Rebuttal: part 1. Who we are (please don't pass this around)

The 'queen sized' bed from our hotel room when we first arrived in Stavropol.




To whom it may concern,

I write this in response to the terrible accusations made against me by Yefim Fainer, president of the Jewish community of Stavropol, Oleg Pushkantser who is a representative of the Russian Jewish Congress in Stavropol (as I have only recently discovered), and some accusations by the media.

The truth always prevails, and nothing can refute it, particularly when it backed up by so many proofs. Therefore, I would like to start off by saying who I am.

1. My name is Zvi Peretz Hershcovich. I was born on 22 Av, 5742 (August 11, 1982) to Mechel and Faigy Hershcovich in Montreal, Canada. My father is a man of integrity, a deeply religious man who works as a handyman. He can fix or repair anything, and is a well-known member of the Chabad community in Montreal. My mother is a former nurse and current doula. She wasn’t born religious, and only became religious a couple of years before my birth. I have 6 siblings, who live in Montreal, Florida, New York, and Los Cabos, Mexico.

Chabad is a group of Chassidim. We follow the 7th Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who was born in Ukraine and moved to America after World War 2. He taught his Chassidim to learn how to love and care for every Jew, and he was among the fore-runners of the ‘Kiruv’ movement, in which he sent Rabbis around the globe to revive Jewish communities which were losing their attachment to Judaism.

In yeshiva (Jewish school), I spent my childhood learning Torah, Mishnah, Talmud, Shulchan Aruch and Chassidus (when I wasn’t playing hockey). I did not receive much of a secular education, but my knowledge of Judaism was (and still is) superb. I learnt to love every person, Jew or non-Jew as one would love himself, and I spent every Friday doing practical Rabbinical work putting Tefillin on Jews at work.

I learnt in large Yeshivas in London, New Jersey, Toronto and Montreal, and worked for a Synagogue in Sydney, Australia for a year. Then I spent two and half years in Ottawa where I worked as a teacher while learning ‘Semicha’, Rabbinical ordination.

I completed my Semicha and was tested by a Rabbi from Israel, the chief Rabbi of Ottawa, and a Rabbi from Venezuela in the summer of 2004.

At the end of that summer, I met my wife, Chaya Mushka Greenberg. Her father is a Rabbi in a Yeshiva in Morristown, New Jersey, and her mother works as a teacher in a school in the same town.

After we were married, we moved to Montreal and settled down in the Jewish community there.

I had been to the FSU 4 times before we were married, and the Jews of Russia and Ukraine had made a deep impression on me. Three times I had been to summer camps in Simferopol and Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine and I had helped to conduct a Seder in Kaliningrad, Russia. I felt a close attachment and deep love for these Jews, who after facing over 70 years of hardships and religious intolerance, were stepping up in large numbers and announcing that they were Jews. I cried like a baby when leaving camp in Dnepropetrovsk (and have pictures of it too), and still am in contact with many of my campers (through web sites such as odnoklassniki, vkontakte, and by regular post and telephone).

As a married man, I wanted to do something meaningful with my life. There weren’t too many Americans working as Rabbis in Russia, in part because it was financially more beneficial to remain in America (or Canada), and in part because of the language and cultural barriers. Nevertheless, I decided together with my wife that if there would be anywhere to work as a Rabbi, Russia would be the place.

This was for several other reasons as well. I felt that I would be able to do a good job in leading a community spiritually, and as a Chabad Chossid who has heard my Rebbe cry for the Jews in Russia, I knew that it was the place I must go. If I’m going to do something (in this case, be a Rabbi), I might as well do it right (and go somewhere where it will count, where I’ll honestly make a difference).

I contacted Rabbi Berel Lazar, chief Rabbi of Russia, and tried to organize a meeting. It took many months before we finally sat down together in a house in Crown Heights, and when I explained why I wanted to move to Russia, he simply asked me which city.

Up to that point, I had been doing odd jobs in Montreal, such as working as a ‘Mashgiach’ (Rabbi who makes sure the food is kosher) for a Kosher caterer in Montreal, and being an assistant film editor for a friend. I also helped write the CGI animated movie ‘Young Avraham’ (youngavraham.com), and wrote myself a live action Chanukah play (walk-through) called ‘Maccabees’, in which I also acted. It was performed in New York City the first year, attracted 15,000 visitors in its first month and was made into a video by Yanky Teitelbaum and Dovid Weinbaum (see here: http://www.mostlymusic.com/jewish-childrens-museum-maccabees-live-chanukah-adventure-p-3833.html). It also was followed by perfomances in Montreal (12,000 people over one month), and most recently Miami (another 15,000).

But all those were temporary jobs, and when Rabbi Lazar asked me to choose a city, I told him that I had no city in mind, but I did think I would do best as the Rabbi of a city rather than being another Rabbi in Moscow, for example.

He gave me a list of cities which needed Rabbis and told me to narrow down the list to three cities, which I would then visit and decide for myself.

We spent the next month doing careful research until we chose our final 3 cities. A month later, we visited them and were shown around the cities and made to meet the communities by the leaders of the communities.

Now that you understand who I am, I will give a history of what has happened since my first arrival in Stavropol. I’ll try to be brief, and be careful to back up my words. Actually, everything I write here can easily be backed up by even a cursory glance at my schedule book, which was filled daily with all the work I had to do. I can scan and upload the 5’th of January of this past year for example, and there you would read for example that at 9:00 I had an appointment with a Stavropol businessman. At 11:00 I had gone to a store to look at prices of different appliances (and written them down in my book), at 13:30 I had been on the phone with a scheduled appointment with a fellow Rabbi, at 15:00 my wife had work on the internet for askmoses.com and at 17:00 I had gone to buy a scanner for our office (or lack thereof).

You get the idea. Every date, from my permanent arrival on 4 Kislev, 5768 (November 14, 2007) is available. I also have photos, and in some cases – videos, which I have filed in my external hard drive and my parents computer and have with me today.

But without further ado, allow me to take you to July, 2007 where a young, excited couple (my wife and I), together with our 8-month-old daughter Miriam, traveled to Russia to choose a city to work in.