moscow | An article in Chabad’s main Russian-language magazine blasting Reform Judaism has outraged Reform leaders in Russia and the United States.
Reform Judaism “embodies an approach toward things that is opposite to the approach of the Torah,” Rabbi Berel Lazar, the leading Chabad official in the former Soviet Union and one of Russia’s two chief rabbis, wrote in the February issue of Lechaim.
Tension between Chabad and the Reform movement has been simmering in the former Soviet Union, but Lazar’s broadside has intensified the conflict and put it squarely in the public eye.
Leaders of the Union for Reform Judaism, as the movement is known in the United States, and of the World Union for Progressive Judaism called Lazar’s attack on Reform Jews deplorable.
“Rabbi Lazar cannot request American Jewish support for his work and profess to speak in the name of all Russian Jews while simultaneously proclaiming that Reform Judaism is not Judaism and Reform rabbis are not rabbis,” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism.
Lechaim is a monthly magazine published by the Federation of Jewish Communities, a Chabad-led umbrella group and the largest Jewish organization in the area. The magazine, which is free and distributed across the former Soviet Union, is one of the largest Jewish-interest monthlies in the area.
Though they weren’t surprised to find criticism of their movement in a Chassidic publication, Reform leaders were worried about Lazar’s article, given its author’s prominence.
Russian Reform leaders say Lazar is wrong about their movement not being successful in Russia.
Rabbi Grigory Kotlyar, head of the Union of Religious Congregations of Modern Judaism in Russia, the central body of the Reform movement, said the movement has about 35 active congregations in Russia, about 40 in Ukraine and about 20 in Belarus.
Kotlyar said Lazar might have been motivated in part because Chabad fears the Reform movement will gain new momentum in Russia in response to the World Union for Progressive Judaism’s global forum, slated for this summer in Moscow.
In a letter to Lazar signed by five Reform rabbis, Russian Reform leaders noted that their movement was not born in the United States. In fact, they wrote, the movement’s Russian roots are almost as deep as those of the Lubavitch movement:
Lazar has not responded either to the Reform letter or a request for comment.