Pinchas Goldschmidt

Goldschmidt during the WEF 2013

Pinchas Goldschmidt (born July 21, 1963 in Zurich ) is Chief Rabbi of Moscow , spiritual leader of the Central Choral Synagogue (Moscow) , chairman of the rabbinical courts of both the Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent States , board member of the Russian Jewish Congress and chairman of the European Rabbinical Conference .

Pinchas Goldschmidt

family

Goldschmidt comes from a fourth generation Jewish family living in Zurich. His father Salomon, married to his mother Elisabeth, was an entrepreneur and developed, among other things, an automated goods transfer system for clothes. His paternal great-grandfather was Chief Rabbi of Denmark and later of Zurich. His father's ancestors immigrated from France to Switzerland during the First World War . Goldschmidt's maternal grandfather was a Chasside from the Carpathian region and lived in Vienna . His grandmother came to Switzerland in 1938, shortly before the annexation of Austria to Germany , because of tuberculosis. His maternal great-grandfather and all of his siblings who stayed behind in Austria were murdered in Auschwitz .

Goldschmidt is married and has seven children. His wife Dara was born in the United States of America and her grandfather is from Minsk .

Goldschmidt's younger brother is a rabbi in South Africa .

Career

From 1979 to 1981 Goldschmidt studied at the Ponewiescher Yeshiva in Bnei Berak in Israel , 1981 to 1982 at the Telshe Yeshiva in Chicago , 1985 to 1986 at the Shevet Umechokek Institute for Rabbinical Judges and 1986 to 1987 at the Harry Fischel Institute for Rabbinical Judges in Jerusalem . In 1987 he received the Semicha from the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Jitzchak Kulitz . In addition to his rabbinical ordination , Goldschmidt holds an MA from Ner Israel Rabbinical College and an MS from Johns Hopkins University , both in Baltimore . From 1987 to 1989 he worked in the rabbinate of Nazareth-Ilit .

In 1989, two years before the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union , Goldschmidt came to Moscow, at the joint request of the government of the Soviet Union, the late Zurich rabbi Mosche Soloweitschik, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate , the World Jewish Congress and the local Jewish underground movement for Jewish life in the country to restructure and create the necessary conditions for a revival of the Jewish community. He succeeded in this through the development of communal structures from colleges, all-day schools and kindergartens, soup kitchens and rabbinical schools to political shell structures such as the Russian Jewish Congress and the Congress of Jewish Religious Organizations and Associations in Russia. In 1993 Goldschmidt was elected Chief Rabbi of Moscow.

In 2002 Goldschmidt was certified by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel for the position of Chief Rabbi in every Israeli city.

In spring 2009 Goldschmidt was visiting scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University .

Religious work and political activities

Goldschmidt writes articles on post-Soviet Judaism on religious law and published a series of responses on Russian Jewish names in Moscow in 1996 . He speaks in the press and before international institutions such as the Senate of the United States , the European Parliament , the Council of Europe , the Knesset , the Neeman Commission of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , the University of Oxford , the Berlin Anti-Semitism Conference of the OSCE and the University of Harvard on current issues, mostly on the state of the Jewish community and the threats posed by anti-Semitism .

In January 2005 he responded in detail to one of 500 petitioners, including newspaper editors, intellectuals and 19 members of the Duma , who signed a petition to close all Jewish institutions in the Russian Federation. The then chairman of the nationalist Rodina party, Dmitri Olegowitsch Rogosin , apologized to Goldschmidt and distanced himself from the petition.

Chairman of the European Rabbinical Conference

In July 2011 Goldschmidt was elected President of the European Rabbinical Conference in London , which brings together around 400 rabbis from Dublin to Khabarovsk . He succeeded the former Chief Rabbi of France, Joseph Chaim Sitruk , who had held the post since 1999. Goldschmidt is only the fourth president and the first from Eastern Europe in the 54-year history of the conference . In 2012, in this capacity, he harshly criticized a ruling by the Cologne Regional Court on May 7, 2012, according to which circumcision should be regarded as bodily harm. In 2013, he warned in Berlin against restricting religious freedom in response to the immigration of Muslims from North Africa and the Middle East. 2015 he thanked Pope Francis for the use of the Roman Catholic Church for the religious freedom and criticized the secular Europe react to anti-Jewish attacks by radicalized Muslim immigrants with an "attack on Islam", "rather than the radicals to fight." At the same time, in the face of the Ukraine conflict, he warned of a new separation of Europe, which would also consist in “the east becoming the defender of traditional religious values, while the west adopting a secularism that would lead it away from its Judeo-Christian heritage”.

Awards

On July 27, 2016, Rabbi P. Goldschmidt was awarded the National Order of the Legion of Honor by the government of the French Republic for his great contribution to strengthening relations between Russia and France.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Раввин Пинхас Гольдшмидт . In: Московская Еврейская Религиозная Община . Retrieved January 17, 2017.
2. ^ ^{A b c} Moscow Rabbi Elected New President of the Conference of European Rabbis . In: The Jewish Post of New York . Retrieved April 26, 2015.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} President ( Memento from January 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). In: Conference of European Rabbis . Retrieved April 28, 2015.
4. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of January 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). In: HULYA - Young Rabbis for European Jewry . Retrieved April 28, 2015.
5. ^ Regional Court of Cologne, 151 Ns 169/11 . Retrieved April 28, 2015.
6. ↑ Freedom of religion: Rabbis intensify criticism of the circumcision judgment . In: Spiegel online, July 12, 2012 . Retrieved April 28, 2015.
7. ↑ Dunning and Reconciliation: commemoration of the November pogrom . In: Deutsche Welle, November 10, 2013 . Retrieved April 28, 2015.
8. ↑ Francis receives European rabbis . In: Vatican Radio . Retrieved April 25, 2015.

Web links

Commons : Pinchas Goldschmidt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files