Despite War, Our Kyiv Community Inaugurated a Stunning Mikvah
by Devorah Levenharts – chabad.org
This is what a dream come true looks like … a dream decades in the making.
Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, has been home to a significant Jewish presence for hundreds of years. But the “Left Bank,” across the Dnipro River from the historic center, was only developed in the latter half of the 20th century, during the Communist era.
This means that it has never had a mikvah of its own.
So when my husband and I founded our community here, we knew we needed to build a mikvah for the thousands of Jewish families who live here.
In time, we built a community campus that includes a school, preschool, day-care center, synagogue and more.
It was time to start working on the mikvah.
The project kicked off four years ago. We raised funds, and many members of the community collected penny after penny to participate in its construction.
By the beginning of 2022, the facility was already in the advanced stages of construction.
And then, everything changed.
On Thursday, February 24, early in the morning, the war broke out.
Three days later, with the seemingly endless Russian convoy on the outskirts of the city, we had no choice but to leave.
It was a very difficult moment. Would we ever see our home and our community again? Would it even exist in a few weeks?
We were leaving the place we’d invested our entire lives into for the last 25 years,
not knowing if we would ever be able to return.
We had to wrap the Torah scrolls and move them to a safer place, without knowing what the future held.
I thought about our precious mikvah, built with blood, sweat, and so much effort, from scraps collected by the community members, and it was still not ready!
I thought to myself, “Can it be that our vision will remain unrealized, without a single Jewish family benefiting from its purifying waters? It’s just not possible!”
And this thought gave me comfort.
Of course, we will return!
The confidence that we would return, finish the mikvah, and celebrate its inauguration gave me the strength to face what awaited us as we and our community relocated to Israel.
With G‑d’s help, we returned a few months later and construction continued.
That’s not to say it was easy—far from it!
The designers were sheltering in Germany, the painter in Switzerland, and many construction workers had been drafted into the army, so things took longer than expected.
And as the mikvah took shape, so did our community. Some people have left for good, but others have come back. And many people from the east, cities such as Kharkiv and Donetsk, have joined us here in Kyiv.
Finally, this week, the moment we’ve been waiting for arrived!
We were privileged to inaugurate the mikvah with 150 of our women in attendance. For the first time in history, the Left Bank has a mikvah of our own.
Dozens of Jewish women got to see a mikvah with their own eyes for the first time, and they were awed by its elegance and beauty.
Some women in our community had heard of mikvah but never gave it serious thought since it would entail driving to the center of Kyiv. And to walk on Shabbat was out of the question because halachah does not even allow one to walk over the bridge from one side of the river to the other.
And for many other women, this was the first time they’d ever heard of this mitzvah, which may not have been practiced in their families for generations.
Thank G‑d, we have several Jewish weddings on the horizon, and these couples plan to make our new mikvah the cornerstone of their marriage.
Thank you to our dear community and supporters who stuck with us through thick and thin, thank you to our dear Rebbe, whose vision and inspiration brought us to Kyiv, and thank you to G‑d, who orchestrates every movement we make every day of our lives.
