‘Some want to resist, some want to leave’
Ukraine has about 43,300 people who self-identify as Jews and about 200,000 eligible to immigrate to Israel under its Law of Return for Jews and their relatives, according to a 2020 demographic study of European Jewry.
As world powers work to defuse the military buildup between Ukraine and Russia, Vlodymyr Zeev Vaksman, a Jewish father in Odessa, is focusing on a personal arms race.
“I put off making any big purchases. I want to buy weapons,” Vaksman, the 40-year-old chair of Odessa’s Tiferet Masorti community, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Monday.
Vaksman, who works as a tour guide, is typical of many young Ukrainian Jews: Attached to their country, they’re hesitant to abandon it when it is threatened. But, mindful of how quickly it can descend into violence, sometimes along sectarian lines, they also are unwilling to leave their family’s safety to the authorities and chance.
“Everyone is worried,” Vaksman told JTA about his circle of Jewish friends.
“Some want to resist and join the defence units. Some want to leave.”
Russia has been amassing troops on the Ukrainian border since November, leading many to fear that the country could be headed for a bloodier version of what happened when Russia invaded in 2014 and seized Crimea.
Like the United States, Israel is exhorting its citizens who are in Ukraine – there are as many as 15,000 of them – to vacate the country. On Tuesday, the Israeli airline Arkia dispatched one of its passenger planes on an emergency flight to Kharkiv, an eastern Ukrainian city. It will leave empty and return with any Israelis interested in returning.
Meanwhile, the Jewish Agency is reportedly making contingency plans to evacuate Jews who wish to leave in the event that tensions erupt into a full-blown war. Ukraine has about 43,300 people who self-identify as Jews and about 200,000 eligible to immigrate to Israel under its Law of Return for Jews and their relatives, according to a 2020 demographic study of European Jewry.
A prominent Israeli rabbi is using the crisis to convince Ukrainian Jews to make aliyah. But on the ground, most Ukrainian Jews appear to be approaching the situation pragmatically, not ideologically.
“It would be good” for anyone who so desires to leave Uman for “a vacation until it is safe”, Rabbi Ya’akov Djan, who is also an Israeli, wrote to Jews in the city where a predominantly Israeli Jewish population has grown around the burial place of Nachman of Bratslav, an 18th-century Chasidic rabbi. But he added that anyone who does not wish to leave should not feel pressured to do so.
Among those on holiday in Israel right now are the wife and daughters of Chaim Chazin, a real-estate professional who was born in Israel and has been living for several years in Uman with his wife, Liat, and their seven children. They left two weeks ago for a family event and decided to extend their stay in Israel “just to be on the safe side until the situation stabilises”, Chazin said.
Chazin himself says he is confident in the leadership of Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and believes that the current tensions are overblown.
“There’s fuel in the fuel stations, food in the markets, toilet paper and medicine in the stores,” Chazin told JTA.
“The only ones freaking out are people who are following the conflict from outside Ukraine.”
He said he thought Djan’s letter was intended to encourage tourists who have come to Uman as pilgrims to Nachman’s grave to head home. “We don’t want them becoming the community’s problem in case of complications. Very few of us are leaving,” Chazin said.
Instead, he said, the local community is planning around concerns that, in the case of a Russian invasion, “all the law enforcement will be rushed to the border and we’ll be left exposed to robbers or whoever.”
Chazin said local Jewish leaders were working with Uman authorities on a plan to set up “some sort of armed guard, maybe with an AK-47 or two”.
“We have some graduates of combat units of the Israel Defence Forces with us.”
As for Vaksman, he’s not eager to move to Israel, where he says he cannot afford to live. (It is not uncommon for Jewish Ukrainians who have moved to Israel to return because of the cost of living.) But he’s keeping the option open.
In addition to working to procure guns, he said, he has “prepared money, documents for the children and even the cats” to board a rescue flight if they need to.
JTA
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