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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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The post In Ukraine, Hanukkah candles are a lifeline in the midst of power outages appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Congressional Hopeful Michael Blake Seeks to Erase AIPAC Support, Misleads on Past Trips to Israel
Former New York State Assemblyman Michael Blake is running for US Congress in the Democratic primary in New York’s 15th Congressional District. Photo: Screenshot
Michael Blake, a progressive Democrat running for US Congress in New York City, appeared to have recently made misleading statements about the nature of his previous trips to Israel and relationship with AIPAC, the country’s foremost pro-Israel lobbying group.
In Instagram comments, Blake characterized one of his visits to Israel as being done in his capacity as a reverend. Blake visited Israel in 2014 with the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and in 2017 with the AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation.
“I attended a trip and spoke at previous events about my faith as an ordained reverend and about the Black & Jewish relationship but haven’t been involved in years,” he posted when asked to clarify his ties to AIPAC, which seeks to foster bipartisan support for the US-Israel alliance.
Blake, a former New York state assemblyman, is running an insurgent left-wing campaign to unseat incumbent US Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres, a staunch supporter of Israel, in the state’s 15th congressional district.
Regarding previous support from AIPAC, Blake said, “Donations would have been minimal in the past.”
Social media screenshot
However, Blake’s social media comments contradict previous documentation about the nature of his trip to Israel and relationship with AIPAC. Although Blake asserted that he visited Israel with an AIPAC-linked group as a reverend, reports indicate that he attended AIPAC events through 2019 and only became ordained as a reverend following his 2020 Democratic primary defeat to Torres.
“The Bronx Democrat then gave up his Assembly seat to fall to Ritchie Torres in a 2020 congressional race. Since then, he’s run his public affairs firm, backed Maya Wiley’s 2021 run for mayor, and got ordained as a reverend,” Politico reported in 2024 in an article on Blake considering a bid at the time for New York City mayor.
Contrary to Blake’s assertions that he only participated with AIPAC as a reverend, the politician participated in multiple AIPAC events, including its annual policy conference in 2017 while serving as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Skeptics have suggested that Blake invoked religion to minimize progressive blowback over his connections to AIPAC.
Last year, the New York Post first reported that Blake deleted several past social media posts touting his attendance at AIPAC events.
Since announcing his campaign to unseat Torres, Blake has lurched farther left on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an apparent attempt to court progressive voters. Blake has issued blistering statements condemning Israel of committing a so-called “genocide” in Gaza and vowed to vote against any military aid to the Jewish state.
“I am ready to fight for you and lower your cost of living while Ritchie fights for a Genocide. I will focus on Affordable Housing and Books as Ritchie will only focus on AIPAC and Bibi,” Blake posted on X in a statement last year announcing his candidacy, referencing Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In May 2025, however, during his failed campaign for mayor, Blake walked back his accusations of “genocide” against Israel, claiming that he regretted using the term to characterize the war in Gaza.
“It was wrong language to use,” Blake said, referencing his October 2023 post which accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. He apparently again reversed his stance when launching his congressional bid in New York’s 15th district.
Despite his efforts, Blake’s previous trips to Israel and history of praising the Jewish state have elicited skepticism among left-wing voters in New York City. Progressive critics have pointed to his 2017 speech at the annual AIPAC conference in which he lavished praise on Israel. In 2020, while speaking with Jewish Insider, he compared his experience as an African American to the struggles of Jewish people in Israel.
As the relationship between the Democratic Party and Israel continues to deteriorate following the breakout of the Israel-Hamas war, liberal politicians have continued to recalibrate their approach to Middle Eastern geopolitics. Many ambitious Democratic candidates have staked out positions on Israel more aligned with the far-left, progressive flank of the party, accusing the Jewish state of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” while vowing to oppose any arms sales to Jerusalem.
Despite his aggressive overtures to progressives, Blake’s campaign to unseat Torres still remains a longshot. The 15th district encompasses Riverdale, a heavily Jewish and affluent community and hub of pro-Israel activism. Polling suggests that Torres maintains heavy levels of support in his district, placing him among the most popular politicians in the state of New York.
