NATAN SHARANSKY formerly the Soviet Union's most famous Jewish refusenik returned to Moscow last week in a new capacity - as Israel's Minister for Trade. He was heartened to hear the Russian Jewish community complaining about what he called "banal" problems, such as lack of funding. This showed the extent to which life had improved for them, he said. The days when Jews could be jailed for teaching Hebrew or kept waiting years for exit visas had faded like a bad dream.
One symbol of new hope for Jews who have chosen to remain in Russia rather than go to Israel is a little peppermint coloured building in the centre of Moscow, a synagogue which the Chabad Lubavitch sect has nearly finished restoring. Its former rabbi was murdered by Stalin's secret police. "They wanted him to say that Soviet culture was sufficient to satisfy the soul," said Rabbi Isaac Kogan, who now leads the community. "But he would not bow to them so they killed him and turned the synagogue into a Soviet culture club. Here they used to play the May Day demonstrations through Red Square."
Mikhail Gorbachev eased the restrictions which the atheist Soviet state placed on the activities of religious believers. The Lubavitch community applied for the return of their synagogue and got it back in 1991.
Rabbi Kogan takes me on to the women's balcony from where I can see the men gathering below to celebrate the sabbath. "The Soviets used this as a theatre," he says, pointing to the temple, beautifully restored with dark wood and stained glass. "And now I must go down and you must stop taking notes." For the sun has set on Friday evening. The Sabbath has begun and work must cease. I stand observing the chanting of the prayers.
Chabad Lubavitch is a Hasidic sect, whose members observe strict kosher rules and still arrange marriages. The men are distinctive for their black hats and long beards and married women have to wear wigs as a sign of modesty. They believe that their last Grand Rabbi, who died in New York in 1994, is the Messiah.
Of the world's 14 million Jews, they are a small minority. But in the former Soviet Union, the sect is playing a role out of proportion to its size. Liberal Jews in the West were active in trying to help refuseniks reach Israel in the communist era. But it is the charismatic Lubavitch, regarded with suspicion by secular Jews, who were trying to rebuild religious life for the 1.5 million Jews left in the old empire after the waves of emigration. Much of their funding comes from Levi Levayov, a diamond merchant originally from central Asia.
The Orthodox synagogue in Moscow operated in Soviet times when the Chabad Lubavitch one was still closed. Just as Christians made greater or smaller compromises with the communist state, which allowed believers to worship but not spread religion, through education or works of charity, so the Jews either found a modus vivendi with the authorities or became dissidents.
"Judaism is very flexible abut we could never accept the ban on teaching our children Hebrew," said Rabbi Kogan, who chose the dissident path. Formerly an engineer in the atomic submarine yards of what was Leningrad, he was denied exit to Israel for 14 years on the grounds that he knew state secrets. He became an underground community leader, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, who, in the 1950s, was arrested by the secret police for baking matzo (unleavened bread). Only in 1986 did Isaac Kogan reach Israel.
A small percentage of Jewish emigre's have returned to Russia, dissatisfied with life in Israel. Rabbi Kogan came back for different reasons. "Israel is my dream, today more than ever before," he said. "It is a real holy land." But Lubavitch elders had other ideas for his career. They decided he would be of more use back in the former USSR. First they asked him to work with child victims of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Then he took over at the synagogue, which runs a school and provides food parcels to Moscow pensioners, Jewish and non Jewish alike.
Do Russia's Jews still suffer from anti Semitism? "I define anti Semitism as forbidding a Jew to express himself in a Jewish way and I do not see that here any more," said the rabbi. "After decades of spiritual hunger, there is real religious freedom in Russia. Of course, some Jews are still unhappy but if they are leaving now, it is for economic reasons.
He admits, however, there have been attacks on the synagogue, including a firebomb in 1993, which burned his bedroom. "Nationalist hooligans are clearly a minority of the Russian population," he said. "But freedom is a two sided coin. If we have freedom, then the hooligans have it, too."