At 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 26, as the first round of shelling began on her hometown of Mykolaiv, Ukraine, Valeriya Guseva, who was in Israel at the time, received a flurry of text messages from her family and friends back home.

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"They all told me that they are glad I'm safe. They were the ones in danger, and they were thinking about me," she says.

Guseva, 24, is completing an internship with a graphic design firm in Jerusalem through Masa Israel Journey, a program that provides professional enrichment opportunities for young adults ages 16 to 35. Her family, including her 88-year-old grandmother, who is a Holocaust survivor, remains in Mykolaiv. Two weeks ago, her grandfather passed away from a heart attack.

"The beginning of his life was in occupation, and the end of his life was in occupation," she says. "It's very hard to live every day with the thought that I can't see all the people I love. It's like losing part of my soul."

Guseva is one of 1,750 fellows from Ukraine, Russia and other former Soviet countries currently registered for long-term career programs through Masa. The organization has seen a 200% jump in applicants from the region since the war began, according to Reuven Greenberg, Masa's head of programming for Russian speakers. "We also see a new trend among communities that typically don't apply or register – namely, unaffiliated Jews."

Greenberg expects 300 Russian-speaking fellows to arrive in Israel by the end of April, many on flights sponsored by the Jewish Agency for Israel. Masa is covering the full cost of their programming, and fellows automatically receive a one-year visa to Israel with the option to extend. For Ukrainian and Russian fellows already in Israel, the organization is providing psychological counseling, as well as extracurricular trips and events, to help them process what's going on in their home countries.

On March 1, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with a group of Ukrainian fellows to hear their many stories. Among them was Leonid Hirshenzon, 23, who is studying web development in Ayanot, a youth village in central Israel. Hirshenzon, who holds a degree in computer engineering, grew up in Kharkiv.

"My parents' apartment building was hit on March 3," he told JNS. "After that, they couldn't stay there anymore. It has no heating, no windows, no electricity, no water. It was negative 12 degrees Celsius at night." His parents are now living in their office in a safer part of the city, shuttling back and forth to his grandparents' apartment to shower and prepare food.

Hirshenzon is making aliyah and plans to pursue a master's degree through a Jewish Agency program that incorporates intensive Hebrew study. He still hopes to convince his parents to join him in Israel.

"My feelings have been changing," he says. "The first phase was I just wanted them to run. I didn't understand the problem with my grandparents. Now it's more like a stalemate. They're in the same conditions that they were two weeks ago. I feel I can't control the situation. There's nothing I can do."

'I feel a lot of support here'

On the morning of Feb. 24, Olga Stalgorova awoke to the sound of her roommate crying. A Moscow native, Stalgorova works as a producer of online courses for the Higher School of Economics through Masa's remote work program. She shares an apartment in Jerusalem with three other fellows, two of whom are from Ukraine. "When the war started, I didn't want to believe it," she says. "I don't support it. I have a lot of friends in Ukraine."

In the weeks leading up to the war, Masa was flooded with applications from Ukraine, says Greenberg. "However, since the sanctions started, we see a larger increase in interest from Russian fellows," he notes. Eager to escape economic turmoil and the threat of compulsory military service, many are applying to the program through virtual private networks (VPNs) to avoid government monitors.

Stalgorova, 24, was raised in a Christian home and began exploring her Jewish roots as an adult. She had intended to return to Moscow after her year in Israel. Now, she says, she will stay: "Even if the war would stop right now, the next 20 years will be economic and political suffering in Ukraine and Russia. I can't imagine what will happen."

It's a moment when her dual identity – Russian and Jewish – is both convenient and comforting. "I like being in a Jewish environment," she says. "I have heard stories that Russians are under pressure in other countries, but I feel a lot of support here."

There are some challenges to be overcome; her salary is worth half of what it was before the war, she says, and her Russian credit card is blocked. Still, she feels lucky. "I have a lot of friends who are trying to escape Russia. I really feel privileged that by chance I came here before everything started."

Mixed feelings – gratitude, guilt, fear – are something the Masa fellows from Ukraine and Russia have in common. The night before she met the prime minister, Guseva created a comic book to document her experience. The final pages show her friends crouching in bomb shelters and a cracked iPhone screen surrounded by rubble that reads, "I'm glad you are safe."

"I can show my feelings with art and help other people to understand," Guseva says. "Many people said, thank you – now we know what we're feeling."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

The post Young Jewish Ukrainians, Russians fleeing war find new homeland in Israel appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The North MoPac Expressway runs up Austin's west side, a busy, eight-lane artery that speaks to the city's expanding suburbs and the extravagant consumption of space that is uniquely Texan. It's not a place that seems conducive to antisemitic demonstrations – or demonstrations of any kind, for that matter. But late last month, the MoPac came to national attention when a banner appeared on an overpass reading "Vax the Jews." The sign bore the name of a neo-Nazi group. Several men were seen beside it giving the Nazi salute to passing cars.

