MOSCOW - Moscow district prosecutors summoned Rabbi Zinovy Kogan, chairman of the Congress of Jewish Religious Organizations, for questioning last week as part of a probe into whether the Russian translation of Shulhan Arukh, a code of ancient Jewish religious laws, provokes religious hatred, a move condemned by many Jewish organizations as anti-Semitic.
The issue was brought up in January, when 19 lawmakers made the text the center of their appeal to prosecutors to conduct an investigation aimed at outlawing all Jewish organizations, accusing Jews of fomenting ethnic hatred and provoking anti-Semitism.
A group of rights advocates filed a complaint in February, asking prosecutors to determine whether the lawmakers' letter incited national and religious hatred and bring them to justice if it did, said Yevgeny Ikhlov, one of the activists who placed the complaint.
The original probe was initiated after two nationalist activists including a prominent far-right ideologue complained the text is aimed at "insulting human dignity based on national and religious affiliation," according to an earlier prosecutors' statement posted on the Web site of an anti-xenophobia group, Sova. The text was also accused of labeling Christians "worshippers of idols" in a reference to Christians' main religious symbol, the cross.
Prosecutors concluded in May the lawmakers' statement did not constitute a crime, but they were conducting a second investigation into the matter, Ikhlov told AP.
Inciting national and religious hatred is a criminal offense in Russia that carries a penalty of up to five years in jail.
Kogan denied the accusations. He said the Russian translation of the book, printed in three editions in 1999, 2000 and 2004, with a print run of about 5,000 copies, "is meant to cultivate respect toward other religions and peoples."
"For us it's a book about how to wash oneself, how to dress, how to eat," Kogan said.
The rabbi acknowledged the text has "some incorrect passages," such as an instruction for Jewish women without a medical education not to help non-Jewish women during child birth. But he said such statements from an ancient text could not be interpreted without the appropriate context.
The Israeli government and Jewish organizations, including the Conference of European Rabbis, condemned the probe. In a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, declared that, “the behavior of the District Prosecutor brings to mind the anti-Semitic persecution witnessed under the Tsars and during the rule of Stalin.” The Prosecutor’s action, Mr. Foxman wrote, “confirms our fears about the revival of anti-Semitic tendencies in Russia.”
“This horrific development is a throwback to the worst traditions of Czarist and Soviet-era antisemitsm and can only serve to legitimize and embolden anti-Jewish hate crimes,” charged Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights group.
"To take a traditional Jewish text and try to ban it reminds us of the official state-sponsored anti-Semitism that we saw in czarist Russia," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.
Russia and the Soviet Union had a long history of state-sponsored anti-Semitism, including the residence restrictions in the Russian Empire, brutal pogroms at the turn of the 19th to 20th century, and Soviet-era discrimination against Jews.
The government no longer perpetuates anti-Semitism after the 1991 Soviet collapse, but many rights groups accuse Russian leaders of being silent in the face of xenophobia, expressed in the occasional desecration of Jewish cemeteries and more frequent skinhead attacks against dark-skinned foreigners.
First published: 15:47, 06.28.5