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http://www.timesofisrael.com/ukraines-jewish-congress-head-builder-or-bulldozer/
Ukraine’s Jewish Congress head: Builder or bulldozer?
Shrugging off critics and an assassination attempt, Vadim Rabinovich claims the mantle of Jewish leader
EV, Ukraine (JTA) — The explosion that ripped through Vadim Rabinovich’s luxury SUV in central Kiev was strong enough to send a shock wave from the parking lot up to his third-floor office in the heart of the Ukrainian capital.
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“It was a shock for a day or two,” Rabinovich said, “and then I moved on.”
The 60-year-old media mogul and Jewish philanthropist views the March 4 explosion as an attack on his life. He has accused Andrey Derkach, a businessman and former politician, of being responsible, telling the Ukrainian media that Derkach had tried to bully him into selling JN1, the Kiev-based television station specializing in Jewish news that Rabinovich launched a couple of years ago.
Derkach has denied the accusation and threatened to sue for libel. The police are still investigating.
“Now I have an armored car,” Rabinovich said. “And that’s the only thing that has changed.”
If a brush with death isn’t enough to cow Rabinovich, it’s hard to see what will. Over the years, the feisty oligarch has battled Ukrainian authorities, business rivals and Jewish community leaders, some of whom have expressed resentment about his ongoing efforts to challenge the old guard of European Jewish institutional life.
But the relentless criticism, like the explosion, has not had its intended effect.
“You can’t please everyone,” Rabinovich said. “That’s life.”
In an interview with JTA this month, he was clad in his typical uniform of jeans and sneakers, a get-up he has been known to wear to occasions where everyone else is in business attire. Rabinovich has a limited appreciation for formalities and, as he puts it, “little patience for nonsense.”
In the 1980s, Rabinovich was arrested and sentenced to 14 years in prison for black market ventures, but wound up serving only seven years, according to Korrespondent, a Ukrainian weekly. Rabinovich says he was jailed on “trumped-up charges,” but the United States to this day has barred his entry as a result, he confirmed to JTA.
‘In Ukraine, they say I am Mossad agent, if you find this kind of nonsense interesting’
“You will find accusations against me in the U.S. In Israel, some say I am connected to the mafia. In Ukraine, they say I am Mossad agent, if you find this kind of nonsense interesting,” Rabinovich said. “I don’t.”
Following his release in 1991, Rabinovich began to amass a fortune as a metals dealer operating in the economic free-for-all after the collapse of the Soviet Union. By 1995, he began pouring millions into Jewish causes.
“After I turned 40, I made a discovery that there is such a thing called Torah,” he said. “It led me in all kinds of new directions.”
Rabinovich says he puts on tefillin and prays every morning. He also hosts friends at his house every Friday, where he leads a discussion on the weekly Torah portion.
In 1997 he founded the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress, which has an annual budget of $3 million, and still serves as its president. He has sponsored Limmud Jewish learning conferences, provided security services to Jewish schools in Ukraine and started JN1, the world’s first 24-hour Jewish news network.
In 2010, Rabinovich and Igor Kolomoisky, a friend and business partner, tried to take over the helm of a long-running Jewish organization, the European Council of Jewish Communities, but were stymied when board members staged a walkout after Kolomoisky was appointed president outside traditional nominating procedures. Detractors said Rabinovich played a key role in what they described as a “hostile takeover” of the organization.
The group’s initial nominees included celebrities such as actor Sacha Baron Cohen — who didn’t even know they were candidates
So Rabinovich started his own organization the following year, calling it the European Jewish Parliament and setting up offices in Kiev and Brussels and a board of 120 members. Critics laughed it off as a farce, noting that the group’s initial nominees included celebrities such as soccer star David Beckham, filmmaker Roman Polanski and actor Sacha Baron Cohen — who didn’t even know they were candidates.
“Clearly, the principle of representation is lacking from this organization — which, like other groups, is no more than a vehicle for the ego of its creator,” Edwin Shuker, the London-based vice president of the European Jewish Congress, told JTA.
But Rabinovich, whose organization has lobbied European governments on Jewish issues, is unfazed by such criticism. In fact, he doles it out just as readily.
Rabinovich on Moshe Kantor, the European Jewish Congress president: He “just sits behind a desk and does nothing and will do everything the Kremlin tells him.”
On Yaakov Dov Bleich, the U.S.-born chief rabbi of Ukraine: “Speaks no Russian and comes to Ukraine twice a year.”
And of American Jewish organizational leaders, Rabinovich says they “only want to be interviewed on television.”
