By COLlive reporter
A Chabad Rabbi who built a growing following among young Jewish adults in the Khamovniki District of Moscow is being expelled from Russia.
Rabbi Yosef Hersonski, who led a synagogue in Khamovniki at the urging of local Jewish residents, was found guilty by Russian authorities of having worked in Moscow without a work permit.
The RIA Novosti news agency reported that Rabbi Hersonski was accused of “setting up without permission a for-profit foreign entity.” The court did not specify the nature of the entity.
Rabbi Hersonski denied the charges and said he was registered with the Marina Roscha Synagogue and Jewish Community Center, which is led by Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar.
Rabbi Lazar and Rabbi Alexander Boroda, President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, both attended the opening of the synagogue in 5769 (2009).
Born in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, Hersonski studied in the Central Yeshiva Tomchei Tmimim Lubavitch in Kfar Chabad, Israel. He also studied in the Straus-Amiel program of Ohr Torah Stone institution founded by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin.
In Russia, he served at the global Russian Jewish website Jewish.Ru. At his Moscow synagogue, he gave various classes, led holiday and educational programs and served as a rabbi and spiritual guide for many.
Olga Myshelova of the Khamovnichesky District Court in Moscow said the court imposed “an administrative penalty in the form of a 5,000 ruble fine with administrative expulsion from the Russian Federation in the form of compulsory expulsion from the Russian Federation by way of a controlled, unescorted departure.”
Rabbi Boruch Gorin, the spokesman of the Jewish Federation in Russia, likened Rabbi Hersonski’s deportation to the expulsion of a second Chabad rabbi, Ari Edelkopf of Sochi, in March 2017.
Both expulsion orders are part of an attempt by Russian authorities “to replace our foreign rabbis with Russian ones, to head communities so that they [the authorities] can control them better,” Gorin told the AFP news agency.
Approximately half of the 70 rabbis working for the Chabad-affiliated Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia are foreign, JTA reported. At least eight of them have been denied permission to work in Russia over the past decade, Gorin said in March.
A source in Moscow’s Jewish community told COLlive.com that the legal system in the country works independently of the political governing system. “As much as President Vladimir Putin is a friend, it would seem that even the Kremlin can’t influence such decisions,” the person said.
Legislation from 2012 imposed major limitations on the work of groups with foreign funding, JTA noted.
a foreign citizen who will open a jewish synagogue at us and will work with no legal papers will be deported from the states russia is no different
As long as the Geulah hasn’t come yet, there really isn’t going to be a radical change for the better in the world. Proves once more just how much we ‘need’ Moshiach now Mamosh!
Just when I thought that the Russians were trying to get along better with the Jews, after the Lag Ba’Omer Parade, had gone so well.