Uncategorized
In Ukraine, Hanukkah candles are a lifeline in the midst of power outages
(JTA) — In the days before Hanukkah, which starts Sunday night, a few men and women from two Conservative institutions in Israel will travel to the small Jewish community in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, with a supply of needed items.
Amid the power outages stemming from Russian attacks, the volunteers will have blankets and sweatshirts for the cold, as well as menorahs and kippahs for religious observance purposes.
The 300 boxes of Hanukkah candles will do double duty.
These days, the power in Chernivtsi, a city of around 250,000 (before the war) in western Ukraine, is more off than on. So the candles will do more than allude to the story of the Maccabees — they will help light Jewish homes across the city.
“This year it’s really important” to have and use Hanukkah candles, said Lev Kleiman, leader of the city’s Conservative Jewish community, in a recent Zoom interview.
Although the need is urgent, “We will hold onto the candles until Hanukkah,” Kleiman added, his words in Russian interpreted by Rabbi Irina Gritsevskaya, the Russian-born and Jerusalem-based “circuit rabbi” of the Conservative movement’s Schechter Institutes and executive director of its Midreshet Schechter Ukraine. The organizations are coordinating the transport of holiday supplies to Chernivtsi.
Among a few “couriers” bringing needed items to Jewish communities in Ukraine, Gritsevskaya has made several trips there over the last 10 months. At the start of the war, she urged Jews in other cities to make their way to Chernivtsi, which was far from the intense fighting on the eastern border.
Chernivtsi, which served as a place of refuge for thousands of displaced people from elsewhere in parts of the Soviet Union threatened by the Nazi army during World War II, is again attracting refugees from throughout the country. Earlier in the current war, Kleiman turned his synagogue into a refugee center for some of the millions of Ukrainians fleeing their homeland. The city also became a gathering site for worldwide faith leaders who have denounced the violence and expressed solidarity with the embattled Ukrainians.
In addition to no heat and light in Chernivtsi, lack of electricity means lack of TV and radio use, along with spotty internet service. (Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Located on the Prut River, Chernivtsi (known at one time as “Jerusalem upon the Prut” for the strength of its Jewish community) is 25 miles north of the Romanian border and home to one of the country’s most active Conservative communities. The city’s Jewish population before the war began was estimated at 2,000, including many Holocaust survivors.
And today, following the invasion? The number could be larger or smaller, no one is counting — but some western cities have experienced population growth due to all of the migration.
“No one knows,” Kleiman said. “Many left, but many came.”
As in other Ukrainian cities, many Jews in Chernivtsi — especially women, senior citizens and children, everyone except draft-age males — have migrated. But uncounted other ones have come to a place of relative safety, either renting apartments or staying in ones under the auspices of the Jewish community. Most of the Jews in Chernivtsi now are those exempt from military service, Kleiman said. Others stayed in order to be with their husbands and fathers who joined the Ukrainian army after the war began, or to care for their aged parents.
Despite signs of war — rifle-carrying soldiers and policemen on the streets, empty shelves in stores because of shortages, people hurrying to safety when they hear sirens — Jewish life there has continued, according to Kleiman. The most active organizations in the city are the local outpost of the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement, the JDC-supported Hesed Shoshana Welfare Center and Kleiman’s Kehillat Aviv Synagogue (his official title is coordinator), which sponsors daily Jewish activities.
The synagogue — located near the Chabad center, with which it cooperates on relief activities — is housed in a small, two-story building that contains an office, a kitchen and a large multi-function hall. Kleiman says Hanukkah in 2022 will be more important than in past years because in addition to its ability to bring people together,the holiday also asserts Jewish survival.
“There are a lot of parallels,” Kleiman said of the holiday and his community’s current situation.
Electricity in Chernivtsi flows only a few hours each day, and at night, no street lights are on, thanks to incessant Russian bombing of Ukraine’s infrastructure, and to government-imposed restrictions designed to conserve the little available resources.
A holiday of lights sans lights? “We’ve never done it before,” Kleiman said, adding that the Jews in his city understand the holiday’s symbolism.
Some will come to the synagogue for a communal candle-lighting, according to Kleiman. Others will light their candles at home, in their windows. Like all other buildings in Chernivtsi, Kleiman’s office and apartment are subject to periodic electricity blackouts, often announced in advance.
“With G-d’s help we will soon have a generator” – and 24/7 lights and heat in the synagogue, he said. Until then, he and the other residents of Chernivtsi will shiver. The temperature in the city was 29 degrees Fahrenheit during the Zoom interview, and a light snow was falling.
