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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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John Galliano bows out of Met exhibition as backlash over antisemitism mounts
(JTA) — John Galliano withdrew from a planned exhibition of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in response to a rapidly escalating controversy over the museum’s decision to honor the fashion designer despite his history of antisemitic and racist remarks.
Galliano said Monday that, after discussions with the Met and others involved in the exhibition, he had decided that it was best for the show not to take place “at this time.” He said he remained accountable for the pain caused by his past words, particularly to Jews and Asians, and recognized that an exhibition honoring his work could be painful for some. The Met said it agreed with his decision.
The reversal came less than a month after the Met announced that Galliano would be the subject of its spring 2027 Costume Institute exhibition, a rare honor that would have made him only the third living designer to receive a solo show there. The exhibition was to open in conjunction with the Met Gala, one of New York’s biggest annual cultural and celebrity events.
Opposition to the exhibition appeared to mount steadily in recent weeks. Early public pushback came from Dana Thomas, Galliano’s biographer, who wrote in an Aug. 6 New York Times guest essay that the Met had made a serious error in choosing to honor him. The criticism then broadened, with Jewish leaders, museum donors and New York politicians publicly urging the museum to reconsider.
Those criticizing the exhibition were New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who called the decision deeply painful for Jewish New Yorkers. Prominent Met donor Alice Tisch described the planned exhibition as a “whitewash,” according to the Times.
The reversal is also a setback for Anna Wintour, Condé Nast’s chief content officer and the driving force behind the Met Gala. She had championed Galliano for decades and was among the Met figures most closely associated with bringing the exhibition to the museum.
The controversy was complicated by the fact that some prominent rabbis had actually met with Galliano before the exhibition was announced and had come away believing that his repentance was sincere, as JTA reported earlier this month.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said Galliano had shown the contrition necessary to earn his return to the fashion world. Rabbi Joshua Davidson of Congregation Emanu-El, a Reform synagogue in New York, likewise said he was convinced by Galliano’s statements of remorse and his efforts to educate himself about Judaism and the Holocaust. Neither rabbi endorsed the Met’s decision to honor Galliano, however. Rather, both told the museum that if it proceeded, it had a responsibility to make Galliano’s antisemitic conduct and the lessons of his repentance an explicit part of the exhibition.
That distinction was reflected in the Met’s original plans. Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s curator, said in announcing the exhibition that it would address Galliano’s antisemitic and anti-Asian conduct, as well as his firing from Dior, a hate speech conviction in France and his subsequent treatment for addiction and public acknowledgment of his actions.
Galliano, among the most celebrated designers in the world, was fired by Christian Dior in 2011 after a video surfaced showing him praising Hitler and making antisemitic remarks in a tirade in a Paris cafe, and directing an anti-Asian slur at the partner of a Jewish woman. A French court convicted him of making public insults based on race, religion and ethnicity.
After entering treatment for substance abuse, he embarked on a process of rehabilitation and eventually returned to the fashion industry. Abraham Foxman, then national director of the Anti-Defamation League, met privately with Galliano repeatedly; in 2013 the ADL said that Galliano had demonstrated “true contrition.”
After the initial announcement of the exhibition, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the ADL, noted that the organization had “long since accepted his apology,” but added that he understood “why some Jews may question the decision to include Galliano’s work in an exhibit given the massive spike in antisemitism in recent years.”
In a statement Monday, Greenblatt appeared to take a harder line in welcoming Galliano’s withdrawal.
“With antisemitism at crisis levels, the Met honoring John Galliano at this moment was misguided, and even Galliano ultimately recognized what the Met should have done from the start,” Greenblatt wrote on X. “This was the wrong move at the wrong moment. Timing matters.”
Galliano’s withdrawal leaves the Met without a planned spring 2027 Costume Institute exhibition. The museum said information about a replacement exhibition and the 2027 Met Gala will be announced later.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post John Galliano bows out of Met exhibition as backlash over antisemitism mounts appeared first on The Forward.
