Forward: “We, all of us, will not put up with attempts to legitimize homosexual wedding,” Samoilenko boomed. “Wedlock between men and women assures the continuation of life and we’re duty-bound to resist dangerous ugliness like homosexuality and promiscuity. I know I speak for my Jewish and Muslim colleagues, too.”
None of the dozens of dignitaries present at the roundtable disputed this assertion, which came just minutes after Samoilenko had reassured his listeners that persecution of minorities in Russia was a thing of the past. But at least one of the prominent rabbis, David Rosen, later distanced himself from Samoilenko’s comments.
“I don’t share it,” Rosen, a former chief rabbi of Ireland and the American Jewish Committee’s director of interreligious affairs, said of Samoilenko’s concern about homosexuality. “I don’t see alternative lifestyles as a threat to my own religion.”
To Rosen, a professional builder of bridges between Jews and other faith groups, Samoilenko’s anti-gay tirade was a symptom of how many Christians and Muslims fear phenomena they see as subversive. Jews, he said, feel less threatened because Judaism seldom has power structures to preserve. He called this openness “the privilege of powerlessness.”
As an Orthodox rabbi, Rosen would not officiate at a gay wedding any more than Samoilenko would, but he feels no need to fulminate about it, he explained…
Russian Jewry has experienced a golden age under Putin. From the maritime border with Japan to the land border with Finland, dozens of synagogues in Russia have been returned to communities that, with help from Chabad rabbis, began to flourish and open hundreds of kindergartens, schools and jewish community centers.
Kazan is a case in point. Home to 10,000 Jews, it last week hosted its first Limmud Jewish learning conference, which local volunteers set up for 450 participants, with help from Limmud FSU. In 2012, the city saw its first Jewish music festival – an annual event in which klezmer bands from across the world perform in open-air venues before Rosh Hashanah.
The Kremlin has not been shy about leveraging this cultural revival, as the chief rabbi calls it, in the battle for public opinion – including in the West. And the constant expansion of RT — the huge television network the Russian government set up in 2005 — to additional languages and channel packages speaks volumes of Putin’s willingness to invest in public relations abroad.
