The Choral Synagogue of St. Petersburg is one of the most beautiful in the world. In a city containing many magnificent churches, the lone synagogue could not be otherwise.

The synagogue is part of a compound containing two buildings and a courtyard. The larger one houses the sanctuary, bridal, and brit mila (circumcision) rooms, a cafeteria-style room where the poor elderly are served lunch daily, and an attractive restaurant where tour groups can dine on kosher cuisine. The smaller building houses a small kosher food store, which includes a “book department” of several shelves containing books emphasizing hasidic themes. This is the only such store for a community comprising 90,000 Jews.

Many tourists visit and the Jewish community office stations a public relations person to talk about the synagogue and community. The one I met on a recent visit to Russia was a lovely 17-year-old, fluent in both English and Hebrew. She explained that the synagogue holds regular services which on a normal Shabbat attract 30 to 50 worshippers and on the High Holy Days as many as 1,000. She said that the bridal room is used two or three times per year. Asked how that is so in a community of 90,000 Jews, she said that use of the bridal and brit mila rooms is limited to observant Jews. There is a fear that intermarried people whose halachic bona fides are doubtful will use these facilities.

Our hostess said that there are five Jewish day schools with 1,100 students. Two of them are Orthodox, and three are what we would call community day schools. She added that the Jewish Agency for Israel offers classes to facilitate aliya, such as spoken Hebrew, the history of the State of Israel, and others. She added that there are no organized Jewish youth groups or other informal education activities.

In a brochure distributed at the synagogue, the information was at some variance with what we were told. The brochure boasts that the synagogue sponsors a youth club, Tzivos Hashem, a clear sign that it is run by the Chabad-Lubavitch hasidic movement. The word “Chabad” appears in photos of events.

The brochure also listed activities that our hostess failed to mention or simply do not exist. One discrepancy in particular caught my eye. That was the statement in the brochure that there are two day schools containing 400 children as opposed to the five mentioned by our hostess. In other words, the three community schools are not recognized by Chabad — just as, perhaps, the non-Orthodox are denied the use of the bridal and brit mila rooms.

The Shabbat prior to my St. Petersburg visit, I attended services in Helsinki, Finland, a community of 800 Jews. At this Modern Orthodox synagogue, there were 30 to 35 locals of all ages in attendance in addition to 10 guests from Israel. As there is no rabbi, services are led by a cantor. The Helsinki synagogue is part of a “campus” that includes a JCC housing a day school, a senior citizen residence, and a gymnasium. In Stockholm, Sweden, the 10,000-strong Jewish community has a major synagogue affiliated with the Masorti (Conservative) movement that draws 200 to 500 attendees at weekly Shabbat services. This is in addition to two smaller Orthodox congregations and a large Jewish community center complex that contains a day school, youth groups, sports, and other activities associated with JCCs. Many international Jewish organizations have offices in the JCC. In both of these Scandinavian cities, there were “kosher” stores with a far larger product selection than the one in St. Petersburg.

The diverse atmosphere in the Scandinavian cities stands in sharp contrast to the restrictive nature of the Chabad-run institutions, which appear not to welcome many Jews who care about their Jewishness sufficiently to send their children to day schools and engage in other “Jewish” activities. They are denied use of communal facilities that would enrich the Jewish content of their lives and are simply not recognized by the Chabad functionaries that control the synagogue. Yet, if Shabbat synagogue attendance and consumption of kosher food are indices of success, Chabad’s is very limited.

Still, Chabad is the only rabbinical presence in St. Petersburg. The Conservative and Reform movements, whose message might be attractive to those non-Orthodox Jews concerned with Jewish life, are not present. One reason for their absence, they claim, is a lack of resources to sustain programs and rabbis. Why Chabad is able to obtain such support and others are not is an unanswered question. Some of Chabad’s budget is supplied by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, where the non-Orthodox movements are well represented.

Funds are not the only reason. Chabad has people who are prepared to leave Brooklyn for years to work in other countries. Similarly, the World Zionist Organization has emissaries throughout the world who are prepared to serve for three years. Yet the non-Orthodox or even the Modern Orthodox streams offer no such idealistic challenge.

In the long run, it would be best if Russia and, indeed, all the countries of the former Soviet Union developed their own Jewish civil service. I am aware that strides are being made in that direction as evidenced by our hostess in the synagogue. However, until the time that such a civil service is established, world Jewry would do well to shoulder its responsibility by offering idealistic challenges to our young rabbis. The emergent Jewish communities of the former Soviet Union need to provide greater choice for those Jews who desire to live as Jews and restore and perpetuate Jewish life in the magnificent city of St. Petersburg.