A crowd throngs, in the early evening of December 9, in front of a stage overlooked by a tall menorah waiting to be illuminated. Several representatives of the Jewish community in the city of Dnipro took turns to recall the significance of the Festival of Lights and draw parallels between the current tragedies in Ukraine and Israel. The speeches give way to celebrations with concerts and dances, under the indifferent gaze of passers-by on Dmitry-Yavornitsky Avenue and a handful of police officers numbed by the cold.
“We are grateful to the Dnipro authorities for being so kind to us”, explains the rabbi of Dnipro and its region, Shmuel Kaminetsky, on stage, after lighting five candles. He speaks in Russian (with a strong foreign accent) instead of Ukrainian, which has become the norm for public speaking.
The rabbi, who was born in Israel and lived for a long time in the United States, continues on the meaning “singular” of Hanukkah in 2023. He alludes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the latter’s resistance: “When one nation imposes itself on another, it doesn’t work; Two thousand two hundred years later, history repeats itself. » Hanukkah commemorates the victorious battle led by part of the Hebrews against the Hellenistic assimilation imposed by Seleucid king Antiochos IV. Weighing his words, the rabbi hopes “an upcoming miracle” And “the return of peace to Israel”.
Empathy towards Israelis
“This is the first time in Ukrainian history that such a sense is manifested of unity », welcomes Zelig Brez, head of the Jewish community of Dnipro. He almost has to scream to be heard over the pulsations of Israeli pop music coming from the speakers. “Ukraine supports us. This is a completely new stage in relations between the Ukrainian people and the Jewish people. They peak today. Ukraine has long been divided and disunited. From now on, the nation brings together all its components. » For Rabbi Brez, Ukraine dented by war identifies with Israel, which “also going through a difficult period after the Hamas aggression”. The fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is of Jewish origin “is not an identification factor, or in a very indirect way”he believes.
A few hundred meters away, on the sixth floor of the Menorah Center, a colossal twenty-story building whose shape evokes that of a seven-branched candlestick, the director of the Hesed Menachem charitable foundation, Oleg Rostovtsev, meditates on destiny of the Jewish community of Dnipro. “The exodus of Jews from Ukraine is over. Everyone understood that Ukraine will not collapse. Many of those who fled at the start of the war have returned”, explains this man with a short white beard wearing a stylized kippah in fatigues. He presents himself as “Ukrainian nationalist” and considers that “Jews, like all other peoples, have the right to be nationalists”.
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