Rabbi Arthur Schneier held sabbath service in Kremlin under Gorbachev eight months before fake collapse of USSR
By Susan Heller Anderson
Published: January 24, 1990
When a forum on the environment ended in Moscow Friday, it was after sundown. So RABBI ARTHUR SCHNEIER, the senior rabbi of Park East Synagogue in Manhattan, promptly conducted a sabbath service. In a hallway in the Kremlin.
''After the Global Forum on the Environment ended with a 40-minute address by President Gorbachev, we had to decide quickly where to hold a sabbath service,'' said Rabbi Schneier, speaking from Moscow. Originally the plan was to go to the Choral Synagogue, Moscow's main synagogue. ''But we could no longer travel after sunset,'' he explained.
So he gathered a minyan, the required 10 people among whom were the chief rabbis of England and Rumania, and began praying in the hallway. He was told by Soviet conference participants that it was the first Jewish religious service ever held in the Kremlin. The rabbi was among more than a thousand political, scientific and religious leaders attending the forum.
''It was very, very moving, the fact that we were obviously chanting and singing Hebrew prayers,'' Rabbi Schneier said, ''and they echoed through the Kremlin.''
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/24/style/chronicle-332390.html