In Ukraine's second-largest city, devastated by bombing, the seasons of Jewish life find expression. Amid sorrow and loss, Rosh Hashana brings hope, even joy.
“In darkness we find light,” said Rabbi Moshe Moskovitz, the city’s 59-year-old chief rabbi, who presides over Kharkiv’s landmark synagogue, the largest in the country., Kharkiv was vulnerable from the war’s first moments. In months that followed, bombs rained down on the northeastern metropolis almost daily, wrecking hundreds of buildings, killing and maiming civilians and scattering much of the prewar population of 1.4 million people.
In the synagogue’s deep, thick-walled cellars, classrooms and storage rooms were repurposed with cots and mattresses, and the kitchens cranked out hundreds of meals a day. “I remember how terrifying it was, the explosions and the bloodshed, and my mother worrying about us all, just as I worry for my granddaughter now,” she said.
Two months ago, the son came to Moskovitz to say that the remains of his father, missing for months in territory that fell into Russian hands but was subsequently reclaimed by Ukrainian forces in the fall last year, had finally been identified by DNA testing. The rabbi summoned a minyan — a group of 10 Jewish men over the age of 13, for purposes of public worship — and they buried the man next to his Jewish grandmother, in accordance with his wishes.
Part of Moskovitz’s pastoral mission involves visiting injured troops at Kharkiv’s military hospital, invariably flooded with gruesome casualties because the city lies only 125 miles from Bakhmut, the. There, he offers comfort to the wounded of all religions. Coming of age continues as well. The Moskovitzes’ son Yisrael — one of the couple’s 12 offspring — will turn 13 in two weeks, coinciding with the festival of Sukkot, and is to have his bar mitzvah. Rosh Hashana marks the start of a crush of upcoming holy days, including Yom Kippur, the Jewish calendar’s most important occasion.
Already since the fighting began, there have been two springs, and two Passovers, marking the Jewish escape from slavery in Egypt. The rabbi’s wife ruefully recalled what she termed this year’s “express Seder” — the lengthy liturgical meal that this time was held in rapid-fire haste so people could hurry home before curfew.
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