"Here, I walk around wearing kipa and tsitsit. I would not dare to do this In Brussels," – Rabbi Wolf on anti-Semitism in Ukraine
The chief rabbi of the Jewish community "Chabad" in Odessa, Abraham Wolf said it in an interview with "Krayina" magazine, Gazeta.ua reports.
"It would be stupid to claim there is no anti-Semitism. It is present at a grassroots level. Sometimes it can occur on the street, between neighbors. Sometimes I feel it. I don't pay much attention. There is no state anti-Semitism here. On the contrary, there is support. This is important.
Second, if you compare anti-Semitism in Ukraine and Europe, you'll see we live in Paradise. I walk down the street wearing kipa, tsitsit and talit in my coat. It's so scary to appear like this in Brussels. It's the same in some parts of Paris."
Ukraine allows everyone to live by their own religious rules, as long as it does not contradict state law, says Rabbi Wolf:
"t is not so easy to open national schools in every country. And here there is a law in place regulating this. I have many friends who live in a world where this is impossible.
Ukraine is open. Where else has the president make Jewish and Muslim holidays the national ones?"
"Rabbis of the USA, Canada, Australia, and Europe envy the freedom, opportunities, and success of their Ukrainian colleagues with white envy. Almost no one has their own schools, so many believers are in synagogues, and there are many synagogues in general. Ukraine gives an example. We meet once a year. Thousands of Chabad rabbis are going to the United States. This year it was in zoom. I don't remember over the past 30 years that Ukraine has not been one of the main topics: how we work, how to learn from our experience, how to achieve the same success."