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Julie Moos Named as the Forward’s New Editor-in-Chief & Chief Content Officer
The Forward today announced the appointment of Julie Moos as Editor-in-Chief & Chief Content Officer. This newly created executive position merges newsroom leadership with audience strategy, positioning the nation’s premier independent Jewish news outlet to accelerate digital growth and serve audiences across platforms.
The appointment was announced by Forward Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen.
Moos, who joined the Forward in 2024 as Managing Editor for Audience, previously served as Interim Editor-in-Chief and Vice President for Audience & Strategy. In these roles, she advanced the publication’s digital content strategy and helped secure major grant funding, including a prestigious Luce Foundation award to support the “Holy Ground” series chronicling Jewish life and reinvention across rural and small-town America.
Under Moos’ leadership, the Forward has hit unprecedented growth milestones:
- Record Audience Scale: Surpassed 100 million total audience views in 2025 across web, video, audio and social channels, as measured by Brandwatch.
- Social Acceleration: Grew social media reach by 280%, expanding video reporting to meet the audience where they are.
- Critical Acclaim: Led the Jewish journalism field in reporting awards, including record recognition from the New York and Los Angeles press associations.
- Product Innovation: Successfully relaunched specialized newsletter offerings, including Antisemitism Decoded.
“Julie’s new role marks a pivotal shift toward a fully integrated structure that meets the demands of the rapidly changing news environment,” said Feddersen. “By bringing editorial stewardship and audience strategy under unified leadership, we can ensure our high-impact reporting meets readers where they consume media today, expanding our reach and amplifying the Forward’s mission to elevate issues vital to the American Jewish community.”
Joel F. Brown, Chairman of the Forward Board of Directors, added: “Julie has made important contributions to the Forward from her first days with us and our franchise will accelerate its growth significantly under her editorial leadership. She has a deep and authentic devotion to Jewish communal life which she braids brilliantly with her excellence in journalism and her advanced command of media distribution strategy. I am confident that her leadership will ensure the Forward remains the premier, trusted media source for American Jews.”
Moos said, “I’m honored to lead this incredible team at a moment of dramatic change in the Jewish world and in the media. For over a century, the Forward has been a trusted guide and voice of Jewish life in America. Today, that requires deep, principled reporting, groundbreaking storytelling and ongoing innovation — from dynamic newsletters to video and live events — to ensure our work invites conversation and connection everywhere people watch, listen, read, talk and meet.”
Moos is a nationally recognized editor and media leader who has served in senior roles at McClatchy Media, the National Press Club Journalism Institute and The Poynter Institute. She edited the New York Times bestseller President Obama Election 2008: A Collection of Newspaper Front Pages Selected by the Poynter Institute.
She lives in Alexandria, VA. She is a graduate of Barnard College and earned a nonprofit management certificate from Georgetown University, where she taught digital journalism at the graduate level. She serves as an ambassador for Central Synagogue’s online community, The Neighborhood, and co-hosts the DC-area chapter. Julie has served for decades as a synagogue board member, staff member and active congregant in North Carolina, Florida and Chicago.
The post Julie Moos Named as the Forward’s New Editor-in-Chief & Chief Content Officer appeared first on The Forward.
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Republican Mike Rogers is the Senate candidate Democrats need to save their party
Many progressive Michiganders – especially in the Jewish community – will hold their nose and vote for Democratic Senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed despite his association, friendship and political partnership with antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker.
Many will hold their nose because El-Sayed has called Israel a “rogue” state, refusing to recognize the Jewish State of Israel as legitimate.
They will hold their nose and vote for El-Sayed because they are more scared of the Republicans’ hold on the Senate than a tainted Democrat.
However, as a social progressive who almost always votes Democrat, I want to push back against this logic and urge my fellow Michigan Democrats and progressives to vote for Republican candidate Mike Rogers for the sake of progressive, democratic values.
