Putin's rabbi Lazar downplays Russian citizens' demand to investigate Chabad for extremism
Residents of the Kemerovo region turned to Governor Sergei Tsivilev with a demand to check the activities of the Jewish movement "Chabad" in the region and Russia. In a video message published by the movement “OSVR Council of Citizens of Kuzbass”, they demanded to “consider the existence of grounds for recognition as a foreign agent” Rabbi Menachem Rabinovich of Novokuznetsk.
The initiators of the appeal demanded to check "Taniya" - the fundamental book on Hasidism - "for signs of extremism."
The Chabad movement is also called Lubavitcher Hasidism. Its representative is Chief Rabbi of Russia Berl Lazar. According to Lazar, 90% of the rabbis working in the Jewish communities of Russia belong to Chabad.
In the fall of 2022, Assistant Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, Alexei Pavlov, published an article “What is cooked in the witch’s cauldron. Neo-pagan cults gained strength in Ukraine . In it, Pavlov called the Chabad Lubavitch movement an ultra-orthodox sect and argued that its main principle was “superiority over all nations and peoples.” Pavlov named businessmen Viktor Pinchuk and Igor Kolomoisky as adherents of the movement.
Berl Lazar criticized the Patrushev aide's article, calling the statements offensive to "millions of believing Jews, including the vast majority of Russian Jews." Lazar compared the statement of Patrushev's aide to "anti-Semitic nonsense" and "new rehashings of old bloody libels on behalf of an employee of the Russian Security Council."
“In <…> the article by Assistant Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Pavlov contained erroneous lines about Lubavitcher Hasidim. I apologize to the readers of the publication,” Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said later in an open letter. Pavlov was fired in January 2023.
Source: https://www.moscowtimes.eu/2023/02/24/v-kemerovskoi-oblasti-nachali-pisat-donosi-na-evreev-a35068