Rabbi wounded in Dagestan recovering in Israel

Dagestan’s Rabbi Ovadya Isakov, who was gravely wounded on July 25 and undergoes medical treatment at Israel’s Beilinson Hospital, is recovering and plans to soon return back to Dagestan, sources from the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia told Tass on Monday. “An anti-Semitic attack luckily failed, and it has not scared my family and me. I want to get back to Derbent as soon as possible and continue with my duties in the Jewish community,” the rabbi said. The hospital press service, for its part, reported that the rabbi, who was airlifted to Israel 10 days ago in a critical condition, is now getting better and the process of rehabilitation may be shorter than it was believed earlier. The head of the FJCR’s department for cooperation with the armed forces, Aaron Gurevich, told Itar-Tass that the investigators still consider terrorism as the main motive behind the attack. The Jewish community in Derbent is the biggest and most influential in Dagestan, and one of the oldest in the North Caucasus. It has 2,000 members at the moment. An unidentified criminal shot and wounded Isakov, 40, at about 01:00 Moscow time on July 25 at the moment, when he had got out of the car and was walking to his residential house. The rabbi suffered a penetrating gunshot wound in the breast and was rushed to hospital and operated.