For me, the disdain that El-Sayed has shown for the Jewish community, especially in his continuing refusal to disavow his relationship with Piker, puts him in the same category as candidates who are openly racist and homophobic. Even the most loyal progressive would reject a racist, even if that meant risking a Republican Senate.
To show the Democrats that such candidates should never be nominated, we must show them that such candidates can never win. Such a candidate winning would be a disaster for the most fundamental requirements we have for any candidate of any party.
Instead, those who really want to focus on turning the Senate Democratic should slip across Michigan’s border to Ohio to knock on doors for Sherrod Brown or donate to help James Talarico in Texas. Those efforts would be a real show of Democratic and progressive solidarity – much more than a vote for El-Sayed.
Donald Trump and the Republican party would like nothing more than to see Abdul El-Sayed in the Senate – an easy target to paint all progressives, liberals and loyal Democrats with the brush of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
The anti-Israel and antisemitic words of El-Sayed and other extremists in the party are a poison that has the potential to severely damage the party long term and make it unviable both for Jews and all those with traditional liberal values. Only a decisive win for Rogers will send a clear message to the Democrats that a return to a stance that is both pro-Israel and pro Palestinian, respecting the Jewish community, is the only way for a strong party to stand up to the Republicans in national elections to defend our progressive values.
This election is not just about the safety and future of Jews in the Democratic party. It is also about returning America to a place where we do not tolerate the harassment of people with whom we politically disagree. The harassment and intimidation of any candidate considered pro-Israel at the Michigan Democratic convention in April traumatized many Jewish participants. Michigan’s Jewish Attorney General Dana Nessel skipped the convention on Saturday out of fear for her safety.
Meanwhile, El-Sayed has said nothing to apologize for his supporters who carried out this gross infraction of the democratic process. Imagine what the National Democratic Convention will look like in less than two years if this model of behavior is not denounced now. Jews with traditional pro-Israel values will see they have no place in the Democratic party.The only way to stop this behavior is to show that it leads to Democrats losing elections.
In recent days, El-Sayed reportedly apologized for remarks he made in March after a truck loaded with explosives rammed into Temple Israel in suburban Detroit with a driver intent on shooting whomever he didn’t blow up. There were more than 100 children inside.
Jews were shocked when El-Sayed seemed to justify the near murder with the words “hurt people hurt people.” His recent non-apology apology if anyone was hurt by his words made it worse.
He doubled down on recognizing the “context” for the attempted massacre: Israel’s actions in Lebanon fighting Hezbollah – the terror group in which the Michigan terrorist’s brother was a member when he died.
In other words, according to El-Sayed, if children are blown up in Michigan, you can blame Israel.
Moreover, he continues to blame Israel for Michigan not having enough funds for its public schools and other needs, a classic antisemitic deflection. His antisemitic blood libel continued after his primary victory when he accused Israel – not just its government – of being “bloodthirsty” – in its defensive war against Hamas.
El-Sayed’s friend and campaign partner Hasan Piker has shared the same sentiment ,warning pro-Israel American Jews that if they continue to defend Israel, they will be targeted because of that stance.
I urge my fellow progressives to examine Piker’s comments insulting Poles and Poland, blaming the West for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and his disdain for Black chatterers on his show – with the vilest of expressions. How can they vote for a candidate who befriends such a man and repeatedly invites him to campaign events?
Yes, Mike Rogers is an old-fashioned conservative who has had to cede some ground to Donald Trump’s conspiratorial views of the 2020 election. But I would argue that worse for our democracy is to normalize the cesspool of disgusting swearing and demonization that Piker champions.
Progressive Democrats must never give up the fight for our causes. However, in the long run, we must right the sinking ship of the Democratic party, a party which is our only hope for winning the war for our progressive values. The path to making this necessary correction is turning our energies to making sure that Mike Rogers defeats Abdul El-Sayed. That is why Rogers, a Republican, has my vote and my voice.
The post Republican Mike Rogers is the Senate candidate Democrats need to save their party appeared first on The Forward.
