![russian style hat russian style bat russian style hat russian style bat](https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/randall-texas-bentley.jpg)
He laughed and mimicked praying and bowing. Everybody here thinks that Jewish tradition is just…” “This is the only way if I want to bring young people who didn’t grow up with Judaism back,” he added. “I have Telegram and Instagram accounts too - nobody is doing this in Britain, but there are lots of Russian-speaking rabbis working on these platforms.” “I really love TikTok,” he said with a giggle. He has also carved out a space for himself in another non-synagogue space: on TikTok, garnering over 40,000 followers by posting videos about Jewish life and religious practice set to the latest viral music trends. It could be a sort of networking place, with co-working and a little Jewish flavor, managed by me.” Russians - all of them - don’t want to be Russians when they are abroad. “Nobody would want to go to a Russian synagogue. “I don’t think I need a synagogue,” he said. He had intended to move to London in the summer to become a rabbi for the large but often forgotten Russian-speaking Jewish community, estimated at over 10,000, in Britain. Izakson has a drive to connect to young Jews ambivalent about religion and to Russian-speaking Jews in Western Europe - two groups that often intersect.
![russian style hat russian style bat russian style hat russian style bat](https://www.furhatworld.com/images_wm/large/Rabbit_Full_Fur_Russian_Ushanka_Hat_Brown_441.jpg)
Few want to stay for long: According to Moldovan authorities, fewer than 100,000 are still in the country. Moldova, which is sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine and is one of Europe’s poorest countries, has so far welcomed over 400,000 Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion. We need to move them quickly because we don’t know how many more refugees will come,” he added. “We are then trying to move people at the first possible opportunity onto where they want to go, whether that is Germany, Israel, or Romania. “We are trying to create the most normal place possible,” Izakson said as a toddler ran around telling people about his stuffed toy Orangutan. Language barriers for many of the refugees remain steep as they spread out throughout Europe some countries are focusing on intensive language training for new arrivals. Izakson chats with a relief worker at a sports hall in downtown Chisinau, Moldova. In neighboring Romania, for example, where many move on to, few people speak Russian.Īround Izakson, a half-dozen Israelis deployed to organize refugee relief efforts wandered around - including Zaza, a “medical clown,” who received disgruntled stares from some older Ukrainians who figured out she was not a medical doctor. But while the official language of Moldova is Romanian (despite a decades-long debate over whether it should be called Moldovan), many Moldovans speak Russian, which has been useful for the Jewish refugees, especially those from Odessa, who often speak Russian too. Very few Ukrainian Jews speak Hebrew, and many have found it hard to communicate with the many Israeli or American Jewish volunteers who have little knowledge of Ukraine and have flooded into Moldova to offer assistance. Formerly a rabbi in Vitebsk in northern Belarus and Vilnius in Lithuania, he is helping oversee local relief efforts run by the Jewish Community of Moldova, an Orthodox organization. Izakson, an Orthodox rabbi who was born into a secular family in eastern Belarus and lived for years in Moscow, has a clear connection with the Jews who have traveled to Moldova. “Many of the smallest ones are excited because they think they are going on holiday,” Izakson said with a sad smile. Another toddler pushed himself past Izakson in a colorful plastic car. Izakson, wearing a black hat, a suit and a well-groomed beard, wise-cracked in Belarussian-accented Russian and giggled with some of the over-excited children. A gaggle of children played in the corner, exuding a sense of calm in a room dotted with exercise mats and wooden pallets that have been repurposed as beds.
![russian style hat russian style bat russian style hat russian style bat](https://www.furhatworld.com/images_wm/large/Mouton_Sheepskin_Russian_Cossack_Hat_Brown_1487.jpg)
MacBook under his arm and sporting the latest AirPods, Rabbi Shimshon Izakson looked as if - with a change of outfit - he could have just stepped out of a hipster cafe in a trendy neighborhood of Moscow or Bucharest.īut he was in a Jewish center’s sports hall in downtown Chisinau, helping Jewish refugees who had just arrived in Moldova from Nikolayev, a strategic port city on the road between Crimea and Odessa that has come under repeated missile attack since Russian troops invaded Ukraine on Feb.