Rabbi Hilel Cohen explaining the esrog to a Kyiv Yid
THE LONE CRUSE Upon the fall of the Iron Curtain, some pioneering Yidden traveled to the bleak wasteland in the hopes of finding something to salvage. In the late 1980s, Rav Yaakov Dov Bleich, a Brooklyn native and Telshe Yeshiva graduate, arrived on the scene. He was soon appointed Chief Rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine by the local Yiddishe communities, and though there have, baruch Hashem, been others who’ve devoted themselves to the community, it is Rabbi Bleich who has always been recognized by the government as Chief Rabbi. Reb Hilel is proud of the fact that it is their shul’s rabbi who has worked so tirelessly on behalf of the community. In the past twenty years, Rabbi Bleich has been instrumental in founding the first Jewish day school in Ukraine, three yeshi-
Rav Yaakov Dov Bleich
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vos, three kollelim, two cheders and a Bais Yaakov for girls, in addition to many other Yiddishe institutions and community organizations. “Our pride and joy is the first and only Jewish summer camp in Ukraine, Camp Shuva,” Reb Hilel says. (See photo below.)
LIGHTS IN THE DARK NIGHT Rabbi Hilel Cohen’s arrival in Kyiv twenty years ago was rather unintentional — and another demonstration of Hashem’s guiding hand. Having arrived in Ukraine
right before Shavuos, he was intent on heading to Medzhybizh for the Baal Shem Tov’s yahrtzeit. It was then that he first met Reb Leibel Surkis, a Skvere chassid. Reb Leibel asked Reb Hilel to come to Vinnytsia for yom tov, and Reb Hilel was quite reluctant. The plan had been to be in Medzhybizh “beim rebben,” with the Baal Shem, and the detour wasn’t very welcome. “But then,” Reb Hilel says, “Reb Leibel opened my eyes and asked, ‘What would the Baal Shem Tov do in this situation?’ “‘There are Yidden who are waiting for you,’ he told me. ‘They want to see and feel Yiddishkeit. Instead of spending your Shabbos with the tzaddik, you can bring the Baal Shem Tov to these Yidden.’ “Reb Leibel’s words resonated with me, and I haven’t looked back.” Starting in Vinnytsia, a small town between Berditchev and Medzhybizh, Rabbi Cohen was soon leading the small community and local school. This was mere years after communism, and there were still locals speaking Yiddish and curious about their lost heritage.
THE SEARCH IS ON A cruse of pure oil isn’t hard to come by. Yid after Yid that Reb Hilel encounters, though unaffiliated
Camp Shuva on an Erev Shabbos. Reb Hilel Cohen is in the shtreimel, holding his son.