Bleich told JTA he spends most of his time in Ukraine. A spokesperson for Kantor’s European Jewish Congress told JTA that Rabinovich’s statements are “unfounded and spurious allegations unworthy of comment.”
“This is a desperate attempt by Rabinovich to remain on the agenda one last time before his organization ceases to exist in the same way as many other fleeting organizations which come and go, causing confusion and embarrassment to the Jewish community and its relationship with European leaders,” the spokesperson said.
‘This is a desperate attempt by Rabinovich to remain on the agenda one last time’
Joel Rubinfeld, a former leader of Belgian Jewry and current co-chair of the European Jewish Parliament, counts some successes of Rabinovich’s organization, notably securing the construction of Montenegro’s first modern synagogue and co-organizing the first European Jewish choir festival in Vienna.
Rubinfeld says Rabinovich’s contributions, his prickly style notwithstanding, are deeply appreciated by Jewish communities, particularly in locales with limited resources that had suffered for decades under communist rule.
“Vadim is both a builder and a bulldozer,” Rubinfeld said, “and as such I think he sees life in a rather geometric manner. He always takes the shortest distance between two points. Some cherish him for it, others resent him.”
http://www.timesofisrael.com/ukrainian-jewish-governor-resigns-amid-dispute-with-president/
Ukrainian Jewish governor resigns amid dispute with president
Billionaire philanthropist Igor Kolomoisky steps down after standoff with Poroshenko over control of state-owned firms
BY
JTA April 1, 2015, 7:31 pm
Igor Kolomoisky (photo credit: Wikipedia/ Справедливість Повна версія)
The Ukrainian Jewish billionaire Igor Kolomoisky resigned as governor of the Dnepropetrovsk region amid a dispute with President Petro Poroshenko over control of two state-owned firms.
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Kolomoisky, who has poured millions of his own wealth into preparing Ukraine’s army to fight against Russia, sent Poroshenko his resignation letter late last week, the news website evreiskiy.kiev.ua reported.
Replacing Kolomoisky as governor of the Dnepropetrovsk region — an area of great strategic importance for its heavy industry and proximity to the Russian border and which has enclaves held by Russian-backed separatists — is Valentyn Reznichenko, the governor of a nearby district.
The resignation follows a tense standoff in which armed men loyal to Kolomoisky occupied the compound of one of the two state-owned firms in dispute, Ukrnafta, apparently to prevent the government from controlling it. Kolomoisky owns a minority share in both disputed firms.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on May 18, 2014, in the Dnepropetrovsk region. (photo credit: AFP/POROSHENKO PRESS-SERVICE/MYKOLA LAZARENKO)
According to the Vesti daily, Kolomoisky sent the resignation after Poroshenko signed a decree removing Kolomoisky as governor.
Kolomoisky, who has donated millions for Jewish causes in Dnepropetrovsk and beyond, was appointed governor in March 2014, and is credited with ensuring public order in the area in the tumultuous days that followed Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the eruption of urban fighting along the border between the two countries.
Celebrated as a hero in Ukraine’s west, Kolomoisky has been vilified in the eastern breakaway regions and in Russia as a war criminal. In Ukraine’s Jewish communities, some argued that his involvement in military projects while presiding as a community leader — Kolomoisky is the president of the European Jewish Parliament — endangered Ukrainian Jews.
The Jewish Community of Dnepropetrovsk, however, thanked Kolomoisky and his team in a statement.
“Dnepropetrovsk’s Jews together with other ethnic and religious communities, along with most residents of the area — and we hope with the majority of Ukrainian citizens wherever they live — want to say a word of thanks and appreciation to Igor Kolomoisky and his colleagues who selflessly led the most important area in the country in its hour of need,” the statement said.
Ale żeśmy zafundowali sobie WOLNOŚĆ !
WIELKA SYNAGOGA W BRUKSELI
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http://www.timesofisrael.com/a-guarded-welcome-on-this-years-european-day-of-jewish-culture/
BRUSSELS (JTA) — Under the gaze of a dozen police officers, a single file of Belgians forms outside the Great Synagogue of Europe.
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USSELS (JTA) — Under the gaze of a dozen police officers, a single file of Belgians forms outside the Great Synagogue of Europe.
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Waiting to enter the shul on its annual “open day” — when the synagogue throws open its doors to the public — many on this Sunday seem puzzled by the police presence.
“Open” is a relative term for Jewish institutions in Western Europe. On a continent where fears of anti-Semitic terrorism run high — and where memories are still fresh of this summer’s bombing of an Israeli tourist bus in Burgas, Bulgaria — opening doors is a complicated matter. Security is an omnipresent concern.
