ABSTRACT
The end of World War II found the survivors of the Soviet Jewish population traumatized by the Holocaust, the tribulations of evacuation and the losses and havoc of the war. In these circumstances, a natural role seemed to be carved out for the synagogue and the community around it, especially given the fact that hardly any other Jewish institutions had survived the vicissitudes of the first decades of the building of communism. During World War II, as the Soviet leadership sought to mobilize its citizenry for the war effort, it had shown an unusual readiness to compromise with a number of institutions and social forces it had earlier repressed and opposed, the most important of which was probably the Russian Orthodox Church. The general fast proclaimed by the Palestinian Chief Rabbinate just two months before the end of the war was the occasion of a major gathering at Moscow's Choral Synagogue.
