Golders Green Synagogue raises over £10k for twin Ukrainian Jewish community
Dunstan Road, is paired with the steel town of Zaporozhye, home to around 10,000 Jews.
Jenni Frazer is a freelance journalist
Golders Green Synagogue has raised over £10,000 for a Ukrainian Jewish community with which it was twinned under a United Synagogue scheme more than 30 years ago.
The shul, known as Dunstan Road, is paired with the steel town of Zaporozhye, which is now on the front line after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February.
Mike Posen, co-ordinator of the twinning scheme, explained that it was agreed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. “We were a bit late so we didn’t get to twin with places such as Moscow, or Kyiv,” he said.
Over the years delegations have visited Zaporozhye and hosted members of its community.
Posen, who has visited five times and led some of the groups, said that around 10,000 Jews from Zaporozhye emigrated to Israel in the early 1990s.
Others moved to Germany, he said, but this has still left a Jewish community of between 8,000-10,000.
The local Jews are now looked after by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and a charismatic rabbi, Nochum Ehrentreu, who has been in the city for 25 years.
Golders Green has previously funded seder nights in Zaporozhye and sent Pesach supplies to the community.
“Now we are focused on evacuation,” said Posen, adding that “hundreds” of people in Zaporozhye had “suddenly discovered that they are Jewish and have asked for help to leave the city”.
Last week Rabbi Ehrentreu, a cousin of Britain’s Dayan Ehrentreu, led a group of 98 people out of Zaporozhye to safety. Sixty arrived in Israel and the rest went to Germany.
Posen, who speaks to the rabbi every day, said that Rabbi Ehrentreu, who has strong network connections with the city authorities, is now directing future aid and evacuation operations from Israel.
“Two weeks before the invasion Rabbi Ehrentreu warned us that funds were going to be needed”, Posen said.
He made an appeal to the Dunstan Road community, which raised an immediate £10,000, which was funneled through World Jewish Relief to help evacuation.
And former members of Golders Green, now living in Israel, are working with Rabbi Ehrentreu in order to keep the evacuated Zaporozhye community together.
Posen admitted that he had thought the twinning arrangement would cease over the years and that the Ukraine community would no longer need Dunstan Road’s support. Instead, the long-standing connection between the two communities has proved a vital link.
Hampstead Garden Suburb Synagogue is not part of the United Synagogue twinning scheme but says that it has “always been privileged to help the Jewish community of Lviv”.
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