RESURRECTING JEWISH CHERKASSY

Young people who only recently got involved in Jewish life immerse in a mikva with freezing water * A phone conversation in which the shliach’s offer is turned down ends with a successful peula * The inspiring generosity of a Jew from Williamsburg * Approval from the city comes just after the construction of the mikva begins * A special dream with the Rebbe and the Rebbe Rayatz * These are only some of the stories that the shliach, Rabbi Dov Axelrod of Cherkassy, Ukraine has to share!

R’ Dov Axelrod relates:

When we first started out on shlichus, my wife and I lived in Tashkent. We had a yeshiva where young baalei t’shuva learned. Some of them had gentile fathers. At that time, there was no mikva in Tashkent and the only choice was to immerse in the fountain of freezing water out in the yard. They did it! Even those who had just gotten involved in Judaism and did not know much. Today, some of them are wearing sirtuks and living in Eretz Yisroel. Sometimes, you have to jump into the water and that takes away the “makif” of the klipos.

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One day, the chief rabbi of Russia, R’ Berel Lazar and Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetzky, rabbi of Dnepropetrovsk offered us a shlichus in Cherkassy, the city where the tzaddik, R’ Yaakov Yisroel, son-in-law of the Mitteler Rebbe, is buried. I accepted the offer.

Not being able to find an apartment in Cherkassy, which was buried under five meters of snow, we lived in Kiev for the first month and operated from there. A month later we found an apartment that needed a lot of renovating, but we moved there right away and fixed it up while we lived there. That is how the Chabad house of Cherkassy opened.

Cherkassy is a district capitol in the Ukraine. It is the size of Eretz Yisroel. It has 300,000 people out of which about 10,000 are Jews, many of whom are not registered as such. When we first met, the heads of the community told me that there are only 800 Jews in Cherkassy, but by now we send mail about Judaism to about 2000 Jews who are in our data base. We are constantly discovering more Jews.

In Cherkassy there are also many people who made aliya and came back. That is why there is a large group of Hebrew speaking people here. This is a phenomenon you will find all over the CIS. Lev Leviev the philanthropist helps us by giving money to the Chabad school, Ohr Avner that we opened. The Rohr Fund also supports us and there are additional important donors.

THE EFFECT OF ONE CONVERSATION

When we first came to Cherkassy, I met with the head of the community and I told him about my plans. I told him that we wanted to open a Jewish school. He claimed there are no Jewish children in Cherkassy.

Well, over one hundred Jewish children have attended our school to date. Most of them are now in Jewish schools. The head of the community is one of the main helpers of the preschool and elementary school.

Here is one story about the school. When we opened it nine years ago, I heard that in Uman, a city in our district, there are some Jewish families with children. I called one of them with a son going into first grade and told his mother that we are new shluchim of the Rebbe to Cherkassy and I asked her to send her son to our school’s dormitory. She politely refused.

About five years went by and her son was in fifth grade. She called and asked me whether our school is still open. It turned out that she had married a gentile and they did not want the boy to stay with them. That is how Dennis came to our house before Chanuka of that year. He knew nothing about Judaism. He lived with us for half a year, from Chanuka until the summer, was accepted into the school, and began receiving a proper Jewish and Chassidish education.

In the summer we sent him to a learning program in Kfar Chabad and he became even more involved in Jewish life. When he returned, he went to learn in Zhitomir where he underwent a bris mila. In the meantime, his cousin from Uman, his mother’s nephew, remembered him and called him. Both of them went to learn in the Chabad school in Charson.

Today, both boys are Lubavitchers. It all started with a phone call that I made to the family in the attempt to recruit another Jewish boy to our school.

MIRACULOUS MIKVA IN CHERKASSY

The Rebbe does not want his shluchim to be in a place without a mikva, which is why I really wanted to build a mikva in Cherkassy. I knew that if we linked the building of a mikva with the plans to build a shul, it would take a long time. I decided to begin building a mikva right away in the hopes of continuing from there.

I took a loan from a bank and bought land for the mikva. Two years later I finished paying the mortgage and all that was left to do was to get money for the actual construction.

At the time, there was a man who worked for me who went to Monroe, a Satmar Chassidic enclave in New York, in order to fundraise for the mikva. One day, I got a phone call from a Satmar Chassid who said he had heard that I wanted to build a mikva in Cherkassy and he wanted to help me find a donor. I did research and found out that he was serious. A week before the Kinus HaShluchim I went around with him in an attempt to find a donor.

