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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.”
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How Billy Wilder and B&H Dairy birthed ‘The Only Living Pickpocket in New York’
Noah Segan’s crime thriller The Only Living Pickpocket in New York has drawn comparisons to NYC auteurs Spike Lee, Elaine May and John Cassavettes. While the writer-director is far from anxious about these influences, he notes another, less obvious touchpoint: a Billy Wilder comedy.
“There’s a line in The Apartment, where the very kindly Jewish neighbor doctor says to Jack Lemmon’s character, after he’s been through all of this meshugas with his apartment,” Segan, wearing a shirt that reads “I [Image of a heart-shaped pretzel] New York,” said in a Zoom interview.
The neighbor advises Lemmon’s befuddled, hyper-gentile character to “be a mensch.” In explaining what it means, he says, “just be a person.”
In Pickpocket, Harry Lehman (John Turturro), the titular gentleman thief, calls his neighbor across the hall a mensch for looking out for his wife. Her response: “I’m just being a person.”
While the film, about what happens when an old-school filcher accidentally lifts a high-tech MacGuffin, has its share of grit and cynicism for an increasingly impersonal, online world, its open-hearted menschlikeit shines through.
I spoke with Segan about the film, his sophomore feature after his 2022 Jewish vampire romp Blood Relatives, about Yiddish, B&H Dairy and whether Turturro is the GOAT of non-Jewish actors playing Jews. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you arrive at this idea of an ode or elegy to a Luddite New Yorker?
I looked in the mirror. (Laughs) I’m sort of a Luddite New Yorker — at heart. But a realist, I guess.
It started with a character. It started with Harry. You go, “OK, what is he going through? How is he functioning? What are his challenges?” And then you go, “Oh man, this guy is New York. And this can happen in New York. And I’m from New York.” You’re looking for patterns, you’re looking for the thing that works for you — but is it a chicken and the egg? Is it New York? Is it Harry? Are they the same thing? But once you get those two aspects, the rest of it can blossom naturally.
Your embodiment of New York is an old Jewish guy.
The embodiment of me is an old Jewish guy! (He fishes out a chai necklace from under his collar.) I got my little chai. Represent for the Forward.
In your previous film, Blood Relatives, you were a Jewish vampire. You said in an interview you were thinking about the fear of “otherness.” I’m wondering if there’s something in that choice of making Harry Jewish. Someone with community, but kind of on the margins. Obviously, in New York we don’t think of ourselves as being marginal, but maybe it’s indicating a change.
I think for the first film, part of the conversation was how to discuss otherness through both a realistic lens: that of a Jew, and through a cinematic lens, that of a vampire. The more you think about things like blood libel, the more you think about things like how Jews were murdered, all of that colors that dynamic. In Pickpocket, it’s a little bit different because Harry isn’t really an “other” he is one of. Not just because there are lots of Jews in New York, but there’s lots of everybody in New York!
I think that New York is often unified less based on religious and racial lines, much more so on socioeconomic lines, which of course is something this movie talks about.
Part of the texture there is Yiddish as a kind of lingua franca. We have Giancarlo Esposito and Lori Tan Chinn — older, non-Jewish characters. They all use it. I know we all say “schlep,” but I teach kids at City College, they don’t all know the word “mensch.” Is that a disappearing part of New York for you, in the same way Harry is recognizing his obsolescence?
To me, it’s not a disappearing part because I run into it all the time, and I think most New Yorkers know a little bit of Yiddish, just like most New Yorkers know a little bit of Spanish and that’s how you get by.
You’ve spoken of the Jewish-Italian handshake, a principle in casting that lets Robert DeNiro play Ace Rothstein and James Caan play Sonny Corleone. I have long maintained that John Turturro is probably the greatest living non-Jewish portrayer of Jews.
I think the idea with John is that he embodies New York to such a degree, that he truly does get to do any version of a New York character. This is a guy who just is New York, and so if you let him be a New York-coded character, it is what it is. It is whatever it needs to be. That man knows more about Philip Roth than anybody I’ve ever met, which makes me feel like that makes him definitely an honorary Jew.
Harry’s doorpost has a mezuzah and he goes to visit his daughter and there’s a wreath on the door. I was wondering about that bit of set dressing.
