Each Purim, the Jewish community of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, takes over the municipal Big Top for a gala performance by traditional circus acts. The event is enhanced by some of the Megillah's ancient Persian imagery and storytelling.
That, though, was in peacetime.
When Purim begins on Monday evening, not many people will venture out into the completely dark and often dangerous streets — most incoming shells are lobbed in by the Russians at night.
But on Tuesday morning, hundreds of members of the much-diminished Jewish community are expected to pour into the synagogue — the first in the former Soviet Union to reopen in 1990 by permission of the reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
“The plan for this Purim is to revive the circus theme. But instead of us going to the circus, the circus is coming to us,” enthuses Rebbetzin Miriam Moskovitz.
Big gatherings are banned in the city because of the danger of a direct hit killing or injuring large numbers of people. But apparently religious locations are able to get special permission for people to attend.
Jugglers, acrobats and tightrope walkers will entertain, along with singing by around 30 Jewish children who have remained in Kharkiv.
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Rabbi Moskovitz helps a congregant with his tefillin
They are the remnant of more than 400 children who were attending the local Jewish school just over a year ago, among a thriving community of 25,000.
Attired in clown outfit complete with red nose, Rabbi Moshe Moskovitz will intone a theatrical Megillah reading — which, he says, has added relevance this year. As it’s a story about a political leader who plots to wipe out a whole nation, there’s little doubt who the circus-goers will be thinking of when Haman’s name is mentioned.
“Even though we do get intermittent incoming missiles from time to time,” Rebbetzin Moskovitz told the JC, “we’re determined to make this Purim as joyous as possible.”
She hopes the current absence of missile attacks on the city will encourage a big turn-out -- and include many Jews who have lost contact during the past year.
Last Purim, civilians were hunkered down in basements or bomb shelters. Russian forces had swept across the nearby border weeks before, hours after President Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation”.
The hostilities were a shock felt all the more by the Jews of Kharkiv, who would often visit or trade with the nearest Russian city, Belgorod, less than an hour’s drive across the frontier. One of the Moskovitzes’ sons had been studying at a yeshivah in Moscow, only (pre-war) an hour’s flight away.
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A Jewish family’s damaged flat (Photo: Paul Cainer)
The invaders entered the city within a few days. A Russian jeep, which had apparently lost its way, was set ablaze near the shul. Rabbi Moskovitz and his wife became famous worldwide, as they were Zoomed live from their sandbagged basement.
During the JC’s visit to Kharkiv we saw a charred school building where a group of officers in SUVs, apparently expecting local support and welcoming flowers, had taken up position. They were wiped out when the building was bombarded by Ukrainian forces.
As the Russian troops pulled back, shelling of the city intensified. The rabbinic couple took the painful decision to move as many Jews out in buses through the only exit from the city.
The rabbi travelled back and forth despite the constant attacks. Conditions began to improve mid-year and the shelling diminished. By Jewish New Year the whole Moskovitz family was back.
This year’s revival of Purim festivities, though, cannot mask the severe blows that the war has inflicted, physically and psychologically, on Jewish communities here and around Ukraine.
On January 30, a building housing three community members’ apartments was struck by Russian artillery. The JC accompanied the rabbinical couple to visit 73-year-old Yaakov Yurovsky, who was at home when a shell struck the roof. Another landed in the courtyard.
“The floor seemed to jump up and the ceiling swayed around but the building didn’t get destroyed,” says Mr Yurovsky, a retired music teacher, in Russian, the dominant language in this part of Ukraine.
As he is shown how to put on tefillin he repeats after the rabbi, word by word, the relevant bracha and the first six words of the Shema.
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A swing set sits near a destroyed building in a section of Kharkiv that was heavily damaged by the Russians on January 24, 2023 in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Nearly one year after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded neighbouring Ukraine, both countries are engaged in a fierce battle for control of areas throughout eastern and southern Ukraine (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The rebbetzin has bought freshly baked bread and some provisions, along with a cardboard cut-out picture of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Yaakov shows us a recently erected plastic-encased mezuzah on his front door. Its presence, he says, protected his apartment from collapse.
“I’m getting requests for tefillin from frontline Jewish soldiers, too,” the rabbi informs me. “And mezuzahs are going up on community doors all over. Even non-Jews have asked their neighbours how to get one. I’ve never seen anything like it in our 33 years here.”
The yeshivah and school remain closed, though. The rabbi says: “I’m sure the children will be back here again, with God’s help.”
Some Jews have found ways to adapt to what they hope is a temporary though massive setback. A high-tech logistics platform owner has retained his 80 staff by letting them operate remotely via social media and internet from cities outside Kharkiv. A grain exporter still sends wheat and barley to Poland.
But the damage to the community’s finances overall has been considerable. Its wealthiest benefactor owns a huge street market that lies in ruins.
Asked how he saw the future, Rabbi Moskovitz responded with a joke: “I feeI we can now take literally the prayer the rabbi is asked to recommend in Fiddler on the Roof: ‘God keep the Czar — far away from us!’”
We know who he means.
