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(JTA) — Earlier than this week, Rabbi Irina Gritsevskaya’s final journey to Ukraine from her house in Israel was in January, when town of Chernivtsi sparkled with Christmas lights and brimmed with cheer.
Now, town situated simply an hour’s drive from the Romanian and Moldovan borders is full of refugees from throughout Ukraine who’ve fled from cities dealing with weeks of Russian assaults to the relative calm of the nation’s southwest.
Over the previous three weeks, since Russia invaded Ukraine and began a brutal struggle, Gritsevskaya has urged the Jews from Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odessa that she works with by means of Midreshet Schechter Ukraine, a Jewish schooling group, to make their approach to Chernivtsi.
And on Monday, she made her means there herself, reversing a course that numerous Ukrainian Jews have taken in latest weeks. After flying from Israel to Europe, Greitsevskaya handed by means of the Siret border crossing in Romania into Ukraine.
“I can’t say I’m not scared,” she posted to Fb from the airport in Iasi, Romania, after touchdown on Monday night time. However, she added, “Once I take into consideration many, many individuals whom I do know and I talked to within the final two weeks who’re actual heroes, my very own fears appear so insignificant.”
Gritsevskaya made the journey for Purim, the vacation celebrating the survival of the Jews over the efforts of a murderous villain to bloodbath them. Together with a colleague, she introduced into the nation a megillah, the scroll containing the Purim story, and on Wednesday, she posted movies of festivities in Chernivtsi — together with a younger woman whose costume included eyeshadow within the blue and gold of the Ukrainian flag.
“We’re making an attempt to have some sort of actual Jewish life within the metropolis that may be bombed tomorrow regardless that it’s not bombed in the present day,” Gritsevskaya stated throughout a digital program Sunday hosted by the Schechter Institutes, the Israel-based Conservative movement-affiliated seminary that has operated Midreshet Schechter Ukraine for the final 30 years.
Born and raised in Russia and dwelling in Israel for many years, Gritsevskaya was maybe the least probably rabbinic presence in Ukraine for Purim this yr. However she was removed from the one one on the bottom facilitating a war-torn celebration.
Chabad estimates that two dozen of its rabbis led festivities in communities throughout the nation, a few of whom had been additionally returning to the nation from overseas after initially evacuating with their households and, in lots of instances, neighborhood members.
The Orthodox motion has had the most important Jewish presence in Ukraine, the place the motion’s final and most outstanding rabbi, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, lived as a toddler and younger grownup. Earlier than Russia invaded, there have been 192 Chabad {couples} working in 32 cities, serving what the motion estimates is 250,000 Jews within the nation. (Estimates of Ukraine’s Jewish inhabitants vary broadly; the bottom comes from a latest survey that discovered 43,000 individuals who self-identified as Jewish.)
Over the previous three weeks, these {couples} have labored to verify their neighborhood members are secure and wholesome regardless of Russian bombing that in lots of locations has been relentless. They’ve lobbied from overseas to persuade their neighborhood members to board evacuation buses, whereas additionally coordinating companies for individuals who are selecting to remain.
And on Wednesday, they made positive that Jews on the bottom in lots of cities had been capable of fulfill the duty to listen to the Purim story recited — and to revel within the survival of the Jewish folks.
In Dnipro, house to a 22-story Jewish neighborhood heart formed like a menorah that was a Chabad venture, a megillah studying drew lots of of individuals.
“We should always have fun this Purim with unbelievable victory: no extra struggle, no extra struggling!” Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky, who has been Dnipro’s chief Chabad rabbi since 1990, stated throughout the livestreamed occasion.
Comparable however smaller-scale Chabad celebrations befell in Odessa; Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s Jewish president; and Kherson, which is underneath Russian management.
Two younger rabbis are even operating Purim actions in Zaporizhia, the location of a fierce battle over a significant nuclear facility, in line with Motti Seligson, the director of media relations at Chabad Lubavitch.
“The overwhelming majority of Jews are nonetheless there they usually most likely aren’t going to depart,” Seligson instructed the Jewish Telegraphic Company final week about Ukraine. “We don’t outline the place folks determine to reside, we simply serve them the place they’re at.”
For an growing variety of Ukrainian Jews, that’s Chernivtsi, the place relative calm has prompted 40,000 refugees to maneuver and the place Turkey has relocated its Ukrainian embassy, from Kyiv. The Chabad rabbi who has lived there for the final 20 years returned from Israel, the place he took his spouse and youngsters after the struggle started, to guide a neighborhood celebration.
There, Gritsevskaya posted a video of her neighborhood’s members making ready for the vacation by placing up decorations, portray a mural and baking hamantaschen. The festivities additionally included a cocktail contest and the unpacking of important provides, together with medicines and dried kosher meat, that Gritsevskaya and her colleague, Rabbi Avi Novis-Deutsch, introduced from Israel.
And, in fact, they heard the Purim story, learn from the megillah that Novis-Deutsch, head of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, purchased for the Jews of Chernivtski this yr.
Novis-Deutsch — who carried the scroll as fastidiously as he would a child, Gritsevskaya joked on Fb — wrote that he had made the acquisition as a present of confidence locally’s future. It was, he wrote, “a sort of expression of belief locally in Chernivtski, of hope, hope for higher days.”
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The submit As many flee Ukraine, some rabbis have headed there — to have fun Purim appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Company.
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