The Boy Who Survived The Inferno In Mariupol Celebrated His Bar Mitzvah At The Yad Lachaim Branch In Nof HaGalil
A Jewish boy who was born and raised in Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine and immigrated to Israel following the war, was able to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah this week at the Yad Lachaim branch in Nof HaGalil, where he and his family receive full Jewish escort. Rafael Mitrapanov was 11 and a half years old when the war broke out • Full Article
A Jewish boy who was born and raised in Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine and immigrated to Israel following the war, was able to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah this week at the Yad L’ Achim branch in Nof HaGalil, where he and his family receive full Jewish escort. Rafael Mitrapanov was 11 and a half years old when the war broke out. He saw the horrors of the war with his own eyes and he and his family hid for a month in the basement of the Chabad house in the bombed-out Mariupol. Only by a miracle were they able to escape from there after several of their neighbors were killed and wounded in the intense Russian attack on the city. Upon their arrival in Israel, Yad L ‘Achim helped the brothers in their reception, gave them shopping vouchers and generous food baskets and above all helped them preserve their Judaism from the missionaries who ambushed them in the city. They joined hundreds of Jewish families who were taken in by the dedicated members of the organization in the branches that were quickly opened for this purpose in several “receptive cities”, so that the missionaries, who, in contrast, were also preparing to take in refugees from Ukraine and even placed their own representatives at the borders, would not be able to lay hands on them. Rabbi Yona Brodkin, a Chabad Baliya emissary and director of the Yad L ‘Achim branch in Nof HaGalil, purchased a pair of tefillin for him with the help of the 770 Fund, so that Benoam would enter the burden of mitzvah like other Jewish boys his age. Before that, Raphael learned the laws of placing the tefillin as well as the way of placing the tefillin. At the youth boarding school ‘Kfar Citrin’, which he entered at the beginning of the school year. After he got up to the Torah at the Yad L’ Achim branch in the city, a Bar Mitzvah meal was held there, and Raphael’s Jewish mother thanked Rabbi Brodkin and the Yad L’ Achim organization for continuing to support them, accompany them and provide them with all their needs. Those who came especially to participate in the event were the rabbi of Mariupol and the Chabad emissary Rabbi Menachem Mendel Cohen and his wife, who were in contact with ‘Chabad Baaliya’ and the people of Yad L ‘Achim in order to accommodate the city’s Jews in the best possible way. Yad L’Achim say: “The hundreds of Jewish families who have been absorbed into our branches have become part of the extended Yad L’Achim family. Raphael and his family are also a miracle of salvation in themselves; a miracle of the wonderful chain of generations of the Jewish people who, only thanks to persistent activity, does not cut off and brilliantly continues the tradition of Israel.” .
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