“If we look at Russian history, it quickly becomes clear that they blame the Jewish community when the political system was in jeopardy,” Goldschmidt told British newspaper The Guardian. “Both under the Tsars and under Stalin, the government sought to direct the anger and discontent of the Russian population towards the Jewish community.”
According to Goldschmidt, anti-Semitism is on the rise in Russia as the country appears to be moving towards a new kind of Soviet Union. “The Iron Curtain is getting lower and lower, which is why I think Russian Jews would do well to leave.”
Under pressure
Goldschmidt resigned as chief rabbi of Russia in July after refusing to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Religious leaders were pressured to justify the invasion and I refused,” he continued. There are about 165,000 Jews in Russia out of a population of 145 million Russians.
In 1926, there were an estimated 2,672,000 Jews in what was then the Soviet Union, 59% of them in the Ukraine. So in a hundred years thousands of Jews have left. Mainly towards Europe and the USA, but lately also increasingly towards Israel.
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