US ambassador to join prayer service at site of Moscow attack

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Ambassador to Russia William J. Burns will visit the site of yesterday's vicious anti-Semitic attack in Moscow to join a special prayer service tomorrow for the wounded and to promote religious tolerance in Russia.

The special service will begin at 9:30 a.m. on January 13 at Agudas Chasidei Chabad of the Former Soviet Union's synagogue and headquarters on Bolshoya Bronnaya Street. Russia's Chief Rabbi, Berel Lazar, will also attend the prayer service. Afterwards, Ambassador Burns will meet with Chabad members, including leaders of Agudas Chasidei Chabad of the Former Soviet Union: Rabbis Boruch S. Cunin, Yosef Aronov, Sholom Ber Levin and Itzhak Kogan.

Rabbi Kogan, himself a victim of yesterday's assault, is a noted refusenik who emigrated from Russia but returned there at the direction of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, to nurture Jewish life and to secure the release of the sacred Schneerson Collection.

Chabad has worked for decades to regain the Collection, a group of unique Jewish books and manuscripts seized during the Soviet era and never returned. Over the years, the group's quest to have Moscow return the texts to their rightful owners in the United States has gained strong bipartisan support in Washington and around the world. Last April, Rabbi Kogan came to Capitol Hill to testify before the U.S. Helsinki Commission about this continuing injustice.

The recent attack on Jewish worshippers is not the first instance of anti-Semitic violence at Chabad's Bolshoya Bronnaya Synagogue, which is just miles from the Kremlin. The Synagogue was firebombed in 1992 while Chabad leaders were residing there, and a bomb was discovered and defused in 2000.

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13.01.2006 09:00