Moscow, Russia -- An article in Chabad's main Russian-language magazine blasting Reform Judaism has outraged Reform leaders in Russia and the US.
Reform Judaism "embodies an approach toward things that is opposite to the approach of the Torah," Rabbi Berel Lazar, the leading Chabad official in the former Soviet Union and one of Russia's two chief rabbis, wrote in the February issue of Lechaim.
Tension between Chabad and the Reform movement has been simmering in the former Soviet Union, but Lazar's broadside has intensified the conflict and put it squarely in the public eye.
Leaders of the Union for Reform Judaism, as the movement is known in the US, and of the World Union for Progressive Judaism called Lazar's attack deplorable.
"Rabbi Lazar cannot request American Jewish support for his work and profess to speak in the name of all Russian Jews, while simultaneously proclaiming that Reform Judaism is not Judaism and Reform rabbis are not rabbis," said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism.
Lechaim xis a monthly magazine published by the Federation of Jewish Communities, a Chabad-led umbrella group and the largest Jewish organization in the area. The magazine, which is free and distributed across the former Soviet Union, is one of the largest Jewish-interest monthlies in the area.
The article attracted the attention of Reform leaders in Russia this month. Reform leaders in the US, Israel and around the world joined in the denunciation.
"'Reform Judaism' cannot be seriously called a religion!" Lazar wrote. "'Reformed Judaism' is just a code of rules created by the people for their own worldly comfort. There is no God there."
Though they weren't not surprised to find criticism of their movement in a Chabad publication, Reform leaders were worried about Lazar's article, given its author's prominence.
Lazar argues that over the past 100 years Reform Judaism developed primarily in the US and therefore reflects American values, which grow out of a secular society. Those values make it hard for Jews to fully observe the Torah's commandments, he writes.
He hopes that the Reform movement's expansion in Russia fails, Lazar wrote.
Russian Reform leaders say Lazar is wrong about their movement not being successful in Russia.
Rabbi Grigory Kotlyar, head of the Union of Religious Congregations of Modern Judaism in Russia, the central body of the Reform movement, told JTA that the movement has about 35 active congregations in Russia, about 40 in Ukraine and about 20 in Belarus.
The movement now has six rabbis born in the former Soviet Union working in congregations in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev and Minsk.
Kotlyar said Lazar might have been partly motivated by fear the Reform movement will gain new momentum in Russia in response to the World Union for Progressive Judaism's global forum, slated for this summer in Moscow. It is believed to be the first time Reform Jewish leaders from around the world will meet in the former Soviet Union.
In a letter to Lazar signed by five Reform rabbis, Russian Reform leaders noted that their movement was not born in the US. In fact, they wrote, the movement's Russian roots are almost as deep as those of the Lubavitch movement: The first Reform congregations opened in czarist Russia in the middle of the 19th century.
The letter added that Lazar's article undermined the principles of democracy and pluralism in the Jewish community that Lazar himself has praised when meeting with American Jewish leaders.
The Reform leaders also said it was regrettable for one Jewish group to publicly attack another, given growing anti-Semitism in Russian.
As of press time, Lazar had not responded either to the Reform letter or to JTA's request for comment.