RUSSIA: FIRST JEWISH CENTRE UNVEILED

(18 Sep 2000) Russian/Eng/Nat XFA On Monday evening several hundred Moscow Jews attended the unveiling of the Russian capital's first Jewish community centre built on the site of a wooden Lubavich synagogue gutted by fire seven years ago. President Vladimir Putin and Russia's Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar cut the tape in a ceremony described as the start of a new era of Russian Jewish renaissance. Putin stressed the importance of the Jewish community in Russia, a country often criticized in the past for overt and covert anti-Semitism. The 45-room centre has a synagogue, library, restaurants, gymnasium, classrooms, youth halls, computer lab, exercise room, imax-like theater, and two mikvahs (ritual baths). The ceremony was attended by the Chief Rabbi of Israel, the U-S ambassador to Moscow, and other dignitaries, including Nathan Sharansky, a prisoner of conscience in the Soviet period and now member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament). Sharansky sai