The mezuzah on the door — it’s like painted over. The idea that it had been there a long time was really important to me. That this is a matter of fact of one’s life. There is probably a question of how much Harry’s culture and religion influenced his daughter, who he left at a young age, and her choices to identify or not with that. Obviously, who knows who she married and how they practice. There are Jews who feel jolly and put a wreath on their door, so there’s no rule about that. But I do think that it is safe to say that there were historic, cultural, ethnic identifying aspects that Harry did not pass on. And that is part of the tragedy, of course, of leaving one’s family.
Did you shoot the film before the death of the MetroCard, and do you think Harry would have been able to figure out OMNY? I feel like the transition from tokens might have been difficult for him.
The transition from tokens was definitely difficult for him. We still had MetroCards when we shot the movie. I think it was a combo. But he doesn’t have a phone to tap! So what’s he gonna do? He’s gonna get an OMNY card and load it up? I mean, I guess that’s sort of like having a MetroCard.
The other day my phone died, so I just used my credit card. So you could do that in theory.
I don’t know if Harry has a credit card.
He deals in cash.
I think what he’s doing is he’s just waiting for somebody to open the emergency door for him. And then he passes them a couple bucks.
How do you think he would feel about Mamdani and the Knicks championship?
I don’t know if Harry votes. I think he likes to stay off the rolls. The more off-the-grid he could be, the better. But I do think that he would be very pleased about the Knicks. I don’t know if he’d be as pleased as John is. But I think he would be very pleased about the Knicks.
We feel that the days of Harry and his analog life are numbered, but there’s also a glimmer of hope when we see him mentoring a younger guy in the old ways of the five-finger discount.
All hope is never lost, especially in New York. New York is a hopeful place. Because it is sarcastic and cynical and has a sense of humor and it’s very fast. People think that that somehow makes it not an optimistic or hopeful place. But no. New Yorkers are the most resilient people on earth — that’s why the all the Jews move here!
Any there other Jewish tidbits that you’re not going to get a chance to to speak about with the general press?
You picked up on B&H right?
I don’t know if I did!
The first scene with Harry, he’s having his matzo brei at B&H.
Oh! I wasn’t thinking of B&H Dairy. I was thinking of B&H Photo.
There used to be a whole cottage industry of these places that that showed up at the turn of the century called B&H, and people go, “Well, why is it called B&H.” It’s Baruch Hashem. It wasn’t anybody’s name. It was just like, ‘Well, I guess thank God we opened up a store.’
(Author’s Note: Regrettably, in the case of the dairy establishment, this tidbit, while widely believed, appears to be apocryphal; the founders of B&H, who catered to Yiddish actors on Second Ave. were named Abie Bergson and Jack Heller and gave their initials to the enterprise.)
B&H is such a great example of New York because it is still kosher. It is still signed off on by a rabbi. The rabbi puts the stamp on it. Remains kosher. It is run by a Catholic Polish lady, her Muslim-Egyptian husband, and the head chef is Mexican. And if you buy the T-shirt, the T-shirt says “Challah por favor.”
It is a great New York, multi-ethnic, multicultural institution, and I’m very proud that we got to shoot there.
The post How Billy Wilder and B&H Dairy birthed ‘The Only Living Pickpocket in New York’ appeared first on The Forward.
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A synagogue and Jewish-owned shops damaged in French riots
(JTA) — PARIS – Jewish-owned shops in Marseille were set ablaze and a synagogue in Paris was vandalized as part of widespread property damage caused by riots across France Saturday and Sunday, according to the Jewish Community Protection Service.
It is too early to assess the full extent of the riots protesting the rising cost of living and the damage they’ve caused, but various elements in the media have described them as civil unrest and chaos.
From Lille in the north to Marseille in the south and in the major cities in between, media estimate that nearly 800,000 people took to the streets and some 2,000 shops were vandalized or looted. Public buildings were set on fire, and hundreds of people or more were injured, including 150 police officers, with thousands arrested.
The riots followed a student uprising that blocked entrances to high schools across the country in recent weeks. Palestinian flags and keffiyas have been a recurring motif in most of the violent protests, acts of vandalism and looting.
But according to SPCJ, known as the Service de Protection de la Communaute Juive in French, there was no evidence that Jewish institutions or businesses were deliberately targeted.
Vandals broke into the Ohalei Yaakov synagogue in Paris’ 19th district overnight between Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday morning, members of the Jewish community discovered that their temporary place of worship had been broken into. The permanent synagogue building is currently undergoing renovations.
