moscow | The Reform movement’s revolution in Russia hinges on money.
That’s the message conveyed by many local participants during a recent meeting of the worldwide Reform movement in Moscow.
Some 400 Reform leaders, rabbis and educators from two dozen countries gathered in the Russian capital for the 32nd international biennial convention of the World Union for Progressive Judaism in a meeting touted as the largest gathering of Jewish leaders here since the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Although the World Union, with 1.5 million members, represents the largest organizational body of any Jewish stream worldwide, its presence in the former Soviet Union is still quite small compared with that of Chabad. There are just six Reform rabbis working in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus today, compared with Chabad’s several hundred. Just 70 Reform congregations receive financial assistance from the World Union, compared with more than 450 congregations affiliated with the Chabad-sponsored Federation of Jewish Communities of the Former Soviet Union.
It was precisely to show support for their movement in the former Soviet Union that the World Union chose Moscow as the site for its international conference, held June 30 to July 5.
Reform leaders also noted that this summer marks 15 years since the establishment of Hineini, the first Reform congregation in the former Soviet Union, in Moscow.
“Even though we have been here for a relatively short period of time, studies of the Jewish community show a clear preference of Russian Jews for Reform Judaism over Chabad or other Orthodox Judaism,” Regev said, referring to a yet-unpublished study of Russian Jewry whose authors shared their findings with World Union leaders ahead of this month’s conference.
The survey was conducted by Vladimir Shapiro, a leading Russian Jewish sociologist. It showed that more than 20 percent of Jews in St. Petersburg view Reform Judaism as the most attractive branch of the religion, compared with the less than 10 percent who said they prefer Chabad and the less than 5 percent who opted for non-Chassidic Orthodoxy. The remaining respondents said they are not interested in Judaism as a religion.
“What makes Chabad stronger than us?” asked Georgiy Gonik, the lay leader for a 50-member Reform congregation in Krasnodar, a southern Russian city.
The answer is money.
According to the World Union’s 2004 annual report, the Reform body spent $1.6 million on activities in the region. In contrast, Chabad spent more than $70 million from its central budget on the Federation of Jewish Communities last year.
The Reform movement in the former Soviet Union still lacks basic components — from lay leaders committed to supporting congregations to Russian-language books on Judaism, local participants said. n
Vladimir Torchinsky, who just helped set up a Progressive congregation in Khabarovsk, a remote community in the Russian Far East, said creating an attractive space for the congregation would allow it to bring in more people, especially the younger generation.
“If we get a space of our own, we could attract more youth, have a real synagogue,” said the 29-year-old graduate of Machon, the World Union’s Moscow institute for para-rabbinic leaders.
JTA correspondent Sue Fishkoff contributed to this report.