Ukraine’s only woman rabbi among many Jewish people fleeing war: ‘So much crying and so much pain’

Per week earlier, Ukraine’s solely girl rabbi had been fleeing the struggle that scattered her Odesa congregation from Moldova to Romania and Israel. Some stayed behind, braving the Russian shelling.

She first led a web based service for these congregants scattered overseas. Then, she officiated one in individual for a small group in Poland, taken in by a Christian couple close to Warsaw.

Gris lit sabbath candles that she had carried from Ukraine, whereas her 19-year-old daughter Izolda performed the guitar and sang, simply as she had throughout providers again residence within the her Reform neighborhood, Shirat ha-Yam.

“There have been so many tales, a lot crying and a lot ache,” Gris mentioned. “For many who are right here, and much more so for these nonetheless in Ukraine.”

Gris and her daughter discovered security after a 30 kilometer (20 mile) stroll lugging suitcases and their two cats, reaching the border with Poland the place they negotiated a 40-hour wait with out meals, water or bathrooms.

The mom and daughter are a part of the exodus from Ukraine that has change into the fastest-growing humanitarian disaster in Europe since World Struggle II.

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With some 200,000 Jews in Ukraine, one of many world’s largest Jewish communities, it’s inevitable that many Jewish individuals are additionally amongst these fleeing.

Worldwide Jewish organizations have mobilized to assist, working with native Jewish communities in Poland, Romania, Moldova and elsewhere to prepare meals, shelter, medical care and different help.

The fact that so many Jews have joined the mass civilian exit from Ukraine exposes the deceitfulness of Russian claims that it is there to “denazify” Ukraine. In fact, Ukraine has steadily grown right into a pluralistic society, led by a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“Why is a Russian regime that claims to be “denazifying” Ukraine brutalizing a rustic led by a democratically elected and proud Jew?” mentioned David Harris, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), who visited Poland this week to evaluate the wants of refugees. “Why is Moscow adopting Nazi-like techniques of the Nineteen Thirties – pretend historical past, phony grievances, blitzkrieg, assaults on civilians and civilian establishments, and homicide of kids?”

Gris mentioned she at all times felt very a lot at residence in Ukraine, a Russian-born Jew who had by no means felt discrimination.

Now Russia’s invasion has plunged the nation into an acute humanitarian disaster affecting Jews and non-Jews alike. Jewish organizations say they’re there to assist all refugees irrespective of religion. However for some Jews, the organizations’ involvement is important to serving to them to migrate to Israel or keep true to their religion’s observances, as an illustration by getting kosher meals.

Apart from the AJC there are others serving to. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), a New York-based Jewish humanitarian group, has up to now evacuated hundreds of Jews to Moldova and helped a number of thousand extra after they reached Poland and different nations.

Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, mentioned among the Jewish refugees plan to go to Israel whereas others intend to affix household in nations like Germany or Britain. Others, he mentioned, “have to determine what to do with their lives – do they wish to settle in Poland or elsewhere?”

The darkish historic irony is not misplaced on Schudrich. Eight a long time in the past, Jews desperately tried to flee German-occupied Poland and different japanese European nations below Nazi German rule. Six million of them had been exterminated.

“The struggles that individuals had, the splitting up of households, saying goodbye and by no means realizing in the event you would see one another once more, and most occasions you did not,” Schudrich mentioned. “And to suppose now that Jews and others are usually not fleeing out of Poland however into Poland, and we, the small Jewish neighborhood of Poland, can now welcome them.”

Gris is awaiting a sponsorship letter in hopes of going to the U.Ok. She was ordained a rabbi on the Leo Baeck Faculty in London and has pals and colleagues there who’re supporting her.

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Carrying a sequined kippa and a ribbon pinned to her chest within the blue and yellow of Ukraine’s flag, Gris mentioned that she by no means skilled anti-Semitism in her 22 years of dwelling in Ukraine.

It was the truth that she was Russian that made her nervous after Russian troops attacked Ukraine on Feb. 24. Buddies suggested her that she can be higher off leaving. Ukrainian authorities froze her checking account – a step taken in opposition to Russian and Belarusian residents. On the border, she mentioned Ukrainian guards requested, “how do we all know you are not a spy?”

Gris mentioned she may perceive that response from a nation below assault, however it nonetheless harm as a result of “my coronary heart and soul is with Ukraine.”

Gris, 45, was born in Bryansk, Russia, earlier than the breakup of the Soviet Union. She launched into her religious journey as a teen at a time of a broader revival of Jewish life in japanese Europe. Judaism, like different religions, had been suppressed by the the formally atheistic ideology of the communist period.

In her youth she was advised by a rabbi that she was so sensible that she may even aspire to being a rabbi’s spouse. However she mentioned to herself: “No, I will likely be a rabbi myself.”

Gris does not know the place the struggle will lead however fears that Jewish life won’t ever be the identical there.

On Saturday, her second Shabbat in security, she was joined in Warsaw by a member of her Odesa congregation – two thirds of whom have fled now – a reunion that was comforting to them each.

She denounced Russian propaganda, and recounted how her personal mom, who continues to be in Russia, did not imagine that Russia attacked Ukraine. “I needed to inform her sure, I can hear the sirens and the bombs myself!”

Now she feels her life in Odesa could also be misplaced ceaselessly. “I do not know once I can return,” Gris mentioned combating again tears. “Or if I’ll return.”