Leonid Reznikov, head of the Jewish community in the Russian city of Ryazan, finds an upside to an alleged synagogue arson there earlier this month.
“People feel reaffirmed,” he said. “If they attack us, it means that we exist. In an ironic way, it’s a sign of recognition.”
Reznikov was in town this week as part of the Climate of Trust program, which brings together human rights activists, Jewish activists, members of the police department, and government officials from both the former Soviet Union and San Francisco to share expertise in dealing with hate crimes.
Sponsored by the Bay Area Council for Jewish Rescue and Renewal, the Anti-Defamation League and the State Department, the program is now in its second year.
Officials and Jewish leaders in Ryazan appear to agree that the fire that damaged the city’s only synagogue was arson but not an outburst of anti-Semitism.
However, they disagree about the state of ethnic tension in Ryazan, a city of 526,000 south of Moscow.
“There is no interethnic tension in our city,” said Nikolai Solovyov, Ryazan’s deputy governor for security issues, adding that he believes the fire was set by vagrants who had slept in the empty synagogue while it was being repaired.
But according to Reznikov, the local government — while friendly toward the city’s nearly 2,000 Jews — is trying to play down ethnic tensions, especially those fostered by Ryazan’s former mayor, Valery Ryumin.
In what seems to be a typical situation in provincial Russian capitals, Ryumin, who remains an active political figure, is using nationalist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic sentiments to boost his popularity.
Reznikov said that after the synagogue fire, Jews who were only marginally involved in the community called him to ask what they could do. And leaders of other ethnic minority groups, such as the Baptists and Armenians, also offered their support.
“It didn’t surprise me,” said Reznikov. “A year ago, when there was an attack on our school, they also came to help fix what the neo-Nazis broke. I know that if something happened in their communities, we would come to help them.”
The police response to the fire was “not very swift,” said Reznikov. It took three days for law-enforcement officials to make a statement to the press, pledging their help to find the culprits.
Reznikov said he believes that the response would normally have been even slower, but the police knew he was going to the United States for the international program.
In a related development, last week a local businessman with Jewish roots was discovered naked on the beach by a group of Russian Orthodox teachers and students, leading to an anti-Semitic campaign in the Ryazan media.
In a series of articles in a popular newspaper, the businessman’s Jewish roots were stressed. The man was accused of hating the Russian people, Russian Orthodoxy and the Russian soil.
Several days before the synagogue arson, the newspaper published a letter from a reader calling on ethnic Russians to “stop tolerating spits in the face with a slavish submissiveness.”
Nearly a year ago, members of a neo-Nazi group known as Russian National Unity attacked the Ryazan Jewish Sunday school, breaking windows and threatening teachers and pupils.
Solovyov says no one knows RNU’s whereabouts, but members can be seen on Saturdays on the streets of Ryazan, wearing black uniforms adorned with swastikas and distributing newspapers that blame Jews for the misfortunes of the Russian people.
Despite such incidents, not all is doom and gloom for local Jews, Reznikov said.
The restored synagogue building, which dates from 1903, was returned to Ryazan’s Jewish community last year. It had been slated to open its doors this fall to serve as a Jewish community center.
Russia’s Federation of Jewish Communities, which plans to send a rabbi to Ryazan to lead High Holy Day services, said it has allocated $25,000 to speed up the damaged building’s repair. “We will not give in to anti-Semitic pressure,” said Avrohom Berkowitz, the executive director.
Meanwhile, the Russian Jewish Congress is working on the political front. It has issued a statement urging Russian authorities to take stronger action against the increasing number of anti-Jewish arson attempts.