Rabbi Yaakobi arrived in Krasnaya Sloboda (meaning “red town” in Russian) from the central Israeli city of Kfar Saba as a Chabad emissary almost 10 years ago. Since then, he has been working ceaselessly to bring the community back into the fold of Orthodox Judaism after centuries of near isolation from other Jewish communities — as well as decades of Soviet anti-religious policies.
The town itself was founded as a haven for Jews in 1742 by Fatah Ali Khan, the Muslim emir of the town of Quba, located in a relatively flat area just south of the the modern day border with the Russian province of Dagestan. While the rugged and remote area to the north had served as a haven for Jews for centuries, a period of unrest beginning in the 18th century saw local Sunnis turn on their Jewish counterparts and send them fleeing. [...]
“The story of the Soviets being responsible for the decline of Jewish learning in the town is the classic ‘those were the days’ ‘golden age’ kind of story,” Murinson says. “As early as the 19th century the level of Torah knowledge was very low and this is a fact. This was attested to by rabbis from the land of Israel and Eastern Europe who visited at the time.” [...]
When it comes to emigration however, despite the upswing in religiosity among the younger generation, they harbor little interest in moving to the Jewish state, seeing Russia as the preferred choice. The general view of Israel in Krasnaya Sloboda is that it is a place where they will likely be ruined, both culturally and financially, and their traditional culture undermined.
