Kherson Votes Chabad Rabbi Among Most Influential

In the July 28 edition of News of Kherson, the newspaper’s readers selected the city’s Chabad representative Rabbi Yosef Wolff as the fifth most influential person in the region.

“Rabbi Wolff is very intelligent, understanding, strong and self-assured,” according to the News of Kherson article.

News of Kherson readers voted for Rabbi Wolff, Kherson’s chief rabbi, from among a list of ten contenders. Earning the other top spots were a security minister, a business mogul who ran for mayor, and a member of the Ukrainian parliament.

News of Kherson reader Vitaly “Aryeh” Bromstein was not surprised by the survey results.

“Rabbi Wolff is someone who came to us from outside the country to make it a better place to live. When Rabbi Wolff gives a speech on the radio or appears on TV, people listen,” he said. Bromstein found out about circumcision and consented to it eleven years ago, at age 50, because of Rabbi Wolff.

Since his arrival in 1993, Rabbi Wolff has helped the community open a Jewish kindergarten, day school, high school, kosher food store, and mikvah. The schools have a combined enrollment of 135 students. Last year he started a foster family program for five boys. In September, a girls division will open. A senior care center is on the drawing board.

Social welfare needs aside, the most pressing problem for Kherson’s 12,000 Jews is rampant assimilation. The rabbi sees Jewish education as the antidote to the disappearance of Jews from a city that was the birthplace of Jewish communist leader Leon Trotsky and Israel’s second prime minister Moshe Sharrett. Being ranked as one of Kherson’s most influential people may help too, Rabbi Wolff said.

“It may bring more people to the synagogue. People like a winner.”