Chanukah Celebrated in Kharkov Like Never Before

The lights of Chanukah filled the streets and homes of Kharkov, Ukraine, this year, with the local Chabad Shluchim spearheading a full range of new programs for all ages.

A Chanukah Quest got students of the Stars program eating doughnuts in the zoo, giving out menorahs to Jews in the street and making menorahs out of snow. The Men’s Kollel joined in the fun and tried their luck at making Latkes. The kollel students went to over one hundred homes to share the light of Chanukah with others. The Women’s Kollel enjoyed an evening of Chanukah music and fun.

Large menorahs were lit on the city’s main thoroughfares, Pushkinskaya and Sumskaya boulevards, in department stores and in the streets, and car menorah parades lit up the way to make a kiddush Hashem throughout the city.

The Or Avner School and kindergarten entertained hundreds of people in the city’s main synagogue, as the children showed their parents how the darkness of Communism has been pushed away by the light of Yiddishkeit that is burning brightly in all of them.