Inside the sanctuary, prayer books, tefillin, and various objects — taken from boxes and cupboards — were found scattered on the floor. The rabbi’s office was also searched. Despite the mess, the Torah scrolls appeared to be unharmed.
According to a member of the synagogue committee, the incident primarily points to an attempted theft. The suspects may have been looking for money, but nothing was believed to be missing.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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How much will Trump’s endorsement help Netanyahu?
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Within minutes of President Donald Trump endorsing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a post on Truth Social Sunday, Netanyahu’s campaign team had released a 30-second clip showing all the times Trump has lavished praise on the Israeli leader over the past few years.
With polls showing that Netanyahu and his governing coalition are slipping in their struggle to retain power in the upcoming Oct. 27 election and lag behind the opposition bloc, an endorsement from the president of the United States is a powerful statement.
But is it enough to tip the scales?
“I don’t think it will change anything,” said Ilana Shpaizman, a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University.
Of course, she said, “Netanyahu will say this is the proof that I’m a leader and all that, and I can speak to Trump … But so what? His followers already know that and they believe in him. They don’t need the endorsement.”
Those who oppose him, Shpaizman continued, “know that Trump forced him (Netanyahu) to accept the ceasefire in Gaza and accept the hostage deal, and that Trump runs the show around Iran. So they also don’t need the endorsement either,” Shpaizman said.
Some pundits speaking on Israeli news outlets criticized Trump for “interfering” in Israel’s election, while others put it down to the fact that Trump does not want America to return to fighting Iran alone if Netanyahu, who is hawkish on Iran, is replaced by someone less willing to act militarily. If Netanyahu loses, that is a scenario that could play out.
“This is the first time ever that the president, at least publicly, endorses a candidate in Israel’s election,” Bushinsky, a political commentator and former adviser to Netanyahu, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Bushinsky said he remembered Netanyahu complaining about U.S. intervention in previous elections in 1999 and 2001, when presidents less enamored of him were in office. He even pushed for an initiative that would block foreign funding for election campaigns.
Now, Bushinsky said, “I guess he is not complaining,” adding that the endorsement serves Netanyahu in two ways.
First, it signals that Trump thinks that Netanyahu is the most suitable guy for the job. Second, it puts Netanyahu’s election campaign back on track, refocusing attention on an issue where Netanyahu is strong – Iran.
“It lets him say ‘I can now finish a job, and I can finish a job with Trump,’ and ‘without Trump or without me, the job will not be finished,’” said Bushinsky.
He said that in the last few days, the political debate had pivoted to other issues such as Ashkenazim vs Sephardim, the draft law and the contentious efforts by the outgoing government to overhaul the judiciary.
“This [endorsement] is the ultimate campaign boost for Netanyahu,” Bushinsky said.
But that boost might not be enough.
Most of the polls taken in recent days show the opposition bloc led by former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot pulling ahead of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, but give neither bloc enough seats to gain the necessary 61 of 120 seats in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, to form the next government.
“I think this might give Netanyahu one more seat, one more mandate, but not more than that,” said Bushinsky.
Prof. Tamar Hermann, director of the Israel Democracy Institute’s Viterbi Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research, said that the timing of Trump’s support for Netanyahu in this election race had come both “too late and too early.”
“It’s too late because people have already decided electoral preferences. They may shift within each bloc, but will not move between the blocs because of this,” she said. “And it’s too early because there are nine days to go to the elections, and we can already see other American leaders spilling some cold water over what he said, even on the Republican side of the aisle.”
This criticism, Hermann continued, will be transmitted to Israeli voters, and they will see that Trump is facing a huge battle in the upcoming midterm elections.
“The image of President Trump has deteriorated significantly since April 26, when he started the negotiations with Iran,” she said, pointing to one of the IDI’s recent public opinion surveys that found the president’s popularity had plummeted after he stopped the war with Iran without totally removing the threats against the State of Israel.
According to that poll, the Israeli public’s confidence in Trump as someone dedicated to Israel’s security fell from around 70% to just 42%.
“In my view, the endorsement will not make a big change,” Hermann added. “It will just strengthen Netanyahu’s political supporters, who will see it as a sign that he is still the internationally known figure that even the president of the United States is endorsing.”
She concluded, “The meaning of endorsement in Israel is totally different than in the United States … we are not that used to this kind of move, and it will not make people change their minds.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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