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Australian Jewish News

As Russia builds up troops at the Ukrainian border, an Australian who has called the city of Kharkiv – 40 kilometres away – home for the past 32 years said there is “cautious optimism” war may not break out.

Sydney-born Rebbetzin Miriam Moskovitz from Chabad of Kharkiv, a city with 30,000 Jews, told The AJN that “every few hours the situation seems to be changing, hopefully changing for the better”.

“Not just the Jewish community, but the entire Ukraine have been under a lot of pressure the last few weeks, especially the last few days, when different embassies started pulling out, and when America and Israel called on their citizens to leave,” she said.

“The Australian Embassy actually called me a month ago to know what my plans were. They wanted to let me know that they’re not taking responsibility for me if I stay. They wanted to know what my plan B is. I said, I don’t have a plan B, this is where I live.”

As heads of their community, Rebbetzin Moskovitz said she and her husband, Chabad of Kharkiv director Rabbi Moshe Moskovitz, “can’t just jump ship when we’re the ones who are holding the community together”.

“I think when people started leaving, I think that’s where the panic really started setting in during the last few days,” she said.

“Everyone sort of felt like maybe somebody knows something that we don’t know that they’re all running away from here. So the fact that we stayed here is very, very encouraging to the people.”

Rebbetzin Moskovitz said what is being reported on the news and what is happening on the ground “seems like two different worlds”.

“The whole world is building this imminent, imminent, imminent invasion. And on the streets, life is going on as normal,” she noted.

The daughter of Rev Henry and Judy Amzalak, Rebbetzin Moskovitz, who has nine children and whose daughter got married just last month, was meant to visit Sydney for the first time in two years next week, but said “I called them and told them I can’t leave my family like this”.

Friends of Refugees of Eastern Europe (Sydney) spiritual leader Rabbi Yehoram Ulman told The AJN he has been in touch with Rabbi Moskovitz, another rabbi in Kyiv and a rabbi in a city bordering Belarus.

“There’s a lot of optimism. None of the Chabad emissaries for example, have made any plans to leave,” he said.

“The feeling is generally that God willing, everything will be fine. Obviously any unrest can potentially be dangerous … but there’s no reason to believe that they will be trying to do anything to civilians and to the Jewish population.

“My understanding is that from what I hear, also the bulk of the Jewish population is not panicking.”

Rabbi Ulman added there was also talk of some of the troops being withdrawn.

“Nobody knows 100 per cent what’s going to happen, but it looks very different to the way it was in Donetsk and Luhansk when there was a war a number of years ago.”

Ukraine has an estimated 200,000 Jews, according to The Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), which has four field offices in the country and supports social welfare, provides food, medicine and other services to the elderly and supports six major Jewish community centres.

“We stand at the ready to maintain our humanitarian lifeline to a vulnerable population of needy Jews and Jewish communities in Ukraine,” Stefan Oscar, executive director of JDC’s former Soviet Union operation, said this week.

“Their care and well-being are our top and enduring priorities and will remain our focus whatever scenarios develop in the region.”

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