I visited Moscow for the first time in July 2006 for an academic reason - to participate in the Eighth Congress of the European Association of Jewish Studies held in Moscow. I grew up, so to speak, with the Iron Curtain, so I never imagined that I would someday visit Russia. I felt hope for a better future, at least in Moscow, for ordinary citizens in general and Jewish life and Jewish studies in particular. I was right. Since then I've followed Jewish life and Jewish studies in Russia, mainly in Moscow with great interest. Both seem to have flourished gradually but steadily.
My next visit to Moscow was in December 2015 for a totally unexpected private reason and continued to make several visits to the city for the same private reason for about a year and a half. My last visit was in September 2017.
Since then I planned a number of times to visit Moscow. Then the pandemic started. I had to postpone my plan several times. Then something totally unexpected happened on February 24 this year, which has put the Iron Curtain anew after three decades of free traffic. Russia has become isolated again, and this time even worse than it used to be under Communism.
The more I continued reading and watching on Moscow, the more I came to be fascinated by it. Now I seem to know more about Moscow than about any Israeli city other than Jerusalem.
What I like best in Moscow is its book culture. I miss a couple of general bookstores there. While waiting for my next visit there, I started buying electronic books in Russian. Now this humble of joy of mine has also been shattered as I can't pay with my non-Russian credit card and PayPal. I've also been dreaming of visiting the bookstore section of a Chabad publisher and spending a Sabbath at one Chabad shul I fell in love with when I visited it in one of my private visits to the city.
As of now, I don't know at all when I'll be able to visit Moscow next time, but naturally, this "problem" is dwarfed in comparison with the worsening economic and other situations of ordinary citizens in Moscow and the other places in Russia, who are actually hostages in a sense.