Completed in 1906, after construction was stalled multiple times by the tsarist authorities, Moscow’s Choral Synagogue remains one of Russian Jewry’s most impressive works of architecture. During the Soviet era, it was one of very few synagogues permitted to function at all. Benyamin Goldschmidt, whose father became the congregation’s rabbi in 1993—only two years after the end of Communism—reminisces about bearing witness to the revival of Judaism in the city:

Even as a young child, when I passed through the towering white columns of the Choral Synagogue and then entered through the huge wooden doors—which I couldn’t open without the assistance of an adult—I knew it was a building of great historical significance. After all, it was not just a synagogue. It was the only overt symbol of Judaism that had withstood 70 years of Communism. From Lenin to Stalin to Gorbachev, the synagogue’s doors remained open—mostly for show, by government decree, but open nevertheless.

During the first few years, there was always suspicion among Jews—everyone suspected everyone else of collaborating with the KGB. . . . When my father first [arrived], a man walked over to him and pointed out someone in the shul, saying, “Young rabbi, be careful. That man is part of the KGB!” As soon as he left, the other man came running to my father and said, “Rabbi, the man you just spoke to is a KGB informant!” I asked my father whom he believed, and he said, “I believed them both.” Even long after the KGB stopped tracking every person who walked into the building, its long shadow remained.

In the main sanctuary, there used to be a closed wooden box with a few seats. They say it was built for Golda Meir, who visited the synagogue as the ambassador to the Soviet Union of the newly created state of Israel. The authorities didn’t want her to mingle with local Jews, so they had to build her a separate section in the shul, which was later used by other foreign visitors. Meir’s visit wasn’t publicized, yet the silent Jews of Moscow spread the news by word of mouth, one by one. When she arrived, 50,000 Jews had congregated, waiting to catch a glimpse of her. Meir later said it was one of the two most important moments of her life.

On one occasion, Goldschmidt recalls, a congregant hushed him for speaking during prayers, and an elderly woman came to his defense: “Don’t you dare shush the child! I waited for 70 years for children once again to make noise in shul.”

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.