzantium) of a ‘symphony’ between state and church and the dependence of the latter on the former". She adds: "We do not know precisely how this alliance works, but we see how carefully and deliberately it is presented." She quotes Lazar: "Naturally, we support this rule as far as we can" (2014). She describes the annual "Hanukkah in Kremlin" ceremony in the State Kremlin Palace, where FEOR presents its "Man of the Year" awards. Zelenina also analyses the "elaborate apologia" for the alliance developed by American and Israeli Chabad writers. Its themes are that the alliance is "above politics", that it is "not a power grab", and that Putin's favour is "a divine miracle".

Editor's note: Zelenina (2018) is the only scholarly study of FEOR cited so far. Other scholarship on post-Soviet Jewish communal politics, including the FEOR–RJC rivalry, has not yet been consulted. Zelenina documents the Kremlin Hanukkah ceremony. Claims about state land grants to FEOR still rest on the Times of Israel summary. For the Schneerson Library transfer to FEOR's Jewish Museum in 2013, and Lazar's statement that "the president didn't ask us, he just told us", see Schneerson library case.

See also

• Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia
• Chabad Lubavitch of Russia
• Chabad and Ukraine
• Schneerson library case
• Chabad messianism