Moscow district prosecutors on Thursday summoned Rabbi Zinovy Kogan for questioning after receiving a complaint that a Russian translation of the Shulchan Aruch, a 16th-Century compendium of Jewish religious laws, inspires bigotry, Kogan said.
Already thrown out of court
The investigation is meant to review an earlier decision by Moscow's Basmanny district prosecutors who found the text did not inspire such hatred and that a criminal case did not need to be opened, said Kogan, chairman of the Congress of Jewish Religious Organizations who published the text.
The probe was initiated by two nationalist activists who complained that a Russian translation of Shulchan Aruch incites religious and national hatred, according to an earlier prosecutors' statement posted on the Web site of an anti-xenophobia group Sova.
Prosecutors declined to comment.
In their complaint, the activists argued the text is aimed at "insulting human dignity based on national and
religious affiliation," according to the prosecutors' statement. The text was also accused of labeling Christians "worshippers of idols" in a reference to Christians' main religious symbol, the cross.
Kogan denied the accusations. He said the Russian translation of the book, printed in three editions in 1999, 2000 and 2004, with a print run of a total of about 5,000 copies, "Is meant to cultivate respect toward other religions and peoples."
"For us it's a book about how to wash oneself, how to dress, how to eat," Kogan said.
The rabbi acknowledged that there are "some incorrect passages" in the text, such as an instruction for Jewish women without a medical education not to help non-Jewish women during child birth. But he said such statements from a very ancient text could not be interpreted without an appropriate commentary.
The issue of the Shulhan Arukh was brought up earlier in January, when 19 lawmakers made it the center of their appeal to prosecutors to conduct an investigation aimed at outlawing all Jewish organizations, accusing Jews of fomenting ethnic hatred and provoking anti-Semitism.
A group of rights activists in February filed a complaint, asking prosecutors to determine whether the lawmakers' letter incited national and religious hatred and bring them to justice if it did, said Yevgeny Ikhlov, one of the activists who placed the complaint.
Basmanny prosecutors concluded in May that the lawmakers' statement did not constitute a crime, but they were now conducting a second investigation into the matter, Ikhlov said.
Turning a blind eye
The Russian state no longer perpetuates anti-Semitism following the Soviet collapse, but many rights groups accuse Russian leaders of being silent in the face of xenophobia, expressed in the occasional desecration of Jewish cemeteries and more frequent skinhead attacks against dark-skinned foreigners.
Several Jewish organizations including the Conference of European Rabbis and the Israeli government condemned the probe into the religious text.
"To take a traditional Jewish text and try to ban it reminds us of the official state-sponsored anti-Semitism
that we saw in Czarist Russia," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev.
