Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Chabad Opened A New Yeshiva In The Most Muslim Part Of Russia

A new Jewish religious school opened today in the city of Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan — Russia’s largest Muslim republic.

The November 8 opening of school, a branch of Chabad’s Yeshiva Tomchei Temimim, was lauded as a “major breakthrough” for Kazan’s Jewish community by the website Chabad.org. The inauguration was timed to mark the birthday of one of the revered patriarchs in the Chabad Hasidic dynasty, Rabbi Sholom DovBer Schneersohn.

The new building sits next to a 100-year-old synagogue, which Chabad also recently restored. The opening ceremony was attended by a batch of local Jewish and community leaders, including the chief rabbi of Russia, the president of Tatarstan and the mayor of Kazan. The Jewish community of Kazan reportedly numbers in the tens of thousands, the Chabad center acting as a core organization offering religious support.

Contact Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected] or on Twitter, @skestenbaum

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.