Amid War, Kyiv’s Jewish Community Perseveres

The following article was written by the New Haven Independent’s Kyiv correspondent.

KYIV, Ukraine — Three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv’s Conservative Jewish community is still hard at work continuing the Jewish tradition in the city.

Many families fled during the first year of the invasion, some to Europe and others to Israel. Kyiv’s Jewish community was already small before the start of the war. Russia’s invasion has only added more challenges to revitalizing post-Holocaust Jewish worship in Kyiv. As of 2023, there were 45,000 Jews living in Ukraine, down from a pre-WWII population of 2.7 million.

Maksim Melnikov, the lay leader of Kyiv’s only Conservative synagogue, invited me to join him and the rest of the community for Shabbat in late April. Over prayer and dinner, we discussed the challenges of outreach during times of war, especially in a fragmented Jewish community like Kyiv’s. In many cases, most have only a tenuous connection to their Jewish identities.

The congregation’s building sits on the outskirts of the city in what was historically a Jewish district. We started our tour in the building’s bomb shelter — a point of solace for the community that has endured almost daily air raid alerts since the first days of the invasion. During the first months of the full-scale invasion, Melnikov told this reporter that Masorti Olami International, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and local Jewish federations, converted the bomb shelter into informal housing for internally displaced persons fleeing fighting in the East.

“We have only grown more committed to our Judaism in the wake of the full-scale invasion,” Melnikov reported. ​“We have Hebrew classes for children and Jewish school sessions, and are planning on adding more.”

Rabbi Irina Gritsevskaya, who advises Melnikov and the rest of the community, lives in Israel but frequently visits Kyiv and other Jewish communities in Ukraine. She works with the Schechter Institute, which aims to expand Jewish education in Israel and Ukraine. Part of Rabbi Irina Gritsevskaya’s work has been to coordinate funding for the shul from Masorti Olami.

The atmosphere at Kyiv’s only Conservative synagogue this April, despite the constant threat of an air raid, was joyous. As the minyan moved through the daily liturgy, we joined together to light the Shabbat candles. Tsenya Garashchenko, 20, told me this was the first time they had hosted an American Jew in the temple, and many of the teenagers tried to practice their English with me. At the end of the services, the minyan recited a special prayer for Ukraine directly after the prayer for healing, Mi Sheberach. This was an addition after the start of the full-scale invasion. As everyone bowed their heads and became silent, Melnikov recited the blessing, which prays for strength for the nation’s soldiers and civilians.

Farbman said, ​“Many of my colleagues in Ukraine who had to leave the country have continued to hold their communities together through online gatherings. And so there came a point where they said, ​‘can you guys help?’ because we are exhausted and burnt out.” He continued, ​“So on a few occasions I led a Shabbat service for these Ukrainian communities online, and the truth is there were, in that Zoom, there were people who were sitting in the dark because they were hiding out in their homes in Ukraine.”

In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Russian language has fallen out of favor in Ukraine. Twenty percent of Ukrainians consider Russian to be their primary language, while 76 percent consider Ukrainian to be theirs.

There has been a significant push in Ukrainian civil society to speak Ukrainian whenever possible. Complicating matters for Melnikov and his community members is that most cannot read or speak Hebrew and the Torah and most Jewish texts have never been translated into Ukrainian. However, Rabbi Irina Gritsevskaya recently published a Ukrainian translation of a children’s siddur which I watched children in the temple use during Shabbat services. Melnikov said he hopes to soon have additional texts available in Ukrainian. To mark the end of Passover on Shvii shel Pesach, Melnikov said the blessing over bread and broke the key-shaped loaf to signify good fortune for the year. For dinner, we ate traditional Ukrainian cuisine. 

Garashchenko told me she has been attending services with her mother and was raised as Jewish in Kyiv. While the congregation is conservative by the book, meaning they keep kosher and the Sabbath (avoiding work and other activities from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday), many of the regulars keep the tradition to varying degrees. A good number of those active in the shul are elderly and bring their own set of needs to the community.

As Melnikov and his congregants work on the ground in Kyiv to support those impacted by the war, back in New Haven, Jewish city residents have answered the call and done more than their part in tikkun olam, ​“repairing the world,” a central Reform Jewish value. The Jewish Community Alliance for Refugee Resettlement in New Haven has been working for years to resettle refugees in New Haven. This value has crossed borders from New Haven all the way to Kyiv and beyond. While I had the chance to join Masorti Olami for Shabbat in Kyiv, work is still being done on the ground in New Haven to support the relief effort for Ukrainian refugees.

Back in the U.S., in the New Haven area, at Temple Emanuel, a Reform synagogue on Derby Avenue in Orange, Rabbi Michael Farbman has been steadfast in his support for the Ukrainian people.

Farbman was born in Belarus and speaks Russian. He was instrumental in founding St. Petersburg, Russia’s progressive Jewish community in the 2000s. He has made multiple trips to Europe to assist in relief efforts for Ukrainian refugees. In April 2022, Rabbi Farbman traveled to Poland, and in August, he and his son traveled to Spain with Beth Shalom, a Reform synagogue in Barcelona, to assist with resettlement.

Farbman spoke with the Independent about his frustration that, despite requests by the Jewish community in Kyiv to host a summer camp for Jewish youth, he has been unable to due to the excessive cost of insurance in a warzone. Farbman worked with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in the late 1990s and spent almost two years living in Kyiv and working with its reform Jewish community.

“ It turns out that we’re not shocked or scandalized by war when we see it, but when it happens in your home, it somehow feels so much more profound,” Farbman said of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. ​“The Haggadah says that in every generation we should feel as if we personally have experienced Exodus. It’s a lovely theory. It’s much harder to put it into practice until you experience it, and then you understand just how hard it hits.”

This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.