The ranks of Jewish ritual animal slaughterers grew by 40 as students of the Chabad-Lubavitch run Machon Ran Yeshiva in Moscow took their final exams and received their ordinations before a panel of Israeli rabbinic authorities.

Many of the graduating students also received their rabbinic ordinations after a second set of tests at the Ohr Menachem Mendel Center in the Moscow suburb of Ramenskoye.

Russian Jewish Congress president Yuri Kanner spoke at the class’ graduation ceremony and congratulated the yeshiva’s dean, Rabbi Yitzchak Kogan, for another year strengthening Jewish life and scholarship.