06/03/2022
Tonight I discovered that my mother's paternal grandparents and my dad's paternal grandparents were both from Kyiv. They left at the end of the 19th century due to anti-Semitism and came to the USA looking for a better life.
When I came home with my girls to Israel from the airport in December, sitting on a bench outside my apartment building was none other than Natan Sharansky, the famous Prisoner of Zion, former head of the Jewish Agency and hero of the Jewish people.
I pulled my girls aside to tell them that they were in the presence of greatness. If you don't know who he is, look him up immediately...
A few days ago, this story of his was posted on FB (originally by Sivan Rahav Meir), regarding his thoughts about what's happening in Ukraine.
Natan Sharansky spoke this week at Sheva Brachot on the occasion of the wedding of Benaya and Neta Dickstein. Benaya’s parents, Yossi and Hannah, and his brother Shoval, were killed in a terrorist attack when he was seven. It is a pity that only those present , heard what Sharansky, the famous prisoner of Zion, said about the situation:
"When I was growing up in Ukraine, in Donetsk, there were a lot of nations and nationalities. There were people who had 'Russian', 'Ukrainian', 'Georgian', 'Kozaki' written on their ID’s. It was not so important, there was no big difference, but one thing was important - if it said 'Jew', it was as if you had an illness.
We knew nothing about Judaism, there was nothing significant in our Jewish identity other than anti-Semitism and hatred towards us. So no one tried to replace the word 'Russian' with the word 'Ukrainian' in his ID card, for example, to be accepted to university, because it did not matter, but if it said 'Jewish' and you could change it - of course your chances of being accepted were greater.
I was reminded of it this this week when I saw thousands of people standing at the borders, trying to escape the tragedy in Ukraine. They stand there day and night, and there is only one word that can help them get out of there: 'Jew'. If you are a Jew - there are Jews out there who take care of you, there is someone on the other side of the border who is looking for you, your chances of leaving are high. The world has turned upside down. "When I was a child, 'Jew' was an unusual word for evil, no one envied us, and today on the Ukrainian border a Jew is an unusual word for good, it describes people who have a place to go and there is an entire nation , which is their family, waiting for them outside."
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