“Taking pictures, taking notes and filming are forbidden,” Raphael, a community guard, says at the entrance. “Bags will be searched. Visitors will hear a 45-minute lecture and then leave. Cellular phones must be switched off.”
The European Day of Jewish Culture was born 16 years ago in Strasbourg, France, as a way to build bridges between the Jewish community and non-Jewish Europeans. Today, Jewish institutions in 28 European countries open to the public on the first Sunday of every September, each year highlighting a different theme.
Sahra al-Assad, a young Muslim woman wearing a tight turquoise hijab, is among those standing in line to enter Brussels’ main synagogue. She says she is curious to see a local synagogue. She has seen a synagogue once before, in Spain, but never in her home country of Belgium.
‘I came to better understand the religion of my brothers’
“I came to better understand the religion of my brothers,” she says. “There are many things that set us apart, but I’m convinced we are intimately linked.”
Asked for her thoughts about the security arrangements, she offers, “It reflects a genuine anxiety.”
The friend accompanying al-Assad, a Catholic woman who identifies herself as Sandra, says she has been curious about Judaism ever since a visit to a synagogue in Egypt.
“It was hidden and we weren’t even allowed to take pictures,” she recalls. “I thought I could photograph here in Brussels.”
Pointing at herself, Sandra asks, “What are they afraid of? If they want people to get to know the Jewish community, just let us in.”
Joel Rubinfeld, co-chairman of the recently established European Jewish Parliament is based in Brussels, says many Jewish communities in Western Europe are facing the dilemma of openness vs. security.
“We want to open up to the general public to fight anti-Semitism and ignorance, but that is difficult precisely because of anti-Semitism. It’s a chicken and egg problem,” says Rubinfeld, who previously led the umbrella group representing Belgium’s French-speaking Jews, CCOJB. “If I were an operative planning an attack, I would use today for reconnaissance.”
‘If I were an operative planning an attack, I would use today for reconnaissance’
The “trick,” he says, “is to find a careful balance between caution and openness. If hundreds come to visit despite the complications, it’s a sign the balance is being reached.”
Rubinfeld adds, “It is a sad fact of life that synagogues in Europe today get the same protection as airports.”
The deadly March 19 attack in Toulouse, France, by an Islamist that left four dead at a Jewish school prompted Belgium’s Jewish communities — themselves no strangers to anti-Semitic violence — to ratchet up their already robust security arrangements. Last month, dozens of Jewish rescue workers from Antwerp held a drill simulating a deadly bombing at a Jewish school.
Despite the lines and the military-style security instructions, some 200 people visited the Brussels synagogue on Sunday. In Antwerp, organized guided tours drew a few hundred people to the city’s Jewish neighborhoods, where at least 10,000 haredi Orthodox Jews live, according to Israel’s Beit Hatfutsot museum. In total, some 40,000 Jews live in Belgium, according to the the World Jewish Congress.
Meanwhile, hundreds of visitors poured into Brussels’ Jewish museum. Many came directly from the Belgian Beer Weekend, which coincided with the Jewish culture day. Tipsy and thankful for the sunny weather, the visitors appear especially receptive to the theme: Jewish humor.
Belgian Jewish humorist Richard Kenigsman speaking at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Sept. 2, 2012. (photo credit: Cnaan Liphshiz/JTA)
“Some of you may find it unfair that Jews can make jokes about Jews with impunity whereas non-Jews can’t,” Jewish Belgian humorist Richard Kenigsman tells a small audience at the museum’s entrance. “The solution is simple enough: Convert!”
Back in the main synagogue of Brussels, professor Thomas Gergely, a linguist from Universite Libre de Bruxelles, delivers a lecture focusing on Judeo-Christian similarities.
“I don’t mean to shock you, but the Christians among us are worshiping a man who was born Jewish, lived Jewish and died Jewish,” he tells the audience.
Raphael, the security guard, asks one of the visitors to step aside after discovering that he is recording Gergely’s speech. The visitor tries to argue, but Raphael tells him he must stop recording or leave. The guard softens only after noticing the man’s Israeli accent.
“Next time, it would be helpful if you say you’re from Israel,” Raphael says with a smile.
After the speech, al-Assad exits the synagogue smiling.
“It was beautiful — spiritually, I mean,” she says. “When I talk to Arabs and Jews here, it seems like the conflict there” — in the Middle East — “is the only thing they can talk about, like it’s our only common theme. But I feel also a little bit Jewish, not just Muslim. I’ve heard about the Holocaust my whole life and it’s my story, too. That’s why I’m here.”
Jews Who Fought For Hitler - Nazi Collaborators - FULL Docu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZUwiLY5nt4
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