Wife Pleads For Husband’s Return

By COLlive reporter

An extensive search effort to locate a Jewish man who went missing on the second day of Rosh Hashana continues in the Ukrainian city of Uman.

Amir Ohana, 28, was among the 30,000 Jews who traveled from Israel and elsewhere to spend the holiday at the gravesite of Rabbi Nachman of Breslev.

The father of three from Bat Yam was last seen at around 2:00 PM on Tuesday walking on a pathway between the distant Jewish cemetery and a lake used for the Tashlich ritual.

CCTV footage showed Ohana walking out of his room in a guest house where he spent Rosh Hashana, down the lobby with a white towel on his shoulders, indicating his was going to dip in the Mikvah waters.

Ukrainian security forces are working with Israeli police to organize searches, while local authorities sent divers to probe the nearby Umanka River, ruling out a death by drowning, Times of Israel reported.

A team of ZAKA search and rescue volunteers headed by special operations director Haim Outmezgine arrived on Thursday in Uman to help with the effort. They are equipped with a drone used in rescue missions of this type.

“This is a very big and complex operation,” said Yossi Frankel of ZAKA’s rescue unit operations. “We are currently awaiting approval from the Ukrainian authorities to send out volunteers from the ZAKA Canine unit and the ZAKA Divers unit, in order to provide the fullest response possible to this search mission.”

Meanwhile, Ohana’s wife Mital Ohana recorded on Friday a video where she pleads for additional help. “He hasn’t returned home, no one is finding him,” she says through tears, speculating that her husband “might be injured in some place.”

“My girls are crying all day and searching for him,” she added. “I’m asking whoever can help to help.” She also directed a request to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “try to help, I feel everything is stuck and we are slowly being forgotten.”

At the instruction of Rabbi Yaakov Roza, who serves as the rabbi for the ZAKA organization, volunteers will continue the search mission even if it means desecrating the Shabbos since it is a matter of life and death.

Forces were also combing forests and fields to locate the missing man, who was said to suffer from a serious medical condition, according to Times of Israel.