Miriam Moskovitz & Esther Wilhelm: Two Dramatic Journeys Out Of Ukrainian War Zones

00:00 Speaker 1 Regular listeners to this podcast series have probably by now memorized a line from the introduction to each Lamplighters episode. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. The following episode presents stories told by two Chabad emissaries whose communities are in Ukraine. Please be warned that some might find the following accounts of life in a war zone disturbing. But as you'll soon hear, amid the uncertainty, the peril, and the suffering, there's also an undiminished joy in the Jewish communities of Ukraine and beyond them. I'm Gary Wolak, and this is Lamplighters, stories from Chabad emissaries on the Jewish frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances, and a community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. On January 26th, twenty twenty-two, there was a big Hasidic wedding in Kharkov, a Ukrainian city about twenty miles from Russia's western border.

01:30 Speaker 2 My daughter Bracha, she always wanted to get married in Kharkov.

01:34 Speaker 1 That's Rebbetzin Miriam Moskowitz, a Chabad emissary to Kharkov. For weeks, she, her husband Rabbi Moshe Moskowitz, and their twelve children had been hearing rumors of a Russian invasion. Some questioned whether they should make the wedding in Kharkov, but Bracha insisted that's where she and her intended groom, Mendy Cattan of Kfar Chabad, Israel, wanted to be married.

01:59 Speaker 2 My kids are very, very, very connected to the city. When you do a wedding in your hometown, when you're doing-- when a shliach does a wedding in his city, it's his way of saying that, "You guys are my family. That's who I want to be at my wedding."

02:11 Speaker 1 The Moskowitz family felt that a war with Russia was far-fetched, so they weren't making any special preparations other than renting a venue large enough to accommodate over five hundred wedding guests and hiring famous Israeli singer Simcha Friedman, who just two days before the wedding asked-

02:29 Speaker 2 "Do you really need me? Are you sure? My wife is very nervous." I said, "Listen, the wedding's going on. Nothing has been changed. Everything's all set."

02:37 Speaker 1 Friedman flew in from Israel, and he sang at the wedding in Kharkov.

02:48 Speaker 2 A lot of, like, the Ukrainian song, Hasidic songs, and the Russian songs, and just a lot of a very, very happy dancing. We had Ukrainian Cossacks dancing hopak Cossack at the wedding.

03:01 Speaker 1 Simcha Friedman also got swept up in the joy.

03:05 Speaker 2 We actually had to convince the singer at the end, like it's two in the morning. We, we already wanted to go to sleep. So it was like, it definitely was a lot of simcha, a lot of unity, and a lot of a feeling like despite all odds, we're gonna make this a really, really happy event, that no matter what, our simchas go on, and the, the joy continues.

03:24 Speaker 1 But just one month after the wedding, the din of war was heard in Kharkov.

03:29 Speaker 2 And at five in the morning, that was Thursday morning, twenty-fourth of February, the phone starts ringing. I picked up the phone. It was a man. And I said, "Are you okay?" And he says, "No, I'm not okay. They're bombing Kharkov. Don't you know they're bombing Kharkov?" And then I open the window, and I hear background, in like, like in the far distance, I start hearing, like, this rumbling noise which we, uh, unfortunately started to get used to o-over the next week.

03:54 Speaker 1 The Moskovitzes canceled classes at their Jewish day school, the one they had celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of just the day before. And with bombs and missiles raining down on Kharkov, Rabbi Moshe drove to pick up one of their sons and four grandchildren who lived in a fifth-floor apartment to bring them to the relative safety of their basement.

04:15 Speaker 2 So Thursday, Friday, Shabbat was constant bombings and tanks trying to get into the city. Sunday, when the tanks entered the city, a tank was going in the direction of the synagogue, and a Ukrainian tank blew it up. That was right next to the synagogue.

04:32 Speaker 1 There were other near misses. That same day, the Moskowitzes learned that one of their students, a young man they refer to only as Chaim, was going to enlist in the Ukrainian army at the recruitment office on their street.

04:46 Speaker 2 And my husband looks out the window, and he sees him walking up the street. He says, "Chaim, Chaim, come inside." He comes into my house. My husband gave him a pair of tefillin. It was very, very, very emotional.

04:54 Speaker 1 The next day, the bombardment of Kharkov intensified.

04:59 Speaker 2 And on Tuesday morning, eight in the morning, there was a bomb directly on the big square on the main building over there. And that Chaim, that soldier, he was supposed to be guarding over there at eight o'clock in the morning. But he decided to put on tefillin first in shul.

05:14 Speaker 1 Chaim's life was spared, but the onslaught continued.

