Ukraine's only woman rabbi is among many Jewish people fleeing war.
WARSAW, Poland -- On her first Shabbat away from the fighting in Ukraine, Rabbi Julia Gris twice led services to welcome the Jewish holy day.
"There were so many stories, so much crying and so much pain," Gris said."For those who are here, and even more so for those still in Ukraine." The reality that so many Jews have joined the mass civilian exit from Ukraine exposes the deceitfulness of Russian claims that it's there to"denazify" Ukraine. In truth, Ukraine has steadily grown into a pluralistic society, led by a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Aside from the AJC there are others helping. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee , a New York-based Jewish humanitarian organization, has so far evacuated thousands of Jews to Moldova and helped several thousand more after they reached Poland and other countries. Gris is awaiting a sponsorship letter in hopes of going to the U.K. She was ordained a rabbi at the Leo Baeck College in London and has friends and colleagues there who are supporting her.Wearing a sequined kippa and a ribbon pinned to her chest in the blue and yellow of Ukraine's flag, Gris said that she never experienced anti-Semitism in her 22 years of living in Ukraine.
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