First of all, I would like to ask you to pay attention to the fact that there is no official church blessing on this book. This means that only I am responsible for everything that is written in it, and not the Russian Orthodox Church. Therefore, I ask those people who find it necessary to speak critically about it, all criticism should be addressed to me, and not to the Church. This is a private project, a private opinion. That is why I would like to ask you to do without the phrase "we have before us yet another proof of anti-Semitism that has engulfed the Russian Orthodox Church."

Since this is the second edition, this is not the first time I have asked for this. Although I know that it is, of course, useless to ask ideologically biased people. "The doctor said - to the morgue, so to the morgue!" [1] After the first edition of this book of mine, its publication by a secular publishing house was still imputed to the entire Church:

"We will cite only two examples of the prevalence of anti-Semitic ideas in the Orthodox environment. 1) During the transfer and burial of the "Yekaterinburg remains", one of the questions asked by the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church to a special expert commission was the question of whether the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family was ritual. In view of the fact that the question of regicide has been developed in the church-related literature, there is no doubt that by the "ritual" character is meant precisely the Jewish one. 2) Another example, the book by deacon Andrei Kuraev "How they make an anti-Semite" (Moscow, "Hodegetria", 1998), strictly speaking, can be regarded as incorrect. The author himself writes: "There is no official blessing on this book. This means that only I am responsible for everything that is written in it, and not the Russian Orthodox Church." However, A. Kuraev is a significant figure; he is practically the only person in the Church who is engaged in voicing its position on topical issues, regularly appearing on television and actively publishing explanations about various problems. Within the Church, he is perceived almost as an official authority. As far as we know, there has never been a single condemnation or doubt on the part of the church hierarchy about the faithfulness of his works."[2]

As for the first point, the official response of the Moscow Theological Academy to the Synod was negative: there were no grounds to see the execution of the Imperial Family as a ritual murder. But the laws of information warfare do not allow us to talk about how "scandalous stories" end: the initial turmoil is important.

On the second point, first of all, I would like to thank you for your kind words: the tolerant attitude of the Patriarchate to my journalistic activity is really dear to me. But again, is it honest: I warn that I am doing something NOT in the name of the Church, I leave the church ambo and speak as an emphatically private person, and these words of mine are still put in the dossier on the Russian Church as such... And this dossier is kept by thorough gentlemen: this is "a joint project of the sem40.ru Website and the Anti-Defamation League." The latter is famous for its good memory, peremptory sentences and very influential connections in Transoceania[3].

This collection contains articles from different years, including those that were written after the publication of the first edition of this book in 1998.

The texts collected in this collection are not the fruit of a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the problem. This collection (so far?) lacks a pivotal chapter: a theological conversation about how a Christian should comprehend the historical path of the Jewish people and on the basis of what moral and religious principles he should build his relations with modern Jews. But I did not see the need to write such a text on my own behalf, since the principles of the Gospel are known to everyone, and their application to the "Jewish question," it seems to me, was quite successfully fulfilled in the classic article by Archpriest I. Sergius Bulgakov's "Persecution of Israel" and in general in his collection "Christianity and the Jewish Question".

The articles of mine that have been collected here arose quite reactively, as a reaction to the of the Church and Russia that came across in the activities of Jewish journalists. Well, the main thing has already been said: if there are no injections, there will be no reaction. Those who agree with this need not read the following hundreds of pages: they are only illustrations of this thesis.

There is no analysis of the "current situation" in this book. Rather, its very appearance is a fact that needs to be analyzed. The fact is that here is another person who was brought up in a university and academic environment, who from childhood learned an intolerant attitude towards "zoological anti-Semitism", nevertheless went beyond the red flags of "political correctness". Why?

On these pages, I present the material with which the encounter led me not to a revision, no, but to an expansion of the idea of "Russians and Jews". To this day, I do not renounce my article "Anti-Semitism is a sin" (Jewish Newspaper. No 1, 1992)[4]. But in addition to this, something else has to be said on the stated topic.

This collection is more of a confession than an accusation. Yes, anti-Semitism is a sin, for all hatred is sinful. And irritation and indignation are the first step to hatred. I don't want hatred to make a nest in my soul. But still, I can't help but notice that reading the democratic press provokes reactions in me that I had never experienced before. I felt that strange shadows were suddenly beginning to flicker in my soul. The rules of asceticism in such cases tell you to take a closer look: where does this feeling of spiritual and moral impurity come from, what provokes these attacks.

A Christian, of course, must be ready to see his guilt, his sin in any unpleasant incident. But is the indignation that is born when hearing blasphemy a sin? Who is more to blame in this case – the blasphemer, or the Christian, in whose presence this blasphemy was uttered and who, perhaps, even stood up too hot-tempered for the desecrated shrine?

Well, in order to avoid this temper, you need to talk calmly. To begin with, you need to admit that there is a problem. There is a problem of the inadmissibly disdainful attitude of some Jewish publicists to the religious and national feelings of the Russian people. And there is the problem of the unacceptably harsh reaction of some of the Russians to these insults.

I understand that first of all, the problem is in our own weaknesses. Saladin is said to have said after a conversation with Francis of Assisi that if all Christians were like that, he would gladly give them the Holy Land. If I had more love, prayerfulness, and spirituality, I would not be irritated when I encountered anti-Russian and anti-Church attacks, but would only cry with heartfelt contrition for the people whom the Lord allowed to fall into such darkness, and for my own sins, which prevent other people, including our detractors, from seeing the true light of the Gospel[6]... But it is not the Seraphim of Sarov that inhabited the Russian land.