08 September 2003, 12:53
Leader of Jewish community of Stavropol was rebuked by regional Department of Justice for book "Kitsur Shulkhan Arukh"
A scandal with anti-Semitic implication burst out in Stavropol. Stavropol's residents Vlasov, Demchinsky and Zhizhin appealed to the Stavropol region's Department of the Ministry of Justice with a request to call Jewish organizations to account for extremist activity. They were impelled to make such an appeal by the article "A manual for Extremists-Beginners" published in the Alex-Inform newspaper #10. It is asserted in the article that Jewish organizations in Russia publish and distribute literature of extremist content, particularly the book entitled "Kitsur Shulkhan Arukh".
Meanwhile, "Kitsur Shulkhan Arukh" is nothing but a book of Judaic commandments, which are placed according to traditional norms.
As the head of the Moscow Bureau on Human Rights Aleksandr Brod said, the Alex-inform newspaper issued in Samara and edited by Oleg Kitter is the most radical chauvinistic newspaper in Russia.
The position of officials of the Stavropol region's Department of the Ministry of Justice is bewildering. They did not understand the unconcealed anti-Semitic character of the publication and took sides with the publishers of the pogrom newspaper while they should have limited its distribution in Stavropol instead, noted Aleksandr Brod.
Human rights activists are inclined to appeal to the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia and demand that the issue of publications stirring up national and religious dissensions be ceased.
