Russian rabbi: Moscow terror attack ‘an unquestionable imitation of Oct. 7 in Israel’
Grief over massacre of more than 130 revelers compounds Russian Jewish community’s sorrow over Hamas attack and leads to canceled or muted Purim holiday events
Canaan Lidor is a former Jewish World reporter at The Times of Israel
Friday’s terrorist attack in Moscow, in which jihadists murdered more than 130 people at a pop music concert, compounded the grief that many Russian Jews were already feeling following Hamas’s October 7 onslaught in Israel.
In solidarity with their fallen countrymen, the attack caused dozens of Jewish groups across Russia to cancel or mute Purim parties whose organizers had hoped would lift community members’ spirits following the murderous events of October 7.
Not all of the Moscow attack’s victims have been identified, even as the federal government in Moscow declared a national day of mourning. It is not yet known whether any Jews were killed in the incident.
Following the attack, “it became clear that it just wouldn’t be possible to celebrate that way,” Rabbi Chaim Danzinger, who had organized and then changed plans for a party in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, told The Times of Israel.
In Rostov, the community canceled its main event at a party venue and moved it into the synagogue.
“We focused more on fulfilling the different commandments of the holiday, which is helping the needy through mishloah manot [food packages], of which we delivered more than 1,200, and, obviously, the reading of the Book of Esther,” said Danzinger, who left his Purim costume hanging in his closet this year.
The events needed to be canceled or toned down, he said, “both for the way it would be perceived by non-Jews who don’t know what Purim is, who’d see Jews choosing to celebrate on such a horrific day. It just wouldn’t be the right message.” But also, Danzinger said, “members of our Jewish community were in no mood to celebrate after what happened.”
Usually, Purim is a focus for Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis like Danzinger, whose mission is to revive Jewish life in Russia following decades of repression under Communism.
“Purim has always been a holiday that we focused on very much because Purim is largely a holiday that doesn’t require special religious observance. So it’s always been an easy holiday to engage all segments of the community and more of our community members and Jews of Russia,” Danzinger noted. The event at Rostov’s synagogue drew about 450 participants — a sizable turnout for a relatively small city but still fewer people than in previous years.
In Astrakhan, another southern city near the border with Kazakhstan, the local Jewish group Nadezhda canceled all Purim events outright because of the attack.
“We will inform you soon about other possibilities of holding the Purim holiday. We mourn with the whole country!” Nadezhda wrote in an email to its members.
ISIS=Hamas
Rabbi Boruch Gorin, a Moscow-based publisher and a spokesperson for Russian Chief Rabbi Boruch Gorin, linked the March 20 attack — for which Islamic State terrorists have claimed responsibility and which Russian authorities say was carried out by at least four detained foreigners — with the one on October 7 in Israel.
The Moscow attack “is an unquestionable imitation of October 7 in Israel,” Gorin wrote. “The murderers were inspired by Hamas. The blood of the Moscow victims is on every person who justified the massacre on October 7.”
Several Jewish groups implied the connection, including the Russian Jewish Congress, which highlighted the international aspects of jihadist terrorism.
Gorin’s explicit linking of the two attacks, however, was considerably more politically incorrect in Russia, a dictatorship where challenging the party line under President Vladimir Putin can be dangerous.
Putin has called the Moscow attack “a bloody, barbaric terrorist act” but has not attributed it to ISIS. He said the perpetrators were “radical Islamists,” but repeated his accusation that Ukraine could have played a role despite its strong denials. “A window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the border,” Putin had said of the alleged terrorists.
Putin’s response to the October 7 attacks, in which Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 Israelis and abducted another 253, was radically different. Putin ignored the attacks for three days. Then, on October 10, he referred to the onslaught as “a clear example of the failure of United States policy in the Middle East.” Putin did not express condolences for Israel or the victims and Russia has vocally condemned Israel’s actions against Hamas in Gaza.
Hamas has also condemned the attacks in Russia, noting the “dead and injured” in a statement that drew much ridicule online from critics who noted the murderous cruelty of Hamas’s own terrorists on October 7.
Many Jews, including dual citizens of Russia, noted Russia’s indifference to the October 7 murders in expressing their own sentiments about the March 20 attack in Russia. “When you hug Hamas, I have no condolences for you, Mr. Putin,” one Israeli, businessman and entrepreneur David Azrieli, wrote on Facebook.
A nation in mourning
But Russian Jews by and large are “in mourning” following the Moscow attack, said Tanya Lvova, the deputy director of the EVA Jewish charity organization in Saint Petersburg.
“With my international contacts, they understand that Russia is not a very popular country right now but it doesn’t matter where it happens. It’s important that when such things happen, we just put away of all our differences and just try to help people,” said Lvova.
Following the attack, she ended up writing condolence letters to victims’ families instead of celebrating Purim, she said. Her daughter’s Purim party was canceled and moved to the local synagogue, she added.
For many Russian Jews, the attack in Moscow brought back the pain they are still feeling over October 7.
“We immediately recall the attack of Arab terrorists on Israel on October 7, 2023 — also on Shabbat and the holiday of Simchat Torah,” Mikhail Oshtrakh, president of the Yekaterinburg-based Jewish National-Cultural Autonomy of the Sverdlovsk Region, wrote on Saturday on Vkontact, the Russian social network. His community celebrated Purim early this year, on Friday, making it one of a handful in the country whose Purim parties were unaltered.
The ISIS connection is causing some concern to Jews specifically, and especially in Russia’s south, which has restive areas with strong Islamist movements and borders with multiple Muslim-majority countries with strong jihadist militias.
“We had extra security. Armed guards,” Danzinger, the rabbi from Rostov, told The Times of Israel. “We don’t expect any issues, but better safe than sorry,” he said.
Back in Saint Petersburg, security was also tightened around Jewish institutions, Lvova said. But there’s little difference in the overall atmosphere for average Jewish community members, who have been on alert since October 7.
“I don’t feel that it became more dangerous to participate in something Jewish,” she said. “It’s more dangerous to live in Russia because a terrorist attack can happen anywhere. But, as we just saw, it’s not a threat facing Jews specifically.”
