The Chabad educational institutions in Dnipro, Ukraine, have become huge centers for the absorption of Jews from the cities on the front lines. In the large study hall of the yeshiva – next to the many holy books.
While the Jewish educational institutions in Dnipro are in the city center, the yeshiva – where the children of the Rebbe’s emissaries in Ukraine who have since been transferred to Germany studied until the war – is located in a pastoral and fenced compound outside the city.
The work of absorbing refugees, treating them, catering them and taking those who are interested in it in an orderly transportation system outside the borders of Ukraine is the great responsibility of the Dnipro emissary Rabbi Shmuel Kaminsky, in cooperation with the “Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine”.
Dnipro is known to house the large and well-established Jewish community in Ukraine, numbering more than 30,000 Jews, of which Chabad and the Federation have activities in all cities of the country.
According to Rabbi Kamintsky, a large part of the older refugees “are in a difficult medical condition and can not go on a long journey that will last over a few days. They prefer to stay within Ukraine, as close to home as possible and we of course give them this option “There were several alarms in the city, but Dnipro is still considered the safest city among the big cities and therefore the traffic of Jews to it from all over eastern Ukraine is very large. Every day we catch hundreds of Jews, a minority staying and most continuing on trains and buses we rent for that purpose.”
At the same time, preparations for Purim are continuing in the offices of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine: Dozens of workers and volunteers from the federation finished work last week on preparing 50,000 parcels to be distributed ahead of Purim with the help of the European Rabbinical Center. All the shipments had already left all over Ukraine: from Donetsk and Lugsenk in the east, under Russian occupation to Uzhgorod and Khust at its western end, near the Slovak border; From Obruch in the north, near the Belarusian border to Mogilev-Podolsk in the south, which borders Moldova.
Each package delivery includes a fancy scroll with Russian and Ukrainian translation, manna ears, chocolates, snacks and other pastries.
Simultaneously with all this and under fire, a special 75-page booklet was published in Ukraine in Hebrew and Russian, which brings from the teachings of the Rebbe, the president of our generation, everything related to faith and trust in God, as well as encouraging the expectation of redemption.
“Despite the horrors of war, we make an effort to bring every Jew the joy of the holiday as much as possible, out of a prayer that this year, too, we will have great miracles and true and complete redemption,” says the shliach Rabbi Meir Stumbler.
