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Among Ukraine’s Jews, a year of war has transformed the ordinary into the sacred
TRUSKAVETS, Ukraine (JTA) — Nearly 600 Jews stand shoulder-to-shoulder, eyes trained on the young man leading the service to close out Shabbat. The crowd sings a soulful havdalah tune that lifts up its final words: “hamavdil ben kodesh l’chol” — ”the One who divides between sacred and ordinary.”
It looks like a Shabbat gathering anywhere else in the world, but I’m in the western Ukrainian city of Truskavets, where — from every part of their conflict-scarred country — these Jewish community volunteers have come together for a four-day retreat, energized by the chance to learn from each other and take a deep breath.
I’m back in Ukraine for the first time since the crisis began to learn from these men and women making miracles happen. I came to document and share stories from this gathering. Remarkably, it’s the largest-ever in the former Soviet Union arranged by my organization, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC, which has worked to aid needy Jews and build Jewish life in the region for decades.
With its wine and sweet-smelling spices, havdalah eases the transition from the holy purity of Shabbat to the workaday mundanity of the week. Surrounded by hundreds of Ukrainian Jews, I felt uplifted, as I always do when I travel to this region and see its defiant, vibrant Jewish life.
The usual rules don’t apply. Here, the ordinary becomes sacred.
On this, my 14th trip to the former Soviet Union in 10 years, I’ve come to know it as a place where that switch is truly flipped. Rebuking a painful history, from the Holocaust to Soviet oppression, everyday actions become lifesaving and essential. That’s never been more true than this past year, as Jewish communities here worked overtime to meet the enormous humanitarian needs of this crisis.
Simple flashlights become beacons enabling home care workers to reach the bedridden elderly Jews they serve. Bus trips between cities are transformed into escape hatches for those fleeing rocket attacks. A box of nonperishables is manna from heaven for those faced with empty grocery shelves, and each call from a volunteer is a life raft for the loneliest seniors and most vulnerable at-risk families.
Over the last year, more than 3,000 volunteers engaged in projects affecting 36,000 people. This work is part of our expansive response to this crisis — supported by the Jewish Federations of North America, the Claims Conference, International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, individuals, families, corporations and foundations. It includes providing uninterrupted assistance to 43,000 Jews in Ukraine and the delivery of 800 tons of humanitarian aid. Among those we help are the elderly and families, internally displaced people, and the new poor who have lost their livelihoods in the devastation.
A song leader leads participants in havdalah at JDC’s volunteer Shabbaton in Truskavets, Ukraine, February 2023. (Arik Shraga)
Not blind to the challenges they face, Jews and Jewish communities here are resilient and resolute in the knowledge that there’s something more important at play. It’s a clarity of purpose that means, against all odds, they’ve grown even stronger.
“My fears were boiling me alive,” said Tatiana Chumachenko, a 34-year-old Odessa mother of two. She started volunteering this summer and now runs weekly cooking classes and art therapy sessions for elderly Jews. “So I made the decision to widen my world — to take on more responsibility, to take care of more people. And volunteering literally saved me.”
Thousands of Ukraine’s Jews just like Tatiana have chosen determination, not despair. They’ve driven through besieged cities delivering medicine and firewood, power generators and portable heaters. They know their Jewish values demand action and compassion, and so they’ve stepped up.
Daria Yefimenko, the head of our network of 25 volunteer centers across Ukraine, is that resolute determination personified. The air raid siren went off the other day as I was interviewing her — a shocking noise, made more frightening by its maddening vagueness: What’s happening? Where? Am I in danger, or is this just background noise?
I learned later that just a few hours before I arrived in Ukraine, a missile had struck Drohobych, only 10 kilometers from the Shabbaton.
Yefimenko seemed unshaken. She and her team — her “family of superhero volunteers” — live here, of course. They must cope with brutal shelling and unpredictable electricity cuts. They have daily fears for their loved ones, and rising anxiety about what the future holds. They help their neighbors even as they share their pain and struggles.
And they keep on going.
Alex Weisler joins the massive group havdalah at JDC’s volunteer Shabbaton in Truskavets, Ukraine, Feb. 18, 2023. (Arik Shraga)
There are so many stories in this part of the world — World War II stories, Soviet stories, stories of rebuilding and reimagining Jewish life after the Soviet Union fell. I’m curious about the one we’ll tell when this is all over.
Will we remember how Jews supported each other in the darkest days? We should.
Before the massive Shabbaton havdalah, I led a smaller version at the hotel down the road where we have housed hundreds of internally displaced people since the earliest days of the Ukraine crisis.
Six elderly Jews from the Zaporizhzhia region joined me for their first havdalah ever. Among the group was 76-year-old Alla Hodak, who fled from a place with significant devastation.
