News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) Criminal motives, not antisemitism are believed to be behind an attack in Vladivostok on Rabbi Israel Zilberstein, an American citizen who serves as the chief rabbi of the Primorsky Krai area of eastern Russia. According to information relayed by the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia to the Interfax news agency, a short, masked man knocked the rabbi unconscious on the main street of the Pacific port with a blow to the head and took a case containing an expensive portable computer.

The rabbi suffered a concussion in the attack. Police came up empty in their search for the assailant.