Lev Kleiman is shown with his community’s Torah ark. (Courtesy of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies)
Though no Russian missiles have fallen inside Chernivtsi itself, some have reached the outskirts, causing damage to the area’s infrastructure and utilities. Other parts of the country have not escaped the Russian onslaught; two months ago more than 4,000 Ukrainian towns, villages and cities had experienced outages, and 40% of the country’s grid was crippled. The bombing of power stations is a major part of Vladimir Putin’s plan to weaponize Ukraine’s weather to bully the country into submission as winter sets in. (In addition to candles and other supplies, some Jewish groups are sending generators and heaters.)
Home in past years to such prominent Jews as actress Mila Kunis, the late Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld, former Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein and the late poet-translator Paul Celan (born Paul Antschel), Chernivtsi has an honored place in the country’s history. On the eve of World War II, some 45,000 Jews lived in the city, about a third of the country’s total Jewish population. The collaborationist Romanian authorities, who ruled the area, established a ghetto in Chernivtsi where 32,000 Jews, including many from the surrounding region, were interned; from there, they were shipped to concentration camps in the nearby Transnistria area, where 60% died.
A third of the city’s Jews survived the war. The population grew to about 17,000 when widespread migration from the USSR began in the late 1980s. Like many cities in the former Soviet Union, Chernivtsi has experienced a modest Jewish revival since Communism fell and open expression of Judaism was allowed again. The revival was spurred largely by the arrival of Chabad emissary couples and programs sponsored by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
But though Chabad, an Orthodox movement, is the prime Jewish mover in Ukraine, there is also a growing non-Orthodox presence in the country. The Israeli branch of the Conservative movement sent its first full-time representatives to Ukraine a decade ago. The movement’s Jerusalem-based Masorti Olami organization sponsors a network of synagogues, schools, camps, youth groups and kosher certification services across Ukraine. A few decades ago, Kleiman attended the Midreshet Yerushalayim day school in Chernivtsi and Camp Ramah Ukraine.
In addition, the Reform movement’s World Union for Progressive Judaism has established 10 congregations in the country; the movement estimates that 14,000 Ukrainian Jews identify as members.
Even though the need is urgent, Kleiman said his community will wait to use the candles until the start of Hanukkah. (Courtesy of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies)
These are boring days in southwest Ukraine. TV and radio are only available when electricity is available, and internet and cellphone service is always spotty. Kleiman calls the war a test of the people’s mettle, a spur to their growing national unity. As a form of solidarity, many have switched the language of their conversations from Russian — the lingua franca during the Soviet days — to Ukrainian.
Nobody in Chernivtsi’s Jewish community is starving, Kleiman said. Kosher food is available at the synagogue, and volunteers bring supplies to people unable to travel. Overall, the morale of the Jewish community is good, he says. Native-born members of the community “support each other,” while some people from other parts of the country, separated from their families, with fewer personal connections, are depressed, he said.
In the boxes of materials that Rabbi Gritsevskaya is to bring to Chernivtsi from Israel are also some Israeli-style dreidels, whose Hebrew letters stand for the words “Nes gadol haya po”: “A great miracle happened here.” On dreidels used in the Diaspora, the last word usually is sham, “there.”
The linguistic symbolism in a land under siege is clear, said Kleiman, who plans to explain the message to the members of the community taking home a dreidel.
“I understand — they will understand too,” he says. “I hope the miracle will also happen in Ukraine.”
—
The post In Ukraine, Hanukkah candles are a lifeline in the midst of power outages appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
This national park would honor a Jewish philanthropist — if Republicans get back on board
The political climate is hardly favorable for a new national park centered on racial justice.
President Donald Trump this week called for sweeping budget cuts to the National Park Service and, in January, for the removal of slavery-related exhibits he said portray American history in a “woke manner.”
Yet a campaign to establish a national historic park honoring Julius Rosenwald — the Jewish philanthropist who funded schools for rural Black communities during the Jim Crow era — is pressing ahead.
Dorothy Canter, who launched the campaign in 2018, sees an opening for the park to finally become a reality. In February, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) introduced legislation to create the Rosenwald National Historic Park, backed by seven Democratic co-sponsors.
But advancing the bill out of committee — much less to President Trump’s desk — will require Republican support. At a time when even the mildest celebration of diversity can be deemed an excess of the “woke” left, Canter is betting that Rosenwald’s story will be the exception.
“The environment is not the best, obviously, but this is a story that should appeal to anyone,” Canter told the Forward. “This is a positive story. Nobody can say it’s DEI.”
Rosenwald’s Legacy
Rosenwald was born in Springfield, Illinois, the son of German-Jewish immigrants. At 16, he dropped out of high school to pursue the family clothing business.
In 1895, he invested $37,500 in Sears, Roebuck & Company — a decision that would ultimately make him one of the wealthiest men in the United States in the early 20th century.
But guided by the Jewish value of tzedakah, he gave much of that fortune away. In 1911, he met Booker T. Washington, the formerly enslaved founder of the Tuskegee Institute, a training center for African American teachers. Washington urged Rosenwald to invest in Black education in the South.