Blake’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
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National support group for interfaith Jewish families guts staff amid funding crisis
(JTA) — A national nonprofit that supports interfaith Jewish families has slashed its workforce after facing an unanticipated budget shortfall.
18Doors announced on March 31 that it had “significantly” reduced its staff due to budget constraints. In fact, about two-thirds of the staff were laid off the week before the announcement, board member Laurie Beijen told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The nonprofit had 15 staff members last August, according to an archived version of its website. This week, it lists four employees, nearly all in the C-suite.
CEO Mike Wise has stepped down, and 18Doors is now being led by Ellen Frank, the chief operating officer, and Adam Pollack, the chief program officer, the organization said.
Among those no longer at 18Doors are employees responsible for fundraising, creating digital content about interfaith inclusion and running a referral service to connect interfaith families and clergy. That service, which the organization says reached 2,000 families a year, remains operational, Beijen said, but “to a lesser degree.”
She said the budget crunch was complex and had come as a surprise. She cited in particular the squeeze felt by nonprofits like 18Doors in recent years as foundations and donors shifted their giving priorities toward Israel and fighting antisemitism.
“We were kind of caught off guard by the severity of our funding issues,” Beijen said. “It’s a myriad of causes that are sort of short, medium and long term, and we ended up just getting caught in this storm.”
Jodi Bromberg stepped down as CEO in 2024 after helming the organization for a decade, including during its 2020 rebrand from InterfaithFamily. The organization hired a search firm to find her replacement and a consulting firm to help draw up a strategic plan, which Beijen said it had been “on the cusp” of announcing before instead sharply contracting.
A delayed annual gift also scrambled budget planning, Beijen said, with a gap of just a few months sending the organization into a financial crisis. 18Doors declined to identify the donor or the size of the gift.
The nonprofit has raised $2 to 3 million a year in recent years and spent all of that or more, according to its filings with the IRS. Its significant donors have included the Marcus Foundation and Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the Jewish federation in Boston, where 18Doors is based. The Marcus Foundation and CJP did not respond to requests for comment.
In a statement emailed to the 18Doors community and posted on social media last week, the nonprofit wrote, “The Board has since secured necessary funding to stabilize the organization in the short term.”
Jewish philanthropic giving has changed since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with many donors choosing to focus on pro-Israel giving and causes that address antisemitism.
In December, the Shabbat dinner nonprofit OneTable laid off a quarter of its staff, citing donors’ funding priorities. The group is adapting its programming to include more Israel content.
At the recent Jewish Funders Network international conference, speakers, funders and philanthropy executives put a heavy emphasis on giving toward Israel and antisemitism-related issues, according to video and recaps of the conference.
Activists and educators in other areas say that while Israel and antisemitism are important issues, other causes are being left behind.
Founded in 2001, 18Doors says its mission is to encourage mixed-heritage families to engage in Jewish life, while encouraging Jewish communities and clergy to become more welcoming and inclusive.
18Doors’ vision of inclusion for interfaith families has grown closer to reality in the decades since its launch. In 2001, a Pew survey found that half of Jews who married in the previous 10 years had married non-Jews. Two decades later, in 2021, it found that the rate for marriages in the last decade had risen to 61%. Most children of the couples were being raised Jewish, the survey found, with participation in synagogue life and Jewish institutions common.
Two major seminaries recently began admitting students who are in relationships with people who are not Jewish, saying that they wanted to ordain rabbis who match the communities they serve. And in December, while continuing to prohibit intermarriages performed by its rabbis, leaders of the Conservative Movement formally apologized for decades of discouraging intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews and vowed to create new opportunities for inclusion in Conservative synagogues.
But advocates for interfaith families say much more needs to be done.
“The idea that being warm and welcoming is sufficient is false. There’s much more to learn and to do,” said Keren McGinity, an interfaith educator and scholar. “18Doors is important because they are part of the work that gets done, including training clergy.”
McGinity has her own experience with layoffs in the interfaith inclusion space. She was the interfaith specialist at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism before her position was eliminated last year.
She said she is optimistic that 18Doors’ financial crunch will be temporary — but she said she believed the Jewish philanthropic landscape needs to change nonetheless.
“What concerns me is that there should be more funding channeled towards engaging interfaith couples and families,” McGinity said.
