Exiled Moscow Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt has warned Jews in Russia to leave the country before they are made into scapegoats. Rabbi Goldschmidt made the comments in an interview with The Guardian, citing growing anti-Semitism and a deteriorating political climate in Russia as reasons for his warning. Goldschmidt, who fled Russia in 2019 amid threats to his safety, argued that Jews in the country are at risk of being used as a convenient target for those in power to distract from larger problems. “When we look back over Russian history, whenever the political system was in danger you saw the government trying to redirect the anger and discontent of the masses towards the Jewish community,” he said. “We saw this in tsarist times and at the end of the Stalinist regime.” “We’re seeing rising antisemitism while Russia is going back to a new kind of Soviet Union, and step by step the iron curtain is coming down again. This is why I believe the best option for Russian Jews is to leave,” he said. “Pressure was put on community leaders to support the war, and I refused to do so. I resigned because to continue as chief rabbi of Moscow would be a problem for the community because of the repressive measures taken against dissidents,” he said. Rabbi Goldschmidt first urged Russian Jews to flee the country after a Russian official called Chabad a supremacist cult, warning that things would only get worse for Jews as the war in Ukraine plodded on. According to the exiled rabbi, 25%-30% of Russian Jews have left Russia, or are planning to leave, since the outbreak of war last February. Russia currently has about 165,000 Jewish people living in it out of 145 million total citizens. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
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