David Rozenson, a St. Petersburg-born Jewish educator and activist, recently received an award from the World Wide Association for St. Petersburg Leadership in a ceremony at the Hermitage Museum. Rozenson spoke with a journalist about his experiences growing up as a Jew in Communist Russia and his return after the collapse of the Soviet regime to help revive Jewish life (interview by Baila Olidort):

As head of the Avi Chai Foundation’s office in the former Soviet Union, I met with many individuals, and rarely found disrespect toward projects that brought Jewish/Israeli education and culture into the public sphere, even in places where formerly anything that related to Jewish life was taboo.

Among the projects that I worked on, for example, we tried to help attain legitimate status for academic Jewish life. Following much back and forth, we came into a dialogue on the matter with the rector of the St. Petersburg State University, a university where my mother, as a Jew, was not accepted to study medicine in her youth. . . . After some hesitation, he eventually agreed to open a full-fledged Department of Jewish Culture in a university where one would never imagine that the study of Judaism could be a legitimate academic pursuit.

Many other projects, religious and academic in nature, drawing Russian Jews who otherwise never would have taken part in Jewish activity or acknowledge their Jewish identities, have since opened. Twenty years ago this would have been impossible to imagine. And consider the number of synagogues, community centers, Jewish day schools, programs for Jewish youth that have sprouted in Russia. True, the political and economic situation is difficult; we must keep our eyes wide open. But we must also be fully appreciative of these developments.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.