A Public Menorah Lighting at the Great Synagogue
On the first night of Chanukah, the Jews of Kishinev attended a grand menorah lighting ceremony at the Great Synagogue on Chabad Lubavitch Street in Kishinev. Dozens of leading community figures, businesspeople, leaders of Jewish organizations, and many more took part, also attending the lighting ceremonies on the nights of Chanukah that followed.
A Happy Chanukah for Elderly and Homebound Women
This year, dozens of elderly and homebound women in Kishinev and elsewhere in Moldova received special Chanukah visits from Rebbitzen Abelsky and a group of young women who are also on shlichus in Moldova. The women received menorahs, candles, and Chanukah “gelt”.
A Chanukah Party for Chabad Women
A special party took place for the women and girls of the Jewish community, at which they enjoyed a great Chanukah program.
Israeli Students Brighten Up the City
Every evening, at sundown, yeshiva students visited the students at their dorms, lighting Chanukah candles with them, giving them a dvar Torah, and plenty of doughnuts. Between Mincha and Maariv, the yeshiva students and university students also learned Torah together in pairs.
Menorahs and Tefillin
Before and during Chanukah, tefillin was put on with people and menorahs were given to anyone needing them in Kishinev.
At one point, student shluchim Y. and Sh. Zalmanov met a very excited Jew, who asked them in Hebrew for Chanukah candles. “I’m from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” he told them. “I know the shliach from there, Rabbi Shlomo Ben Tolila.”
When the Zalmanovs asked him if he wanted to put on tefillin, he was only too happy to do so. “I have Sephardic roots,” the man explained proudly, and he almost promised to take his tefillin with him the next time he traveled. In the meantime, he received a Chanukah kit so that he could keep lighting the menorah till the end of the festival.
The Holocaust Survivor Who Discovered His Jewish Identity
Boris was born to a Jewish mother, but his official Russian documents list him as a non-Jew because his father was a gentile.
For many years, he wondered about this because he felt Jewish in every way. He had few memories of his parents’ home because when he was a child the Communists killed his family. However, he still possessed some photographs of his maternal grandfather, who had been an observant Jew. Maybe this was why he used every opportunity to visit the Jewish library in Kishinev, even though he thought he was a non-Jew.
When Boris (who pronounces his Hebrew name “Boruch” with a distinct Yiddish accent) turned 68, he discovered that he was a Jew. This happened at the Kishinev Jewish library, when the shluchim struck up a conversation with him. It soon emerged that he is a Jew and that it was time for him to put on tefillin …
Although Boris had never heard of tefillin, he was very proud and pleased to put them on and to recite the Shema for the first time in his life, with the Russian translation.
After his impromptu bar mitzvah, Boris-Baruch received a Chanukah kit and a copy of the Chabad newspaper, “Mayanot Hachaim”, which explained how to light Chanukah candles each night of the festival.
