Russia’s Interfax news agency reports:
Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Center for Tolerance will receive its first 500 books from the Schneerson library in June, the public relations chief of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FEOR), Boruch /Gorin, said.
“I think that before the end of the year all the 4,500 books will be handed over,” Gorin told the Interfax-Religion.
Currently books in the Schneerson collection, which is stored at the Russian State Library, are being inventoried and scanned before being moved to the Jewish Museum. Between 500 and 700 books would be scanned monthly, Gorin said.
When the 4,500 book end up at the museum, experts will get down to studying books that may be part of the Schneerson collection but have not yet been identified as such. This work was likely to start next year, Gorin said.
He added that books that have not been confirmed as belonging to the collection but have indications of this might be as numerous as those that have been confirmed as part of it and might run into thousands.
Recently, the Schneerson library issue was raised at a meeting of the presidential council on ethnic relations. President Vladimir Putin rued out the possibility of the library being handed over to the U.S. Chabad-Lubavitch community and proposed keeping it at Moscow’s Jewish Museum, where the council meeting was being held.
Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky said the library might be handed over to the museum before the end of 2013.
The Schneerson library is a collection of old Jewish books and manuscripts put together by rabbis of the Chabad Jewish community in the late 18th century in Belarus.
Part of the collection, amassed by Lubavitcher Rebbe Yosef Yitzchok Schneerson, was nationalized by Bolsheviks in 1918 and ended up at the Russian State Library. The other part was taken out of the Soviet Union by Schneerson, who emigrated in the 1930s.
About 25,000 pages of manuscripts got into the hands of the Nazis, and were later seized by the Red Army and handed over to the Russian State Military Archive.
Lubavitchers have sought the restitution of the Schneerson collection since the late 1980s. According to some reports, then Russian president Boris Yeltsin promised to James Baker, secretary of state in the George Bush Sr. administration, that the holy documents would be returned to the chassidim.
On August 6, 2010, a federal judge in Washington, Royce Lamberth, ruled that the Hasids proved the legitimacy of their claims to the ancient Jewish books and manuscripts, which, in his definition, are kept at the Russian State Library and the Russian Military Archive illegally.
The Russian Foreign Ministry challenged the judgment.
On January 17, 2013, a federal court in Washington imposed a daily fine of $50,000 on Russia for failing to comply with the 2010 ruling. The court ignored the points of the U.S. Justice Department that measures of this kind would not be conducive to the settlement of the dispute over the library and run against U.S. interests.
Yasher Koach to Rabi Cunin and all who have been tirelessly
since the 1980″s!!!
because the Rebbe specifically said he wants them here in ny and that offer (to house them in Russia under chabad)
was on the table 20 years ago and the Rebbe said no
Here’s my understanding:
1) The books belong to Chabad
2)The Rebbe wanted them returned in their entirety to the Aguch library (in NY)
3) The Russians were stubborn and refused to return them
4)They’ve now agreed to return them, albeit not to allow them out of Russia
What’s the rationale for standing on principle and saying we’ll accept nothing less than every book returned to the Aguch library in NY?
Is Chabad in Russia not the etzem wellspring of the Rebbe’s chassidus in “chutzah” (as are all batei chabad)?
Please help me understand.
1 step at a time!
Is it better that The Govnt should hold it and not chabad? Are you all insane…..
I know that some books from the collection were sold in the open market quietly so why not have it here.
You all know what since we dont know what the rebbe would say between the avalable 2 choices that where not avalaible when the rebbe was here lest wait for his quick return and we can ask him
You think the Rebbe would be against the transfer, or view it as a first step?
The Rebe wants the sefroim back in NY and anything short of that is going against the rebbes will.
The Rebbe wanted it should come back to 770! Just look at the last sicha the Rebbe said on the lastHei Teves – 5 teves 5752 and the shabbos after – 7 teves how much the rebbe wanted the seforim to come back HERE IN 770…. This is not why the Rebbe sent Shluchim there for years in the late 1980’s early 90’s for time un end to try to bring back the seforim. For more info go to http://www.hebrewbooks.org/23760 It’s a 500 page book writtin by harav Sholom Ber Levin describing what they went through in Russia, and the… Read more »
Any idea of how many of these seforim are new/unpublished?? (separate from those that somehow have been published even though the originals have remained still in russia)