who reflected on what he saw as the worrying neo nazi tendencies in ukraine. what did you make of his position? i still believe that, who am i tojudge others? living in. ..such a country under such a regime today where any word uttered can. . . have great ramifications. it takes a lot of courage to speak out and who am ito judge others? but the point is that there s something significant about what boroda said and his view of you, because you indicated that you d been told that there would be trouble for thejewish community in moscow and russia if you spoke out.
there was pressure put upon you, that s your position. boroda claims, as far as he s concerned and aware, there was no pressure put on the jewish community in russia. so who is telling the truth and who is not? you have to decide in interview, maybe in hardtalk about that next time. however, at this time, i would take any kind of statement coming out of russia with great care, making sure that the statement is a bona fide statement and the people who said certain things, that actually it was their opinion. i guess what he, that is, rabbi boroda, appears to believe is that you are, in essence, disrespecting all of the jewish community. and let s face it, there s well over 100,000 of them in russia. all of those jewish people in russia who have
to do something. i couldn t keep quiet. keeping quiet was not good enough. and my wife and i, we decided to leave russia and go and start a foundation and help the refugees who left ukraine to go to eastern europe. your position became, within a few weeks of that invasion, your position became that it was morally wrong, morally unacceptable to stay silent, not to condemn that invasion. is that what i should understand from what you re saying? yes. i believe that staying silent was wrong, was morally wrong. if you are silent in the face of evil, it s morally wrong. and that s the reason we decided, first of all, to do something about it. and afterwards, when i left the country, i spoke up. why then do you think that other seniorfigures in the russianjewish community took a very different view? i m thinking in particular, for example, of rabbi alexander boroda, president of the federation of jewish communities in russia,