Alex Weisler leads a group of internally displaced Ukrainian Jewish community members in their first-ever havdalah ceremony, Feb. 18, 2023. (Arik Shraga)
Here, observing Jewish rituals in a third-floor alcove, she had begun to form a makeshift community—not quite home, but not alone either. “You made sure we were never abandoned to fate,” she told me.
In that moment of stark intimacy, our small group blessed the wine, smelled the cinnamon, and felt the warmth of the braided candle. It bound us together and reminded us that drawing a distinction between then and now can be holy, too.
As we take stock of a year of grief and grit, we must guarantee that the next one is a kinder one. We must recognize our own hands as sacred tools and each member of our global Jewish family as holier still.
There’s nothing ordinary about that. Each person and each day has become an opportunity to do good for those who need us most and build their future together. That’s the only way forward.
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Israel Competes in World Cheerleading Championships for First Time Ever
Israeli national flags flutter near office towers at a business park also housing high tech companies, at Ofer Park in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 27, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Israel is competing for the first time ever in the 2026 ICU World Cheerleading Championships.
The competition begins on Wednesday, which is also Israel’s Independence Day.
The ISCU, the official cheerleading organization in Israel that is supported by EL AL Airlines, made the announcement and posted footage on Instagram of the athletes and their final rehearsal before flying to the US for the competition, which will take place until Friday in Orlando, Florida. Ludmila Yasinskaya-Demari is the president of the Israel Cheer Union.
“Today, on Israel’s Independence Day, the Israeli cheerleading team has the honor of competing on the world stage,” the ISCU wrote in an Instagram post. “It’s a very moving and meaningful moment for us to represent Israel on such an important day — with pride, strength, and love for our country. Thank you to EL AL for supporting us in this way. There’s something symbolic and special about flying and competing with Israel’s national airline. From Israel to the world — the Israeli team is ready.”
The championship is being held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex at Disney World, and is organized by the International Cheer Union, the official world governing body for cheerleading. Israel is a member of the European Cheer Union and the International Cheer Union. It will compete in the POM category and in two doubles pairs competitions.
Team USA is after its ninth, consecutive co-ed premier world title at the World Cheerleading Championships. The US has won gold since 2021 and also won the competition from 2016 through 2019. The competition was not held in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2015, the US came in second place behind Team Chinese Taipei. The US is also the defending champion in the All Girl Premier category.
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Rachel Goldberg-Polin Talks in ’60 Minutes’ Interview, New Memoir About Grief After Son Murdered by Hamas
Rachel Goldberg, mother of killed US-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin whose body was recovered with five other hostages in Gaza, speaks during his funeral in Jerusalem on September 2, 2024. Photo: GIL COHEN-MAGEN/Pool via REUTERS
In a new memoir and “60 Minutes” interview this week, American-Israeli Rachel Goldberg-Polin, a mother of three, opened up about grief and the process of moving forward in life after her only son, Hersh, was murdered while in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip.
“To know that your child is being tortured, tormented, starved, abused. He’s maimed. And that’s an excruciating form of suffering,” she told “60 Minutes” correspondent Anderson Cooper in a segment that aired on Monday, which was also Israel’s Memorial Day (Yom HaZikaron). “And then what’s so fascinating to me is that when they came to tell us that Hersh had been executed, then I realized that those 330 days had been the good part, because he was alive. And now I’m in this place and this is the rest of my life. How do I walk through this place without a piece of me here?”
“I’m trying to re-understand what it means to be in this world,” she added. “There are millions of us right now who have buried children. There’s nothing unique about me. But it creates light for me to try to give words to the pain.”
Hersh was one of 251 people kidnapped by Hamas-led terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. The 23-year-old was attending the Nova music festival in southern Israel, near the Gaza border, with a friend when he was abducted. Terrorists murdered 1,200 people during the onslaught, including 378 festivalgoers, and wounded thousands more. Hersh hid inside a bomb shelter with others and had his left arm blown off by a grenade before he was taken hostage.
Goldberg-Polin and her husband campaigned tirelessly and met with world leaders around the globe to try to secure the release of the hostages, but on the 328th day of his captivity, Hersh was executed by Hamas terrorists. Israeli soldiers found his body in a tunnel in Rafah on Aug. 31, 2024. Hersh, who was shot six times at close range, and five other hostages had been executed.
Goldberg-Polin further details her grief and talks about the kind of person Hersh was, even as a child, in her memoir “When We See You Again,” released on Tuesday. The book is a “searing portrait of a mother’s grief and strength in the wake of unthinkable tragedy,” according to a description of the memoir published by Penguin Random House.
“There are days when I break completely,” Goldberg-Polin writes in her book. “I have cried for an entire day straight. I didn’t think it was physically possible, but the weeping never let up. That is a very long time to cry. I kept hoping I would run out of tears. And then there are days when there is a whisper of sun. Not out there in the sky. In me. In us.”