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The banner was one in a string of antisemitic incidents that rocked Austin that week, culminating in an arson fire outside Temple Beth Shalom on Nov. 1 that caused more than $25,000 worth of damage. On the day before the fire, the banner appeared over the MoPac again.

Austin faith leaders and politicians forcefully condemned the incidents; a "Rally for Kindness" was held at the capitol; and on Monday, Nov. 29, another sort of response will be issued: Levi Levertov, associate rabbi at Chabad of Austin, will light a large menorah on the overpass where the banner appeared.

"Our approach is to spread positivity to everyone we meet, Jewish and non-Jewish," Levertov told JNS. "What better symbol could there be than to light a menorah on an overpass that brought fear and hate to Austin. The overpass was spreading hate; the menorah is spreading light."

The event will be one of several of public menorah-lightings in the Austin area, including events at the capitol with the governor and at City Hall with the mayor, said Levertov.

Public lightings began in 1973, when a group of yeshivah students erected a small, wooden handmade menorah on Fifth Avenue in New York City. It was just a stunt to attract attention; the students were there to distribute free tin menorahs. A year later, in 1974, in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, a small white wooden menorah was put into place by Chabad Rabbi Abraham Shemtov and a handful of yeshiva students.

It was done at the initiative of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who encouraged his followers to take the mitzvah of publicizing the Hanukkah miracle –pirsume nisa in Hebrew – quite literally. The Rebbe embraced his students' innovation, promoting public menorahs as a triumph of light over darkness and an expression of Jewish pride.

The campaign caught on, and within a few years, large, V-shaped menorahs appeared outside state houses, from the Billy Graham menorah in San Francisco to the one outside the Kremlin. US President Jimmy Carter kindled the first national menorah outside the White House in 1978 – a tradition that has taken place ever since.

Initially, the idea encountered fierce pushback from Jewish groups, who saw the menorahs as undercutting their hard-fought battle to remove Christian symbols from the public square. Civil liberties groups joined the fight, and in 1989, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in a case challenging a menorah outside a Pittsburgh municipal building. In County of Allegheny v. ACLU, the Court ruled 6-3 that public menorahs did not violate the separation of church and state because they had become a symbol of the secular holiday season. A subsequent Supreme Court challenge, in Cincinnati in 2003, cemented the menorah's constitutional status.

Today, public menorahs are so ubiquitous that they transcend denominations and even faiths. "Public lightings shine light in both the physical and the spiritual realms, and remind us that we are together, standing strong," Neil Blumofe, senior rabbi at Conservative Congregation Agudas Achim in Austin, told JNS. "It is an important statement that the lights of Hanukkah represent a respectful and navigable way forward – a proper and holy way to utilize fire – especially after the arson attack in Austin."

A grassroots campaign this year in Buda, Texas, persuaded officials to allow a menorah on town property for the first time. When they refused to fund it, as they did the public Christmas tree, Christian groups chipped in to make it possible.

'Hanukkah with the Greeks'

Public menorahs seem particularly relevant at a time when 39% of American Jews say they have changed their behavior out of fear of antisemitism, according to a recent study by the American Jewish Committee titled "The State of Antisemitism in America 2021." It's a phenomenon that's only intensified by the hothouse environment of a college campus, said Rabbi Yudi Steiner, director of the Rohr Chabad Center at George Washington University.

After a Torah scroll was found desecrated in a GW fraternity last month, Steiner launched a campaign to put up mezuzahs for Jewish students on campus. "There was tremendous buy-in," he said. "At the same time, there are students who feel uncomfortable putting up the mezuzah because they feel they're going to be targeted."

Hanukkah's message of religious freedom and spiritual light is the antidote to that mentality, said Steiner – "The theme could not be more perfect" – and he's seizing the moment to create an unexpected alliance. On the last night of the holiday, Chabad is staging a public menorah-lighting co-sponsored by every fraternity and sorority at GW, an event they have playfully dubbed "Hanukkah with the Greeks."

"These aren't just individuals making a decision to support Jewish life," said Steiner. "These are student organizations coming out and saying we want to do the right thing."

Samson Kampler, a junior at GW, said last month's incident at the fraternity wasn't anything new. "Antisemitism doesn't surprise us anymore. As a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, I find that really unfortunate."

Public menorah-lightings on campus give him a sense of Jewish pride, he said, but, perhaps more importantly, they're an opportunity to teach: "It's giving insight to kids of other religions, to show that no matter what occurs across campus, we're proud. We just want to celebrate our holiday."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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