By COLlive reporter
The Golden Rose Synagogue in Dnepropetrovsk, built some 150 years ago on Kotsyubinskiy Street/Sholom Aleichem street, is not afraid to openly join the war effort against Russian rebels.
“We are providing comprehensive assistance to servicemen fighting against terrorists and protecting the unity and integrity of Ukraine,” it recently said in a statement. “We are calling on Dnepropetrovsk’s Jews to actively help them.”
Leading the Jewish community is businessman Ihor Kolomoisky who holds the position of Regional Governor of Dnepropetrovsk, the BBC News reported.
Kolomoisky is a key figure in organizing and financing the Ukrainian volunteer battalions and is actively involved with the Fund for the Defense of the Country, which collects money to provide Ukrainian troops with medicines, food and equipment.
Yet Russian media is claiming that the Jewish community in Ukraine is “a hotbed of anti-Semitism” and the Jewish residents are frequent targets of everyday attacks. This claim is being used to trump up the role of far-right extremists fighting with Ukrainian volunteer battalions.
With Dnepropetrovsk being one of the country’s largest Jewish communities, the Chief Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky rejects the idea that Ukraine is anti-Semitic.
Life is “easier and safer” for Jews in Ukraine than in Western countries such as Belgium and France, where radical Islam is on the rise, Kaminetsky said in a recent film about efforts to defend Dnepropetrovsk against the Russian-backed insurgency.
In September, at least 100 Jewish families fled Donetsk to the government-controlled city of Mariupol, according to Donetsk rabbi Pinchas Vyshedsky.
Rabbi Vyshedsky himself recently moved his office to Kiev “to help Jews from his city who found refuge in the capital and other parts of the country,” Chabad.org said.
On November 3, the citizens of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic elected Alexander Zakharchenko as their prime minister, marking a supposed turning point in the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine.
In the days after the election, VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky interviewed civilians in Donetsk about their lives over the past few months.
He visited locals working in a market that sits dangerously close to the ongoing battle for Donetsk’s airport, as well as others who have been living in a bomb shelter for months following the destruction of their homes.
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May HaShem be with you and keep you safe!
ad mosai?ad mosai?ad mosai?
It must be incredibly difficult for shluchim in the area to play their cards right in this conflict. Hashem should give them the strength they need to make the right decisions, stay safe, and be poel on their makom hashlichus stronger than ever