05:18 Speaker 2 And then we were, we were sleeping all downstairs with my grandchildren, and five minutes later, we heard an even louder boom. This was something, like, really, really, really close. And all of a sudden, I start getting phone calls. "Are you okay? Are you okay?" And it's like, "Yeah, I guess I'm okay." And it was two doors from our house, a direct missile hit. Tuesday evening at around seven, there was a very, very big explosion next to our school, the same school that we had just a few days before celebrated thirty years. So that school, because of the explosion nearby, the-- all the windows, all the glass, all the doors smashed. We just had just renovations in the summer. All the windows were blown out. And that's when we realized that this is not a simple war, which is just going to be a matter of a few targeted, uh, strikes, but this is something that is going to be touching civilian lives. Kharkiv has one and a half million people. It's a very, very big city with over 25,000 Jews. So once you start closing all the supermarkets, closing all the pharmacies, and you've got people locked up in buildings, old people on the seventh floor without a lift, everybody's cut off and everybody's desperate. I don't know how everybody, the whole Kharkiv, found my cell phone number, so I was getting phone calls, my husband was getting phone calls, the shul was getting phone calls the whole time. We had started a whole operation

06:34 Speaker 2 of help for people in Kharkiv. So we were basically manning the phones and sending these amazing drivers who were ready, even though there's bombing outside, to send hot food, to send medicines to people, and also people were streaming in the whole time to move into the synagogue and live downstairs.

06:49 Speaker 1 But despite the need for the help the Moskowitzes were providing, the constant bombardments and the possibility of even more escalation created a dilemma. Should they stay or should they go?

07:01 Speaker 2 And then we just realized that for the sake of our families, we've got to get my children and my grandchildren out. So the original plan was that my children and grandchildren were just gonna leave with my son, and then my kids told us that they're not leaving without us. So then that was the hard decision, so we basically decided that we are gonna go all temporarily, we are gonna have to leave the city. This is a question of life and death. We have no choice but to leave. We went to the shul with my, my husband, went downstairs to all those people who were there in the shelter, went to the cook, told everyone we're gonna be coming back as soon as we can, made sure that they have everything, and assured them that financially we're gonna be all supporting you, we're just gonna be going for a day.

07:37 Speaker 1 The last thing Rabbi Moskowitz did before leaving was to kiss the curtain covering the ark holding the synagogue's Torah scrolls, and he vowed to return to the people who wanted or had to stay behind. The Moskowitzes left Wednesday morning for Dnipro with members of 10 families, but they quickly realized that thousands there were leaving or planning to evacuate because of fears of an assault on that city. They decided to head west to Moldova. It was a 29-hour drive, and they were delayed for hours at the border before they could leave Ukraine.

08:12 Speaker 2 It was very emotional because it was becoming more final, slowly, that we actually had left. We actually felt like refugees. You know, we're shluchim who have been running a city with everything, and now we have, like, these few suitcases, and we don't know where we're going. And it's the kind of a situation where we're the whole time waiting to open the news and say, "Wow, it's over."

08:34 Speaker 1 But it wasn't. The Moskowitzes spent that Shabbat in Chișinău.

08:38 Speaker 2 And there was, like, about 100 people there, refugees that, who were also there together in this synagogue in Chișinău.

08:44 Speaker 1 After Shabbat, the Moskowitzes made the arduous drive through the mountains to the Romanian border, where there was another long wait before they were admitted.

08:53 Speaker 2 And Sunday morning, we went on evacuation flight to Israel.

08:56 Speaker 1 On the 6th of March, the Moskowitzes made it to Israel with 10 families and their children. How were you feeling at that point?

09:06 Speaker 2 I wouldn't even say it was a mixed emotions. It was tragic emotions. Our whole mission is to be there for our community, so leaving and having to leave was like ripping apart all of what we are.

09:18 Speaker 1 It's been that way for other Chabad emissaries in Ukraine as well, like Esther Wilhelm from Zhytomyr. She and her husband, Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm, run several Jewish institutions and community services in and around Zhytomyr. Early on the morning of February 24th, she was waiting at the airport for a flight to Belgium, where she had planned to observe the shloshim, the one-month anniversary of the passing of her father.

09:45 Speaker 3 Boarding time was 5:10 AM, and then all of a sudden, at 10 to 5, they said, "All flights are canceled, and we're evacuating the terminal." And I caught a ride back to Zhytomyr without my suitcase.

10:01 Speaker 1 By the time she had returned, her husband had already begun to plan for the evacuation of the Olumim children's home, which cares for orphans and abandoned, destitute, and abused children.

