Russian Jewish leaders on Friday mourned the death of
Alexy II, the Russian Orthodox patriarch who became one of the first major
religious Christian voices to call for an end to anti-Semitism in Russia.
Alexy II died Friday at his residence outside Moscow at
the age of 79. Church officials did not release a cause of death, but he was
known to have heart problems.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Alexy II led a
spiritual revival of his church, assuming the role of patriarch as the
officially atheistic Soviet Union collapsed. He rebuilt a national religion
from the ground up, developing Russian Orthodoxy as a quasi-national religion
with deep nationalistic sentiment.
With the Russian Orthodox Church's history of pogroms
and forced baptism of Jews in the 19th and early 20th centuries, many Jews
worried about its renewed ascendancy.
But while Alexy II pushed for compulsory Russian
Orthodox education in Russia, he also become an early clarion voice calling for
an end to historical virulent anti-Semitism among Russian Orthodox believers.
In 1991, as the Soviet Union fell apart, Alexy II
traveled to the United States and spoke before a group of rabbis where he vowed
to fight anti-Semitism in Russia. He addressed the Jews as
"brothers."
The speech was condemned as a "Judaic heresy"
by Orthodox priests in Russia who often incuded anti-Semitic diatribes in their
sermons. Alexy II's name was omitted from liturgical readings referring to the
head of the church and some even denounced him as a secret Jew, according to
Yuri Tabak, a historian and a religious expert at the Moscow Bureau for Human
Rights.
Alexy II -- who was born Alexy Mikhailovich Ridiger on
Feb. 23, 1929 in Tallinn, Estonia, an area that at the time was also a Jewish
religious center --successfully pushed for passage of a 1997 law on religious
organizations that officially recognized four "traditional religions"
in Russia: Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism.
Originally, the law intended to recognize "world
religions," which would have left out Judaism, because it is the religion
of just one people, said Zinovy Kogan, a spokesman for the Russian Jewish
Congress.
As the law worked its way through the legislative
process, the Jewish community took Alexy aside and asked him to change the
formulation of the law to "traditional religions" and include
Judaism, Kogan said.
"We connected with him and told him that we felt
it wasn't fair, that Judaism appeared on the Earth even before Russia, and they
agreed," Kogan said. "We changed it to 'traditional religions' and
that's how Judaism appeared in the preamble" of the law.
Since then, the leaders of those four religious
denominations often have appeared together at official events.
"It's very important to say that he didn't divide
the Jewish world," Kogan said. "It was all the same to him; it didn't
matter if they were Orthodox, Reform or Chabad. He stood with all of
them."
Most recently, cooperation at the leadership level has
meant a formal and public relationship between Alexy II and the Russian rabbi
with closest ties to the Kremlin, chief Chabad Rabbi Berel Lazar.
Lazar was not available for an interview Friday but
released a statement shortly before the start of Shabbat praising Alexy II.
"I must say that the Patriarch Alexy always showed respect for other
traditional religions of Russia," Lazar said. "Every time I saw he
welcomed me, saying, 'Shalom.'"
Religious leaders continue to try to work on Russian
Orthodox-Jewish relations.
Mikhail Chlenov, general secretary of the Euro-Asian
Jewish Congress, attended a meeting in Brussels on Thursday where the central
topic was relations between Russian-speaking Jews and the Russian Orthodox
Church.
"One of the tasks that we see is the need to
expand the basis for dialogue with Orthodox believers. They are going forward,
but they have slowed in comparison with our work with other religions," he
said. "Nevertheless, we see a bright future."
