PURELY COMMENTARY

12 | FEBRUARY 15 • 2024 J
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From One Country at War to Another

I

n a country beset with 
war, its men subject 
to being drafted and 
deployed into active service, 
with many other sleep-
deprived 
citizens who 
have remained 
behind coping 
with warning 
sirens that 
may sound 
at any hour, 
and with jobs 
disappearing and incomes 
reduced because of the war. 
 Paulina Rabin 
Mikhailovna and Olga 
Sherbak made donations the 
other day for people nearly 
2,000 miles away living 
under the same conditions.
Mikhailovna, 76, a retired 
pediatric cardiologist, and 
Sherbak, at 69 still working 
as a Hebrew teacher, live 
in Chernivtsi, a city of 
250,000 (pre-war) in the 
southwestern region of 
Ukraine.
Their contributions were 
intended for the Jews of 
Israel.
Like many Ukrainian Jews 
today, of limited financial 
means, dependent on 
pensions or small salaries, 
they contributed recently 
to the Jerusalem-based 
Schechter Institutes’ Israel 
Emergency Campaign, which 
is assisting the physical and 
spiritual needs of Israelis 
adversely affected by the 
deadly Hamas attack from 
Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023.

Both widowed, both hear 
sirens on a daily basis, both 
have relatives and close 
friends in Israel.
The two senior citizens 
are among “hundreds” 
of members of Ukraine’s 
shrunken Jewish community 
who have taken part in the 
Emergency Campaign, said 
Rabbi Irina Gritsevskaya, a 
native of Russia and current 
citizen of Israel who travels 
to Ukraine frequently to 
meet with and tend to the 
needs of the country’s Jewish 
community. 
“Israel is very important 
for these people,” she said 
in a recent Zoom interview. 
“Ukrainian Jews wanted to 
do something for Israel. They 
wish they could do more.”
“We want Israel to win” 
its war against Hamas,” 
Mikhailovna said in an 
interview. “It is my historical 
homeland.”
“Our hearts stopped on the 
7th [of October],” Sherbak 
said. She and her fellow Jews 
in Ukraine asked themselves, 
“How can we help?”
“After Hamas thanked 
Russia for its help in the 
fight against Israel,” she said, 
“everything became crystal 
clear to us” about the threat 
facing Israel.
“Times have changed” 
for the Jews of Ukraine 
since Russia invaded 
Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, 
says a spokesman for the 
Schechter Institutes, the 
Conservative movement’s 

central educational arm in 
Israel. Ukrainian Jews were 
then on the receiving end of 
aid from overseas. “Now the 
Ukrainian Jewish community 
is providing support to 
Israeli Jews. Who knew this 
would change so quickly?”
The Schechter Institute 
“supports us in difficult 
times,” Sherbak said. “Now, 
money is the only thing I can 
do.”
How many hryvnias 
(Ukrainian currency) did she 
donate? “I don’t remember. I 
didn’t count.”
What did she sacrifice 
by contributing to the 
Emergency Campaign?
“I didn’t give up anything.”
Some 40,000 Jews lived 
in Ukraine in early 2022, 
but no exact figures on 
the current size of the 
community (or on the 
number of Ukrainian Jews 
who have lost their lives in 
the war) are available; after 
the start of the war began by 
the invasion of the Russian 
army, many Ukrainian Jews 
left, settling in Israel and 
several Western countries 
— in the uncertainty of a 
land still under siege, with 
Russian missiles still landing 
on Ukrainian cities, no one 
knows exactly how many 
have returned.
In addition to their 
activities in Ukraine, the 
Schechter Institutes are 
among several Jewish 
organizations that have 
initiated a wide variety 

of programming for the 
estimated 14,000 Ukrainian 
Jews who have gone to Israel 
since early 2022.
Events in Ukraine are 
largely overshadowed by 
the 4-month-old war in 
Gaza, especially among 
the media and many Jews 
overseas, Rabbi Gritsevskaya 
said. “People have already 
forgotten” the situation 
among the Jews of Ukraine. 
“The situation is getting 
worse and worse every 
day.” There is still “massive 
bombing in major cities. 
We are in an emergency 
situation.
“It’s a scary situation,” the 
rabbi said; young men are 
scared to walk on the street, 
lest they be conscripted into 
the Ukrainian army.
Similarly, the U.N. High 
Commissioner for Refugees 
said recently that the war 
in Ukraine “is not news 
anymore in the world.”

JEWISH LIFE IN UKRAINE
Despite the daily pressure, a 
growing number of Ukrainian 
Jews are taking part (some 
online) in Jewish activities 
offered by Conservative 
congregations, the Chabad-
Lubavitch chasidic movement 
and the network of Hesed 
community welfare centers 
sponsored by the American 
Jewish Joint Distribution 
Committee; enrollment of 
young campers set to attend 
the Conservative movement’s 
Camp Ramah in western 

Steve 
Lipman

Hundreds of Jews in Ukraine have sent donations to Israel since the Oct. 7 attack.

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