I want to make a confession. As I’ve absorbed the news from Ukraine this past 8 days, I have been absolutely captivated by the names of the towns and cities of Ukraine. Odessa, Berditchev, Anapol, Kyiv, Uman, Mezhibozh and others jumped out of the depths of Jewish memory and onto the front pages of our newspapers. The Jewish history of these cities, along with hundreds of others in Ukraine stretches back centuries, but in the past two hundred years so much of Jewish modernity was forged in lands that became Ukraine. The Hassidic movement was born in Ukraine and spread primarily in Ukraine and set down deep roots in Ukraine beyond any other region in Europe. The Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid of Mezritch and Rav Levi Yitzhak, and of course Rav Nachman all lived and taught and died in cities that have been in the news day after day for the past week. And Odessa was the capital city of secular Jewish modernity, Yiddish literature and Zionist activism. Leon Pinzker was living in Odessa when he wrote Autoemancipation, a short book that catalyzed a mass movement of Jews to advocate for their own freedom and dignity in our ancestral homeland.
And I confess that I didn’t fully believe that these cities existed in the real world. These were names from a fairy tale, not places where people still lived and died. After all, the Ukraine became part of what historian Timothy Snyder has called the ‘bloodlands,’ the region of Eastern Europe that was conquered by the Soviets and then the Nazis and then the Soviets again in the span of just a few years leaving behind 14 million dead civlians. Jewish life in Ukraine persisted for a thousand years and met its end in the death pits of Babi Yar and other death sites of the so-called Holocaust of bullets.
But that was an ignorant thought.. The cities where our ancestors lived continued to exist without us. But they also continue to exist with us as an enduring component of Ukrainian life. Ukraine is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the world. Hassidic groups, especially Belz, Breslov, and Chabad, have returned to Ukraine, and shuls and yeshivot and nursing homes and schools have been built in the decades since the fall of the Soviet Union. There are more Jews in the city of Khakiv alone, than in most other European countries. I should say, “there were ” more Jews in Kharkhiv since the city has been bombarded by Russian artillery for the past week. The “Menorah Building” in Dnipro is the largest Jewish affiliated building in the world. Google it after Shabbat.
So instead of feeling bemused that cities I know from legends are in the newspaper, or feeling grateful that our ancestors had the good fortune to leave there to come here, I feel awe at a Jewish community that has built so much Jewish life in such a short period of time in a location that ostensibly was inhospitable to Jews and Judaism. I have a new destination where I desperately want to visit and I hope the community will not be erased before I have a chance to visit and experience what has been built there.
Ramban, Nachmanides, was one of the only rishonim, medieval scholars, to write an introduction to each of the five books of the Torah. Instead of being content to provide line by line comments on each verse as it appears, Ramban notices big themes and he shares them in these introductions. In his introduction to the Book of Exodus, Ramban writes that Sefer Shmot is the “Book of Redemption” because it tells the story of our redemption from Egyptian slavery and how we were brought to the promised land by God’s miraculous intervention on our behalf.
We finished reading Sefer Shemot just a few minutes ago. Did you notice that the book does not end in redemption? How can the book of redemption not end with redemption? Ramban anticipated that question and he writes that when the book ends, with the Jewish people surrounding the Mishkan, filled by God’s presence, we are נחשבו גאולים – considered redeemed. Ramban therefore introduces two meanings for our national redemption. We can be redeemed when we return to the land that God swore to Avraham and his descendants. Or we can be considered redeemed נחשבו גאולים when we live in a community that surrounds a mishkan and is centered on Torah and mitzvot.
And those two meanings are not really in conflict. I hope I’m not spoiling the suspense of Tanakh but even when we do reach the promised land, we don’t experience “the end of history” at least never for longer than forty years of peace and quiet. On our way to ge’ulah, we have a chance to attain moments of נחשבו גאולים when we build communities surrounding Torah and mitzvot with justice and kindness and hospitality and friendship and holiness and devotion. And we can find those moments anywhere.
And so as I’m praying for Ukraine this week, I am praying for every refugee, anywhere on earth, to find their way home and I’m praying for every civilian in harm’s way to find safety. And I’m also praying for a Jewish community and am hoping that it endures and thrives and becomes again a place we can visit to tour the sites of Jewish history and also to participate in a living and vibrant Jewish community. Ukraine, no less than Chicago, or Antwerp or any even Yerushalayim is a place where we can be considered as if we were redeemed. That’s possible for all of us if we decide to make it so and it is where we should set our sites as a community.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 