10:13 Speaker 3 The children's home is not far from a, uh, military base, so the kids woke up at 5:00 AM hearing the explosions. And my husband said, "The first thing, we're getting out the children's home." So war broke out at 5:00 AM. At 12 o'clock noon, they were in buses. We just got anyone out, whoever was ready to, uh, get on the bus. We just took out anyone who could, who was ready to go.

10:40 Speaker 1 Rabbi Wilhelm sent dozens of children from the Olumim home, along with three other families of Chabad emissaries, including Director Rebbetzin Malkie Buket. After a 15-hour drive over dangerous roads and through military checkpoints, they arrived in Chernivtsi, a city in western Ukraine. There they had a brief respite from the hectic journey, thanks to the local Chabad emissaries.

11:04 Speaker 3 But then what happened was the sirens started going off there, and they spent a night there in the, uh, bomb shelter, and that was pretty traumatic for them.

11:15 Speaker 1 Esther Wilhelm joined them three days later with a busload of about 40 more children. Those who cared for them witnessed orphaned and abandoned children being torn from their homes again.

11:27 Speaker 3 And then my husband said, "Okay, that's it. Tomorrow you're crossing the border into Romania."

11:32 Speaker 1 So it was back to the buses. The evacuees headed to the Romanian border, but their vehicles were not allowed to cross. All of the children had to do that on foot. They found a hotel and rested as Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm searched for ways to get all of them into Israel. It was complicated, and it took time, but they all made it.

11:54 Speaker 3 And then from there we flew to Israel.

11:57 Speaker 1 Wilhelm and 90 of the children were met at Ben Gurion Airport by Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Esther Wilhelm says that when she and her husband moved to Zhytomyr 27 years ago, people would ask them...

12:11 Speaker 3 How long are you going for? And my husband's answer always was, "When the last Jew leaves Zhytomyr, I'll be the one to turn off the lights." And my husband had a very hard time leaving because just the fact that he was there was giving a lot of support to the people that were there, and there were people who took it very hard once he left.

12:35 Speaker 1 The Wilhelms are now living temporarily in Neve Harim, an Israeli agricultural settlement between Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh with 150 Ukrainians from the children's home and from all over their Zhytomyr community. More arrive almost every day.

12:52 Speaker 3 So our daily schedule here is trying to make sure that they are constructively occupied, and, uh, so it's not like we're really getting anyone settled in and, uh, enrolling them into, uh, schools or anything like that. We're trying to build a schedule where they're having, uh, educational courses, recreational courses, trips, whatever we can do to, uh, occupy them constructively until we see how things play out and what happens.

13:22 Speaker 1 The Wilhelms are also helping those who want to leave relocate. They're still in contact with and send food shipments to those who have stayed behind in Zhytomyr. Esther Wilhelm stays in touch with as many of them as she can and offers her moral support.

13:38 Speaker 3 Through, uh, WhatsApp messages, video messages in Russian occasionally, give a weekly women's class on Zoom, which I've continued to give, but, uh, sometimes I've had women from Zhytomyr, and sometimes I haven't because they happen to have been hiding in the bomb shelters at the time of the class, which is something that I can't really predict beforehand.

14:06 Speaker 1 There's something the Wilhelms want people to know, that members of their community who left Ukraine did so because of the war, not, as at least one news article claimed, because of antisemitism.

14:20 Speaker 3 The article which I read and which I saw was posted in many different languages. It said in English, in Hebrew, in French. That article was completely fake because it was talking about us and our children's home and the, uh, workers at our children's home, but really since war broke out, we've only had help and support from the Ukrainian people. Somebody made it up, and I don't know where that came from.

14:44 Speaker 1 Like the Wilhelms, Rebbetzin Miriam Moskowitz is also in Israel now with her family and members of their Kharkov community. She says it's been a big adjustment.

14:54 Speaker 2 It was a little bit of a, a daze. Where are we? What are we doing? What happens now? My whole 32 years of life in Kharkov is in three suitcases.

15:02 Speaker 1 But also like the Wilhelms, Moskowitz and her family are doing everything they can to care for members of their community who've joined them in Israel, are leaving Ukraine, or have stayed behind. Last week, as Jews all over the world planned to celebrate Purim and hear the story of how the Jews prevailed over a genocidal tyrant, Miriam Moskowitz wondered how they were going to make Purim for people back home in Kharkov.

15:29 Speaker 2 How are we gonna do Purim now? How are we gonna do happiness now when I'm dealing with phone calls about somebody who has no food, when we're dealing with people who were killed in Kharkov, and we're trying to find a way to bury them, and then we have to think about Purim? But that's how Jewish life works always. We bury, and we do weddings. We have those ups and downs.

