Amid the many painful stories of the thousands of Jews who fled Ukraine to Moldova, an exciting story emerged today (Tuesday) that symbolizes the continuity of Jewish life amid suffering and wanderings, with the introduction into the covenant of a two-and-a-half-year-old Jewish toddler – a refugee from Kharkov.
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The mother, who did not belong to the Jewish community in Kharkov, refused to perform a circumcision at birth. But when she arrived in Chisinau, when she saw the special reception held by members of the Jewish community in the city for every Jew wherever he was, she felt the need to perform this covenant, in order to make her son a kosher Jew.
She turned to Rabbi Mendi Axelrod – a Chabad emissary in the city, who serves as the rabbi of the Great Synagogue of Kishinev, and who managed the reception of the Jewish refugees in the country – and asked him to perform the circumcision for his son as soon as possible.
Instead of looking for an expert mohel who would agree to make the trek to Moldova, it turned out that under private supervision was in the city another refugee – Rabbi Yaakov Geisinovich, considered the most experienced mohel in the CIS countries, and who makes over 500 alliances across Ukraine and Russia each year.
Rabbi Geisinovich fled with his family from the city of Dnipro, known as the “Jewish capital of Ukraine”, and they are now in Kishinev as a crossroads from where they will continue to the country or to another concentration of Jewish refugees in a European country.
Due to the fact that the main synagogue in the city is full of refugees, it was decided to find a sterile place, and this morning the alliance took place at the Mother and Child Center in Chisinau, where one of the women of the Jewish community in the city works.
And his name shall be called in Israel: Haim Shalom Yoel.
Rabbi Zosha Abelsky, Director General of the Jewish Community in Moldova: “At the request of the mother, she and her family will remain in Kishinev for the coming month, in order to recover from the escape and the alliance. Little Haim is enrolled in a Chabad kindergarten in Kishinev and next week will be admitted to it along with other refugee children.
“This covenant and the entry of the child into the covenant of our ancestor Abraham, gave us strength in our difficult activity to save Jewish refugees who flow to us all the time.”