From our people, from Muscovites

Moscow's Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt has been elected the new president of the Conference of European Rabbis, a public organization uniting Jewish communities and their religious leaders from 40 European countries, the head of the rabbi's office, Yakov Shumyatsky, told RIA Novosti.

Goldschmidt, a long-time member of the Conference of European Rabbis who has chaired its standing committee since 1999, will succeed Chief Rabbi of France Yosef Chaim Sitruk, who has led the Conference since 1999, as president. Goldschmidt became the fourth president in the history of the organization and the first representative of Eastern Europe in this position.

“The Conference of European Rabbis deals with problems common to all Jewish communities within the European Union. The fact that today a Moscow rabbi heads a European organization is a fact of recognition of the development of Russian religious Jewish communities,” Shumyatsky told RIA Novosti.

Representatives of the Moscow Jewish religious community hope that in his new status Goldschmidt will be able not only to represent the interests of Moscow Jews at a new level, but also to promote interaction between Russia and the structures of the European Union.

The Conference of European Rabbis was created in 1956 to support the revitalization of Jewish communities and coordinate the activities of Jewish religious organizations in Europe. In recent decades, the Conference has represented the interests of Jewish communities in the governing bodies of the European Union. Currently it unites 400 rabbis and Jewish communities from 40 European countries. The headquarters of the Conference is located in Brussels, meetings are held every two years in one of the European capitals with the participation of authoritative religious leaders, leading political and public figures from different countries.

Goldschmidt was born in 1963 in Zurich (Switzerland). He received his education in the USA, at Johns Hopkins University, and Israel. In 1988, while a rabbi in the city of Nazareth, he was invited to Moscow as a lecturer at the Institute for the Study of Judaism at the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1989, at the invitation of the Chief Rabbi of Russia Adolf Shaevich, he founded and headed the rabbinical court of the USSR, and in 1993 became the Chief Rabbi of Moscow. In 2010, by decree of President Dmitry Medvedev, Goldschmidt received Russian citizenship.

Goldshmidt is one of the founders of the Russian Jewish Congress and the Congress of Jewish Religious Organizations and Associations of Russia.