Rosenwald would go on to help fund nearly 5,000 schools for Black students across 15 states. By 1928, one in three Black students in the rural South attended a Rosenwald school. Alumni of Rosenwald schools would include congressman John Lewis, poet Maya Angelou and civil rights activist Medgar Evers.
Canter, a retired biophysicist and national parks enthusiast, first learned about Rosenwald as an adult through a documentary — and was struck that this story of Black-Jewish cooperation was not more widely known.
“I knew that there was not one national park unit among the more than 400 that commemorated the life and legacy of a Jewish American, or told the story of Rosenwald schools,” Canter said. “And I can tell you that today, almost 11 years later, that is still the case.”
There are national historic sites and monuments honoring Jewish Americans, including the Rosenwald family home and the David Berger National Memorial. But a national historic park — a designation that often spans multiple sites and has greater cultural cache — has yet to honor a Jewish American.
Part of Rosenwald’s relative obscurity, Canter said, stems from his own philosophy. Rosenwald embraced a “give while you live” approach and did not believe in permanent endowments, requiring that the Rosenwald Fund spend all of its money within 25 years of his death.
That approach has yielded severe financial challenges decades later. Today, only about 10% of the more than 5,000 Rosenwald school structures remain, according to Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The Trust placed Rosenwald schools on its 2002 list of America’s 11 most endangered historic places, warning of an “urgent crisis of erasure, abandonment and deterioration.”
Many of the schools were built in rural areas that have since been abandoned, Leggs said, adding that the buildings were made of wood that has slowly decayed. The loss is personal for him: Upon researching the history for his job, Leggs discovered that both of his parents attended Rosenwald schools in Kentucky.
“It was a transcendent moment for me,” he said, “because I remember being at a school building that was literally vanishing history.”
The surviving schools have mixed ownership, Leggs said. Some act as local community centers, while others operate as commercial or office spaces, such as the Caldwell Rosenwald School in Huntersville, North Carolina — today, home to Burgess Supply, a carpet store.
A bipartisan issue?
In the final days of his first presidency, Trump gave a significant boost to the campaign for a Rosenwald national park.
He signed the Julius Rosenwald and the Rosenwald Schools Act into law, directing the Department of Interior to conduct a study assessing the feasibility of establishing the park. Eight Republicans had cosponsored the bill, and it passed with broad bipartisan support.
The study “resulted in positive findings,” concluding that the San Domingo School in Sharptown, Maryland, met all the criteria for a national park and recommending that Congress create a grant program to support the preservation of additional Rosenwald schools.
But Republican backing for a national park honoring Rosenwald’s legacy now appears to have waned.
The Forward called and emailed the three Republicans who cosponsored the 2020 bill and are still in office. None responded to the Forward’s question about their position on Durbin’s bill to establish the Rosenwald park.
A White House spokesperson directed the Forward to the national historic site at the Rosenwald family home but declined to say whether Trump was supportive of the national park commemorating Rosenwald schools.
Rep. Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican, went so far as to send a letter to President Joe Biden in 2024 expressing his support for “the expedited designation of a Julius Rosenwald And Rosenwald Schools National Park.”
His office did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment.
Nor did the office of Tim Scott, the Republican senator from South Carolina who previously advertised his support for the restoration of Rosenwald schools in his state. “Booker T. Washington helped build thousands of schools for Black children, advancing impactful educational opportunities throughout the South,” he tweeted in February 2024. “With the restoration of Rosenwald School, his legacy lives on in South Carolina. #BlackHistoryMonth”
‘A story for our time’
Durbin’s bill arrives just as the agency that would create a park faces drastic proposed cuts: Trump this week proposed funding for the already understaffed National Park Service be reduced by $736 million, or 25% of its budget.
Meanwhile, the president has sought to recast historical narratives at existing parks. In January, Trump ordered the National Park Service dismantle an exhibit about nine people enslaved by George Washington. Earlier this month, the Trump administration directed the removal of a pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument in New York City.
Yet Rosenwald’s story doesn’t fit neatly into the culture-war themes that Trump has singled out. Rosenwald himself was a political conservative, a laissez-faire businessman and steadfast Republican who believed in fostering economic self-sufficiency through education.
Dennis Ross, a former Republican congressman from Florida who retired from office in 2019 and has supported the Rosenwald park campaign, told the Forward he sees Rosenwald’s story as one conservatives should embrace.
“I’ve heard the argument that this is a way of trying to backdoor DEI. I totally disagree and take issue with that. This is showing what American history is all about,” Ross said. “If you were to dwell on the oppression of slavery, then maybe that argument might work. But I think the important thing is to look at the transition, the evolution from slavery to success.”