Though no other institution has quite the national reach that 18Doors has, other organizations addressing some aspects of interfaith family life include the children’s Jewish literacy program PJ Library; Embark at Mem Global, a program for interfaith and mixed-heritage couples in their 20s and 30s; and Honeymoon Israel, which provides trips to Israel for “young couples of all backgrounds.”
Beijen said 18Doors is aiming to preserve its flagship 18-month clergy program, the Rukin Rabbinic Fellowship, which provides training for spiritual leaders who work with interfaith families.
Bromberg, the group’s former CEO, says 18Doors serves families like hers: Her wife is Catholic and they have children together. Now a consultant helping other nonprofits, she said the cuts at 18Doors signify both a crushing loss and a pressing question.
“These are long time, long-tenured staff. The Jewish community as a whole will lose the institutional knowledge and the relationships that it’s had through 18Doors, through the laying off of those staff,” she said.
Bromberg added, “The question it leaves in the minds of families like mine is: Whose priority are mixed-heritage and interfaith families in Jewish life?”
The post National support group for interfaith Jewish families guts staff amid funding crisis appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish groups condemn Trump’s threat that a ‘whole civilization will die’ in Iran
(JTA) — Jewish groups were among those criticizing President Donald Trump and accusing him of using genocidal rhetoric on Tuesday after Trump posted online that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” wrote Trump in a post on Truth Social. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?”
The president’s comments came hours before his 8 p.m. deadline for Iran on Tuesday to reach a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and were met by swift condemnation by a group of Senate Democrats, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“We speak today with one voice and one purpose: to condemn President Trump’s threat to extinguish an entire civilization,” Schumer wrote in a joint statement. “This is not strength. Intentionally destroying the power, water or basic infrastructure upon which tens of millions of civilians depend to punish the very civilians who suffer at the hands of the Iranian regime would constitute a war crime, a betrayal of the values this nation was founded on and a moral failure.”
Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, condemned the president’s remarks, saying in a statement that there were “simply no words to describe the danger of a U.S. president openly threatening to erase an entire civilization.” She alluded to Jews’ history of facing genocidal leaders in her comments.
“Make no mistake: the president’s threats are deeply reprehensible to us as Jews and as Americans, and must be condemned by all leaders – regardless of their stance on the war with Iran,” Spitalnick said. “We know what it means when leaders call for communities and populations to be wiped out.”
Spitalnick was not the only Jewish leader to weigh in. Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the liberal pro-Israel lobby J Street, said in a statement that the group was “appalled by President Trump’s heinous remarks.”
“This language – a threat to carry out war crimes – is a searing violation of Jewish and American values, certainly will not lead to the de-escalation we desperately need and is a terrifying example of the senseless violence that has characterized Trump’s leadership,” Ben-Ami said, calling on Congress and the Cabinet to “do everything in their power to restrain and remove him.”
Other progressive Jewish groups and leaders accused Trump of promoting genocide, including Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, which wrote in a post on Instagram, “This is not strength. This is not safety. This is a call for genocide.”
Timothy Snyder, a historian of the Holocaust, also leveled the accusation against the president in a Substack post published on Tuesday titled “The president speaks genocide.”
“To bomb a bridge or a dam or a power plant or a desalinization facility, very likely a war crime in any event, could very well have a different legal significance, a genocidal one, if it takes place after the expression of genocidal intent by the commander and head of state,” Snyder wrote.
For some Jews, the president’s looming deadline for Iran carried added significance as it came during the final days of Passover — and as Iran continued to barrage Israel with missiles.
“Tonight, I pray that the Pharaohs who insist on our demise recognize the harm that they may bring on themselves,” Rabbi Arie Hasit, associate dean of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Israel, wrote on Facebook. “That they recognize that Iran can put aside its insistence that Israel must be destroyed and that they can make the necessary steps to end this war.”
“And I pray that if they are overcome by Pharaoh, that no leader try to play the part of God,” Hasit continued. “That in the name of my future, we do not wipe out any civilization. That we understand that even the worst of enemies does not justify the use of the fiercest of our power.”
The post Jewish groups condemn Trump’s threat that a ‘whole civilization will die’ in Iran appeared first on The Forward.