500 Soviet emigres at first seder have `special' rabbi

For 500 Soviet emigres experiencing their first Passover seder,the choice of Rabbi Victor Rashkovsky to conduct the ceremonial mealcouldn't have been more fitting.

He is the first to become a rabbi among 300,000 Soviet Jews inthe wave of emigration that began in the 1970s, say officials of theJewish Community Center in Skokie.

Why him among so many? "Ask God," said Rashkovsky, 48, beforethe seder at the center.

Rashkovsky, a former film and theater critic who left the SovietUnion in 1973, earned a Ph.D. in mass communication at the Universityof Cincinnati before embarking on his new career.

As a Jew in the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union, he had …