15:49 Speaker 1 Moskowitz had come up with a theme she wanted for this year's Purim party that was planned for Kharkov, Purim in Israel. She chuckles wistfully that that's the way it worked out in the end. But she helped plan a big celebration in Kfar Chabad for her Ukrainian community there. The event drew about 300 people.

16:10 Speaker 2 And it was like some of them had just come to Israel, and it was so emotional. They've been ripped from their homes and ripped from the stability, and then seeing us there was like they're holding on to something that was still, you know, a, a memory and a, and a connection to their home. So there was a lot of crying and singing and dancing, and that was Purim in Israel for the Kharkov people. And the night before, we actually did a Zoom for all the people in Kharkov. Those are the people sleeping downstairs in the synagogue, the women from my community who decided that no matter what they wanna stay.

16:40 Speaker 1 Fulfilling the mitzvah of hearing the Megillah read twice during Purim cannot be done online. That must be done in person, so Moskowitz looked for any way she could to inspire her people back home.

16:52 Speaker 2 We told them to do mishloach manot, send it to the person who's next to you in your house. Put some tzedakah on the side. Two hours later, I get a WhatsApp picture of hamantaschen. One of the ladies made hamantaschen over there, and she says, "Hi, Miriam. I'm sending you my hamantaschen with hope because last year when we made the hamantaschen together with you, we had music in the background. Now I had artillery fire in the background, but I'm sure in the end there will only be happiness and victory." This is the power of the Jewish faith, no matter what.

17:24 Speaker 1 With Purim now behind them, the Moskowitzes are looking for any way they can to get shmura matzah into Kharkov before Passover. As I wrap up my conversations with Miriam Moskowitz and Esther Wilhelm, it occurs to me that although circumstances have drastically changed for each of them over the last few weeks, their missions remain essentially the same. Moskowitz and Wilhelm agree.

17:53 Speaker 2 The mission is the same. I be honest, it's not the way I want it to be. I prefer the more simple kind of mission where I'm living in my city. I'm running things the way I feel that, you know, I can do the best job.

18:07 Speaker 3 The circumstances have taken our shlichas and the test of our shlichas to places where we never imagined it would be, but we're very thankful for the fact that our shlichas is continuing, that we still have- community here with us, and that we're living with the shlichus of the moment.

18:28 Speaker 1 I ask Wilhelm and Moskowitz what they need in order to continue to serve their communities.

18:34 Speaker 3 We're definitely going to need funds because whatever happens with these people we have here, and some of them might end up making Aliyah, and some of them will still be waiting things out and s- to see how things develop. And we have all these kids who are totally our responsibility because their parents are back there. So somehow we're going to have to get everyone settled no matter what happens. And we're going to have to help all these people rebuild their lives wherever it's gonna be, and that's going to need a lot of financial resources.

19:08 Speaker 2 You know, financial help is definitely necessary for all the work, but I think the emphasis should be on doing good. I have seen in the last month so much darkness, so much suffering, so much pain, and so much senseless destruction that I couldn't even believe this is something that could be happening in our century. At the same time, we ourselves have seen such a hug from the Jewish people, how much people wanna do, how much people wanna care, people who tell me, "I started lighting candles, and I never did before. I started adding a prayer." And it just shows that the world is a much better place than it seems like. And the Lubavitcher Rebbe always said that your good deed could be the last thing that's gonna change the balance of the scales and make the world a better place.

19:52 Speaker 3 What the Rebbe always said is that we have to increase in goodness and kindness, and I think that's what each and every one of us has to do is to think about going out of our comfort zone and doing something which can add to the, uh, goodness and kindness around us.

20:09 Speaker 1 Esther Wilhelm, Miriam Moskowitz, their families, and their communities in Israel, back home in Ukraine, or on the move from one place to another, want nothing more than a peaceful end to the war and for everyone to return home as soon as possible. But Moskowitz, still in Israel, says there's one thing that would be even better.

20:31 Speaker 2 That the redemption should come, Mashiach should come, and everyone should come over here as fast as possible. That would be the best option.

20:37 Speaker 1 To help Chabad's relief efforts in Ukraine and to assist with the relocation of refugees, please go to lubavitch.com/ukraine. There you can earmark your donation in different ways, including to assist the alumem children's home in Zhytomyr and Chabad of Kharkov. I'm Gary Wolik. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com. And if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast@L-U-B-A-V-I-T-C-H.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. This is a Lubavitch International podcast.