We went to a Jew in Williamsburg to whom the subject of building mikvaos around the world is close to his heart. He was very surprised to hear that I live in Cherkassy and on the spot he told me that he would make a donation to build the mikva!

“How much do you need?” he asked me.

“$80,000,” I said.

A short while later I left his house with a check for $25,000 as an advance. I wanted to start building but there was one small technical problem. According to the law, in addition to owning the property, we had to transfer the title to our name. We spent a long time trying to make the transfer, but for some reason it dragged out and the person who worked on our behalf at the government office was unsuccessful. We did not want to put money into land that was still not officially ours, but in the end I decided that I could not wait any longer and would start construction in the hopes that we would soon get the permits.

On 12 Tammuz 5768 we poured the foundation for the mikva. A day later, the man from the government office called me and announced that the long awaited approval had been received.

The cost of the construction ended up being a quarter of a million dollars, with the donor from Williamsburg footing most of the bill, together with the Merkaz Rabbanei Europe and other significant donors. That is how we ended up with a Chabad mikva which is one of the nicest in Europe.

A DREAM OF THE REBBE AND THE REBBE RAYATZ

Another story connected to the mikva:

The construction of the mikva took place in the winter, but we don’t have any rain in the winter, just snow. You can put snow in the reservoir on a day when the temperature is ten degrees below zero, when the snow isn’t watery but is ice, and that way, there is no problem with using water that is “drawn.” In order to fill the reservoir, you need a large quantity of snow because snow is full of air. In addition, there are other details that make the job particularly difficult and complicated.

I was in touch with a rav who is expert in these things, but the fact that he wasn’t there with me made me nervous. I was very tense the night before we were going to carry out the work. That night, I dreamt that the Rebbe and the Rebbe Rayatz came to me. The Rebbe Rayatz wore a shtraimel and the Rebbe looked relatively young. They looked at me with glowing faces and the Rebbe asked me, “What do you need?”

I said, “We need you!”

The Rebbe turned red and he looked down. I thought in my dream that the Rebbe did not feel comfortable hearing me say that since he was standing near the Rebbe Rayatz.

The next day, I woke up in a different frame of mind. I remembered the dream and felt that the Rebbe and the Rebbe Rayatz, who was a grandson of the Cherkasser, had come to encourage me about the mikva. In the end, all was fine.

Once the mikva opened, I felt that the gates of gashmius and ruchnius opened up for us. Many local youth suddenly began getting interested in Judaism, to put on t’fillin, to wear tzitzis, and agreed to have a bris. I felt that the mikva had broken the klipos. Even our material situation improved. It has had a spiritual effect on the entire city.

WHEN BRESLOV DID “MIVTZAIM”

Not many know but in Uman there is a local Jewish community which is comprised mostly of older people. They are not at all connected to the area of Rabbi Nachman’s grave and the huge pilgrimage there on Rosh Hashanah.

In previous years we would bring bachurim every year who would help the k’hilla there on Yomim Tovim, blow the shofar, daven for the amud, etc. One year, it wasn’t arranged and I was stuck without bachurim. I traveled to Uman two days before Rosh Hashanah and began looking for someone who would agree to walk twenty minutes on Rosh Hashanah in order to blow the shofar for the local community.

Whoever I met and tried to recruit did not understand what I was talking about. After all, they had come to Uman to daven at the grave of Rabbi Nachman so why would they go somewhere else? My explanation that their “tikkun” this year would be in helping other Jews was met with surprise: What? There are Jews who live in Uman?

I finally found some fellows who had served in the Sayeret unit in the army, and they agreed. I walked them from the gravesite until the shul of the k’hilla and back and arranged that at twelve noon on Rosh Hashanah they would go there and blow the shofar.

After Yom Tov, I called one of the local Jews to hear how it was and he said that eight Breslovers had come and did Chabad mivtzaim. They danced, blew the shofar and it was terrific. That is how the Rebbe works through Breslover Chassidim. Since then, this is the third year in a row that they come in the name of Chabad and do the Rebbe’s mivtzaim with the local community.

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R’ Axelrod concludes:

We know that our success is not due to our personal talents. It comes from the Rebbe lifting us up and letting us see that everything is with his kochos and brachos. It happens that we think we will be successful with something and it doesn’t work out. The opposite also happens, that there are things that seem impossible and suddenly, it works out.

All the outreach in Russia is a sign of the Geula. When you work in Russia and see three generations that did not know what Judaism is and suddenly, the Jewish neshama wakes up in a grandson or great-grandson, you are literally seeing resurrection of the dead.

May we immediately merit the end of galus with the full hisgalus of the Rebbe Melech HaMoshiach!