 In the 1920s, he was invited to take over the Moscow Choral Synagogue, and the family moved to the Soviet capital.He had become a follower of the Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, who was exiled by the Soviets and at the time lived in Poland.To be an active religious leader, especially a Jewish one, under the Communists was an uneasy task, and the Moscow Rabbi was permanently harassed by the authorities, chased from a Moscow apartment and forced to settle outside the city limits.