Canter is also optimistic, and said she plans to meet with a Republican senator — she declined to provide a name — whose staff has expressed interest in the park. As to whether Trump would sign the bill: She hopes the campaign will have the opportunity to put it on his desk.
“People with different backgrounds and cultures were able to come together, work together, find common ground and move this country forward,” Canter said. “So if that isn’t a story for our time, I don’t know what is.”
The post This national park would honor a Jewish philanthropist — if Republicans get back on board appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Trump Says Gas Prices May Remain High Through November Midterm Election
U.S. President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters while Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio look on, as they attend a meeting with oil industry executives, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 9, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the price of oil and gasoline may remain high through November’s midterm elections, a rare acknowledgement of the potential political fallout from his decision to attack Iran six weeks ago.
“It could be, or the same, or maybe a little bit higher, but it should be around the same,” Trump, who is in Miami for the weekend, told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo” when asked whether the cost of oil and gas would be lower by the fall.
The average price for regular gas at US service stations has exceeded $4 per gallon for most of April, according to data from GasBuddy. Trump’s comments on Sunday came after weeks of asserting that the spike in prices is a short-term phenomenon, though his top advisers are cognizant of the war’s economic impacts, officials have said.
Earlier on Sunday, Trump announced on social media that the US Navy would blockade the Strait of Hormuz and intercept any ship that paid a crossing fee to Iran, after marathon talks between the US and Iran in Pakistan over the weekend did not yield a peace deal.
“No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Any US blockade is likely to add more uncertainty to the eventual resolution of the conflict, which is currently subject to a tenuous two-week ceasefire. The new tactic is in response to Iran’s own closure of the strait’s critical shipping lanes, which has caused global oil prices to skyrocket about 50%.
UNPOPULAR WAR HITS TRUMP’S APPROVAL
The war began on February 28, when the US launched a joint bombing campaign with Israel against Iran. The scope quickly expanded as Iran and its allies attacked nearby countries, while Israel targeted Hezbollah with massive strikes in Lebanon.
The war has buffeted global financial markets and caused thousands of civilian deaths, mostly in Iran and Lebanon.
Trump’s political standing at home has suffered, with polls showing the war is unpopular among most Americans, who are frustrated by rising gasoline prices.
The president’s approval rating has hit the lowest levels of his second term in office, raising concern among Republicans that his party is poised to lose control of Congress in the midterm elections. A Democratic majority in either chamber could launch investigations into the Trump administration while blocking much of his legislative agenda.
US Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, questioned the strategy behind Trump’s planned blockade.
“I don’t understand how blockading the strait is going to somehow push the Iranians into opening it,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
In a separate appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Warner said the blockade would not undermine Iranian control of the waterway.
“The Iranians have hundreds of speedboats where they can still mine the strait or put bombs against tankers in closing the strait,” he said. “How is that going to ever bring down gas prices?”
Although Trump has repeatedly said that the war would be over soon, Republican US Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday that achieving US aims in Iran “could take a long time.”
“It’s going to be a long-term project,” said Johnson, who was not asked about Trump’s proposed blockade. “I never thought this would be easy.”
Uncategorized
Israel’s Ben-Gvir Visits Flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound
Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir walks inside the Knesset, in Jerusalem, Oct. 13, 2025. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Pool via REUTERS
Israel’s far-right police minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem on Sunday, saying he was seeking greater access for Jewish worshipers and drawing condemnation from Jordan and the Palestinians.
The compound in Jerusalem’s walled Old City is one of the most sensitive sites in the Middle East. Known to Jews as Temple Mount, it is the most sacred site in Judaism and is Islam’s third-holiest site.
Under a delicate, decades-old arrangement with Muslim authorities, it is administered by a Jordanian religious foundation and Jews can visit but may not pray there.
Suggestions that Israel would alter the rules have sparked outrage among Muslims and ignited violence in the past.
“Today, I feel like the owner here,” National Security Minister Ben-Gvir said in a video filmed at the site and distributed by his office. “There is still more to do, more to improve. I keep pushing the Prime Minister (Benjamin Netanyahu) to do more and more — we must keep rising higher and higher.”
A statement from the Jordanian foreign ministry said it considered Ben-Gvir’s visit to be a violation of the status quo agreement at the site and “a desecration of its sanctity, a condemnable escalation and an unacceptable provocation.”
The office of Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said such actions could further destabilize the region.
Ben-Gvir’s spokesman said the minister was seeking greater access and prayer permits for Jewish visitors. He also said that Ben-Gvir had prayed at the site.
There was no immediate comment from Netanyahu’s office. Previous such visits and statements by Ben-Gvir have prompted Netanyahu announcements saying that there is no change in Israel’s policy of keeping the status quo.
Muslim, Christian and Jewish sites, including Al-Aqsa had been largely closed to the public during the Iran war. There was no immediate sign of unrest on Sunday after Ben-Gvir’s visit.