By Interfax
Russia’s chief rabbi Berel Lazar has congratulated the nation on Russia Day and expressed the certainty that the country will be able to overcome existing difficulties, just as it did before.
“I think I will not be mistaken if I say that today’s holiday has become the birthday of a great power and an important factor of international stability and peace,” Lazar said in a felicitation letter obtained by Interfax-Religion.
“This is primarily a holiday of unity” for Russians, he said.
“We remember that attempts to split and differentiate us on grounds of ethnicity and religion were made. Thank God these attempts failed thanks to timely actions of the state leadership, our patriotism and the fact that our multinational people were united and rose to protect Russia,” Lazar said.
The chief rabbi pointed out that the Russian Supreme Council adopted the declaration on Russia’s sovereignty on June 12, 1990, and the first president was elected one year after.
“One may have different attitudes to events that followed, the collapse of the Soviet Union and economic shocks of 1990s, but today having a historic perspective in sight, we understand that actions of the Russian leadership in those years preserved Russia as a single state and saved all peoples of our country from bloody feuds,” he said.
“The whole world was saved from the threat of riots in the state that has the world’s largest stock of nuclear weapons,” Lazar said.
