Washington Jewish Week - 10.30.2003

 

 

 

 

Washington Jewish Week

Rabbi helps Reform Judaism grow in Ukraine

by Paula Amann 
News Editor 

Time was, being Jewish meant mostly humiliation for Alexander Dukhovny: teasing at school, rejection from his city's only university, difficulties in finding work. 

"I grew up Jewish, but simultaneously I was ashamed," said the man who is now the chief rabbi of Kiev for Ukraine's growing Reform or Progressive stream of Judaism. 

Yet the Jewish holidays, with their family gatherings, left a warm glow, and he grew up watching his mother observe Shabbat and other traditions. 

These days, Dukhovny, 53, is helping others learn the meaning of these customs, as he busies himself with services, summer camps and conversions for a network of Reform congregations that he says has expanded from 14 when he took charge as chief rabbi in 1999 to some 47 today. 

"They were just waiting for someone to water the soil that was already sowed," said Dukhovny in an interview Tuesday. He remains the sole Reform rabbi in the country. 

The Kiev native was in the area this week as part of a three-week, five-city U.S. tour, sponsored by ARZA/World Union, that will culminate at the Union of American Hebrew Congregations biennial convention next week in Minneapolis. 

His local visit included speaking engagements at Alexandria's Beth El Hebrew Congregation and Rockville's Temple Beth Ami. He also met Monday with leaders of NCSJ-Advocates on Behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eurasia. 

The rabbinate is a second career for Dukhovny, who trained as a mechanical engineer and spent two decades working at the National Academy of Science of Ukraine. A reluctant scientist, he left his field in the early '90s to work for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. 

As he sought to explore his Jewish roots, Dukhovny headed for London, where he earned a master of arts in Hebrew and Jewish studies at London University and received an ordination from Leo Baeck College. 

In his Kiev post, Dukhovny says he is attempting to build closer working relationships with Chabad and Orthodox colleagues. The Jewish community holds joint Chanukah and Purim celebrations "under one roof," he says, although he is not invited to help officiate. 

Controversy erupted last month when the Second Congress of Ukrainian Rabbis elected Rabbi Azrael Haikin of Brussels Ukraine's chief rabbi. Yaakov Dov Bleich, from the Karlin-Stolin branch of Chasidism, has served in the role since 1992 and has voiced his intent to keep his job. 

Yet most of the more than 100 Ukrainian rabbis belong to the Chabad movement that Haikin represents. 

Meanwhile, Dukhovny is struggling to get his own message across to Ukrainian Jews, 80 percent of whom he notes are intermarried and not deemed halachically Jewish by his Orthodox colleagues. 

"Nobody has a monopoly on Judaism, no one person," said Dukhovny. "I'm very pleased that in Ukraine, people have choices ... to go to Chabad or Reform."