She also describes grief, saying: “People want hope, resilience, recovery, strength, survival, healing. They want thriving and rising from the ashes, like the phoenix from the days of yore. But the pain is chronic, ever present, constant, gnawing, circular, not linear.”
Goldberg-Polin told Cooper on “60 Minutes” that she now thinks “grief is actually just this precious badge of love that you wear because someone has died and your love is continuing to grow.”
Former Hamas hostage Or Levy was released in February 2025 along with two others and talked to “60 Minutes” about spending three days with Hersh in a tunnel. He told Cooper that during their time together, Hersh kept repeating the mantra, “He who has a why can bear any how.” The line is from “Man’s Search for Meaning,” a 1946 concentration camp memoir by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, who adapted a similar saying by Fredrich Nietzsche.
“It became our mantra … The only reason why I survived was him,” Levy told Cooper on “60 Minutes.” Soon after his release, Levy got the mantra tattooed on his arm.
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Iran Seizes Ships in Strait of Hormuz After Trump Extends Ceasefire
Ships and boats in the Strait of Hormuz, Musandam, Oman, April 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Iran seized two ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, tightening its grip on the strategic waterway after US President Donald Trump called off attacks with no sign of peace talks restarting.
Trump maintained the US Navy blockade of Iran‘s trade by sea, and Iran‘s parliament speaker and top negotiator Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said a full ceasefire only made sense if it was lifted. Reopening the strait was impossible with such a “flagrant breach of the ceasefire,” Qalibaf said in a post on X.
“You did not achieve your goals through military aggression, and you will not achieve them by bullying either. The only way is recognizing the Iranian people’s rights,” he said in his first response to Trump’s ceasefire extension.
Iran‘s semi-official Tasnim news agency earlier said the Revolutionary Guards had seized two vessels for maritime violations and escorted them to Iranian shores. It was the first time Iran has seized ships since the war began at the end of February.
The Revolutionary Guards also warned that any disruption to order and safety in the strait would be considered a “red line,” Tasnim said.
NO NEW DEADLINE FOR CEASEFIRE
Trump said on social media late on Tuesday that the US had agreed to a request by Pakistani mediators “to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal … and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”
A source briefed on the matter confirmed on Wednesday that Trump had not set a timeline for the extension of the ceasefire.
In a show of defiance, Iran showcased some of its ballistic weapons at a parade in Tehran on Tuesday evening, with images on state TV showing large crowds waving Iranian flags and a banner in the background with a fist choking off the strait.
Captions read: “Indefinitely under Iran‘s Control” and “Trump could not do a damn thing,” referring to the waterway, the closure of which has caused a global energy crisis.
PAKISTAN STILL WORKING TO FOSTER TALKS DESPITE ‘SETBACK’
Pakistan, which has acted as a mediator, was still trying to bring the sides together for negotiations after both failed to show up for talks on Tuesday before the two-week-old ceasefire had been due to expire.
“We were all prepared for the talks, the stage was set,” a Pakistani official briefed on the preparations told Reuters. “If you ask me honestly, it was a setback we were not expecting, because the Iranians never refused, they were up to come and join, and they still are.”
Throughout the war, Iran has effectively shut the strait to ships other than its own by attacking vessels that attempt to transit without its permission. Around a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes through the waterway.
The Revolutionary Guards accused the seized ships, the Panama-flagged MSC Francesca and Liberia-flagged Epaminondas, of operating without required permits and tampering with their navigation systems.
The Greek-operated Epaminondas reported being fired upon about 20 nautical miles northwest of Oman. It said it had sustained damage to its bridge after being hit by gunfire and that no one was hurt in the incident.
Greece and the company have not confirmed the seizure of the vessel. MSC, the world’s biggest container shipping group, did not respond to a Reuters request for immediate comment.
A third, Liberia-flagged container ship was fired upon in the same area but was not damaged and had resumed sailing, according to maritime security sources.
DIFFERENCES REMAIN ON KEY ISSUES
With his announcement on Tuesday, Trump again pulled back at the last moment from warnings to bomb Iran‘s power plants and bridges, a threat condemned by the United Nations and others as potentially constituting war crimes. Iran had said it would strike its Arab neighbors if its civilian infrastructure was hit.
Oil prices reversed course to head higher after the shipping incidents on Wednesday, with Brent crude futures up almost 4% at $102.2 a barrel.
A first session of peace talks 11 days ago produced no agreement.
Washington wants Iran to give up highly enriched uranium and forgo further enrichment to prevent it getting a weapon. Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, wants an end to the war, the lifting of sanctions, reparations for damage and recognition of its control over the strait.
An Israeli strike killed two people in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, Lebanon’s state news agency reported, and Hezbollah said it launched an attack drone at Israeli forces in the south, further straining a ceasefire between the Iran-backed terrorist group and Israel.
The Lebanon ceasefire had been a precondition for Iran agreeing to talks.