Canadian Jewish News - 04.13.2005

CJ News

Ukrainian president orders return of Kiev synagogue 

By PAUL LUNGEN, Staff Reporter 

Not far from Kiev’s Independence Square, in the heart of the Ukrainian capital, stands the city’s main synagogue, an elegant structure that was known as the Brodsky Synagogue in pre-revolution days.

For decades the house of worship, named for one of Russia’ pre-eminent sugar magnates, was lost to the Jewish community as Soviet expropriators decreed it would better serve as a puppet theatre. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the return of religious freedoms, the Jewish community successfully lobbied for its return.

The synagogue was only one of many Jewish communal institutions seized by the Soviets and only two weeks ago, the recently elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, issued a directive to the mayor of Kiev to begin the process of returning a second large Kiev synagogue, also constructed by the Brodsky brothers, that was being used as a cinema.

Rabbi Moshe-Reuven Azman, one of Ukraine’s two chief rabbis, proudly holds up a single sheet of paper which he explains is a copy of the letter from Yushchenko to Olexandr Omelchenko, instructing the mayor that he has five days to comply. The letter was sent by Yushchenko shortly before his trip to Washington, where he was feted by U.S. President George W. Bush for his role in “the Orange Revolution” and as a leader in the development of democratic rights worldwide.

Rabbi Azman, who was the featured speaker last week at a Toronto Jewish National Fund program, said Yushchenko has proven a steadfast friend of Ukraine’s Jews. While others worry that he has awarded medals to the staff of the opposition newspaper, Silski Visti, which ran several anti-Semitic articles, Rabbi Azman points to other events that linked Yushchenko to the Jewish community.

As a high profile politician and opposition leader, Yushchenko participated in three Chanukah programs at the Brodsky synagogue over the past few years. His last visit took place during the Orange Revolution,which saw the streets of Kiev teeming with supporters of the democratizing Yushchenko, as well as backers of his presidential opponent, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich.

Other ties link Yushchenko to the Jewish community. One of the president’s key aides is Evgeny Chernovenko, a Jew who now serves as minister of transportation and communication and who was Yushchenko’s chief of security during the elections.

Chernovenko helped establish a good relationship between the president and the Jewish community and many rabbis and Jewish organizations backed Yushchenko’s presidential bid. During the election, Rabbi Azman relates, Yushchenko was on the receiving end of hostile propaganda that made him out as some kind of fascist or anti-Semite.

“That’s not true,” Azman said. “I know him personally.”

Azman points to a particularly poignant example of the president’s connection to the Jewish experience.

At the community’s most recent Chanukah celebration, Yushchenko brought with him a small piece of “holy land” from Auschwitz. His father, he explained, had been interned in the camp as a Soviet prisoner of war.

Yushchenko told the gathering, “‘I pledge on this land that if I am president, it will be good for the Jews,’” Azman recounted.

During the Orange Revolution, Rabbi Azman related, the Brodsky synagogue increased its profile among non-Jews unfamiliar with the community by distributing food packages to demonstrators, whether supporters of Yushchenko or Yanukovich. The synagogue, only a short walk from Independence Square, was turned into a temporary refuge where 200 people slept every night. The community handed out warm clothes to many of the demonstrators, Rabbi Azman said.

Azman acknowledges that despite Yushchenko’s favourable attitude to the community, there are anti-Semitic forces the community must contend with. Oleg Tyagnybok, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and head of the Freedom Party, has repeatedly made anti-Semitic speeches, he noted.

A report published in December by the Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union (www.fsumonitor.com), “Chronicle of Antisemitism in Ukraine: 2002-2004,” describes a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism since 2002.

The report found that “Unlike the Soviet period, the central government of Ukraine does not have an official policy of state sponsored anti-Semitism, and has made gestures towards the Jewish community. Nevertheless, serious problems remain that leave Jews vulnerable.”

Rabbi Azman, who was born in Leningrad, said only a trickle of Jews are currently leaving Ukraine. Most who have wanted to depart have done so, leaving a community that ranges in size from 300,000 to 500,000 people. (Other estimates put the number closer to 200,000.)

With the liberalization of Ukrainian society in recent years, the Jewish community has rebuilt a vibrant Jewish infrastructure. It has established five schools in Kiev alone, serving 3,000 youngsters. The community maintains clubs for seniors and young people and even sponsored a solidarity mission to Israel of 200 community leaders at the start of the Iraq war.

Rabbi Azman points to a mass bar mitzvah of 1,000 youths planned in the next few weeks at the plaza near the Western Wall in Jerusalem as another success story.

Community celebrations marking Chanukah, Purim and Passover remain popular – 12,000 participated in the 2004 Purim celebrations alone – but the challenge for the religious leadership is reaching the thousands of unaffiliated Jews, many of whom have only minimal awareness of their Jewish heritage, he said.