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(JTA) — Rabbi Aaron Motuz fled Odessa Thursday night time aboard a number of buses with about 200 different group members in defiance of a government-mandated curfew.
They meant to succeed in neighboring Moldova, the place lots of of Jews from Ukraine are already staying, however didn’t have all the required papers. The convoy is heading west to Poland and, Motuz informed the Israeli information web site Kikar, will proceed driving by means of Shabbat, when Orthodox Jews are commanded to chorus from such journey except human lives are at stake.
The haste, Motuz stated, can be related to a brand new authorities order that any man older than 18 keep within the nation – a transfer that’s seen as designed to forestall emigration forward of recruitment to the military. Motuz’s brother is already serving on the frontline, he informed Kikar. Non-Jewish locals who noticed the bus convoy requested to come back with it, and a few even supplied to pay.
“We’re afraid they’ll cease us on the best way and ship us again. So we’re driving nonstop by means of Shabbat. It’s pikuach nefesh,” Motuz stated, utilizing the Hebrew time period for the Jewish precept that saving a life is the best worth.
Motuz represents one excessive of the ways in which Ukrainian rabbis ready for the primary Shabbat for the reason that Russian military invaded their nation. Some cautioned Jews to remain residence and even flee, whereas others urged their group members to stay constructive even amid scary situations.
“Particularly in our scenario, we have to keep in mind that we’re within the Hebrew calendar month of Adar and when Adar arrives, we improve our pleasure,” Rabbi Nochum Erentreu, an emissary of the Chabad Hasidic motion within the japanese metropolis of Zaporizhzhia, reminded his flock in a video sermon that he posted on Fb.
It’s a quote of a centuries-old saying about the necessity to rejoice across the vacation of Purim, which can fall on March 16 and celebrates the deliverance of the Jews of Persia from lethal persecution there.
He urged listeners to facilitate the triumph of their hearts of “religion and confidence that the Almighty will assist us.” The Rebbe, he stated, referencing the late Chabad chief Menachem Mendel Schneerson, “Many instances repeated: Suppose effectively and will probably be effectively!”
Rabbi Moshe Azman, posting on Fb from the synagogue at Anatevka, a compound he had constructed close to Kyiv for Jewish refugees throughout Russia’s final invasion of Ukraine in 2014, informed his followers to “radiate pleasure wherever you go” — which this week might simply imply into underground bomb shelters, makeshift bunkers or to security exterior of cities.
“I’m with you. Don’t panic. Everyone knows what’s occurring. Let’s pray, let’s be united, let’s not let worry enter us! Let’s be completely satisfied,” Azman stated. “Let’s pray to the Almighty and ask Him to present us peace.”
However peace felt far off as night time fell on Friday, with Russian troops advancing on Kyiv and uncertainty wracking the nation.
“We simply evacuated the entire group and all the youngsters, and we needed to violate the Shabbat,” the gabbai, or director, of Odessa’s most important synagogue stated in a video posted on Fb. “We ask everybody pray that we succeed to assist all of the Jews we’re liable for and that we’ve, God keen, a great Shabbos and nice safety from Hashem,” or God.
In Kherson, a southern metropolis located close to the border with Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Wolff, additionally Chabad, requested listeners to “keep residence if doable, don’t go away residence except it’s completely vital,” her stated, citing the in a single day bombing of town’s outskirts.
However, he too added: “Don’t panic and stay calm, in addition to to present tzedakah,” Hebrew for charity, which he stated “saves lives.” Wolff then prayed for peace.
Yaakov Dov Bleich, one other Ukrainian chief rabbi who divides his time between that nation and his native United States, saved his video message Thursday night time from Kyiv snappy and particular.
“We’ve decided to try to evacuate to the west,” he stated, referring to a couple dozen
households from his congregation. However a curfew prevents the evacuees from leaving, he stated.
So the households are “sheltering in a spot exterior of Kyiv, in a camp” with the hope of touring Friday within the course of the Polish border.
“If anybody may help, please do what you may to assist. Daven,” he stated, that means pray, “and donate cash.”
A number of Jewish or Jewish-related teams concerned with aid and group work in Ukraine appealed for the donations for his or her efforts.
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC, launched what it known as on its web site an emergency marketing campaign to mitigate a $4 million improve in expenditure in reference to the battle. 1 / 4 of the quantity had been raised on Thursday, a JDC official, Amos Lev-Ran, informed the Jewish Telegraphic Company.
A banner on the web site, that includes the image of an aged man with raveled hair and titled “Ukraine’s Jews want your assist now” solicited donations of as much as $500.
Chabad-Lubavitch, the worldwide Hasidic motion which in Ukraine might be the most important Jewish religion group by way of rabbis, synagogues and congregants, has shortly arrange what it calls on its most important web site, Chabad.org, the “Ukraine Jewish Aid Fund.” On-line, donors are in a position to earmark their contributions to considered one of greater than 30 cities in Ukraine.
Misha Kapustin, a Reform rabbi from Crimea who left for Slovakia following that territory’s annexation by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, was considered one of few Ukrainian rabbis who addressed an viewers in Russia, somewhat than in their very own native nations.
“Expensive associates residing in Russia! I perceive very effectively what nation you reside in, however I additionally know that the Torah says: ‘You shall not stand over the blood of your neighbor,’” Kapustin wrote on Fb Thursday.
Those that stay silent a few crime “turn out to be accomplices,” he wrote. “Let your voices for peace be heard in your nation. If at the very least considered one of you’ll hear my phrases — however not solely hear them — then they don’t seem to be in useless.”
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