Moscow Jewish Center Opens; 1st in 50 Years

The Soviet Union’s first Jewish cultural center in more than 50 years opened here on Sunday with expressions of hope that it will help bring a renewal of the once-vibrant community life of the country’s 2 million Jews.

Mikhail Gluz, the center’s director, called it “both a beginning and a return for us, both a recovery of what in Jewish culture and community life we had nearly lost over the decades and the creation of the new things that we are sure will come. . . .

“For the Jewish community, we know that the center will be far more than a theater, a library and a set of rooms, and we hope it will be more than even a focal point in our cultural life. We want it to bring a real renaissance to Jews across the country.”

A Plea to Gorbachev

International Jewish leaders hailed the center’s establishment as a result of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reforms, but they called on him to ensure an end to all persecution and harassment of Soviet Jews.

“Today is a time to say ‘thank you,’ ” Elie Wiesel, winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, said of Gorbachev. “I believe he deserves our trust.”

Wiesel and other Jewish leaders who came from around the world to participate in the center’s opening believe that it marks a significant change in the government’s willingness to tolerate religious freedom and in its attitude toward the Jewish community, whose often severe repression began under the dictator Josef Stalin more than 50 years ago.

“It is earnestly hoped that this is the beginning of a great new era in Jewish life in the Soviet Union,” Edgar M. Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, told the hundreds of people who packed the new center and spilled out into the street.

“The only way to do this is through the strengthening of Jewish pride, and the only way to build Jewish pride is through Jewish culture, Jewish history, Jewish literature and the Jewish religion.”

End to Struggle

Isi Liebler, president of the Council of Australian Jewry, who helped secure permission from Soviet authorities last year for the center, added, “We believe that, if President Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost (openess) and perestroika (restructuring) succeed, we will see an end to the long period of struggle between the Jewish people and the Soviet Union.”

The opening was attended by the American, British, Australian, Canadian and French ambassadors and by the head of the small Israeli mission, all of whom brought messages of support from their governments.

“I hope this will be a new beginning for Soviet Jewry in which they will be able to practice their religion freely and enjoy fully their culture,” Secretary of State James A. Baker III said in a message read by Ambassador Jack F. Matlock Jr.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Israel described the center’s formation as “a hopeful and promising development” and called for the development of relations with Israel as the Jewish homeland.

But there was no formal greeting from the Soviet government, which was represented by two mid-level officials from the ministries of foreign affairs and of culture.

Ties to World Jewry

Gluz, a popular composer, who also heads the Jewish Musical Theater, said that he believes that Gorbachev’s reforms will “allow us to develop the ties of Soviet Jews with Jews around the world.”

“The strengthening of cultural ties between Soviet and foreign Jews will help disseminate a better understanding around the world of what is happening in our country,” he added.

Other participants included Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles; Yuri Lyubimov, the expatriate Russian theater director; Yehuda Amichai, Israel’s leading poet, and Yuli Edelstein, a former Soviet refusenik who became an executive of the Soviet Jewry Zionist Forum after eventually emigrating to Israel.

Wiesel, who nearly 25 years ago characterized Soviet Jews as the “Jews of Silence,” said that he would not have believed then that there would ever be the possibility of a cultural center in Moscow with its promise of a cultural rebirth for Jews here.

“You have remained Jews,” Wiesel told the hundreds of Soviet Jews who filled the new center. “What a statement of faith you have made. We are proud of you.”

‘Jews Were Humiliated’

But Wiesel, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his human rights activities, particularly his efforts to ensure international remembrance of the Holocaust, recalled how “Jews were humiliated, shamed, persecuted, imprisoned and killed” in the Soviet Union.

“Why did Stalin hate Jews so much?” he asked. “Why did he hate Jewish culture so much? Why did he try to annihilate Jewish culture?”

The center is named for Solomon Mikhoels, a leading Soviet actor and the director of the country’s main Jewish theater when he was killed in a 1948 car crash that Soviet historians now say was probably the work of the security police. The theater troupe was then dissolved, and many of its members were imprisoned.

Wiesel, praising Gorbachev for his reforms in both domestic and foreign policies, urged him to go further. “Let him have even more courage and establish diplomatic relations with Israel,” Wiesel said. “In doing so, he will help establish peace in Israel and around Israel.”

Library, Museum

The center, housed in an old theater building in central Moscow, will have a library of books on Jewish themes, will offer courses in Hebrew and Yiddish, will present concerts and plays, will develop a small museum and put on temporary exhibitions and will host conferences and seminars. The center will also have a cafe with traditional Jewish cooking.

Its inaugural exhibition, “The Courage to Remember,” came from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles and is the first in Soviet history to focus on the Holocaust, which is largely ignored in Soviet histories of World War II.