Joined by regional chief rabbis from throughout central Ukraine, Jewish residents of Krivoy Rog celebrated two milestones this month when they laid the foundation stone for a future kindergarten and sports complex, and commenced writing a new Torah scroll to be used at a nearby synagogue.
Central Ukraine City Celebrates Jewish Milestones
Joined by regional chief rabbis from throughout central Ukraine, Jewish residents of Krivoy Rog celebrated two milestones this month when they laid the foundation stone for a future kindergarten and sports complex, and commenced writing a new Torah scroll to be used at a nearby synagogue.
Held at the Ohr Avner Chabad Day School, the ceremonies included students of the city’s STARS Jewish youth program, community leaders and Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbis Shmuel Kaminetsky, chief rabbi of Dnepropetrovsk; Sholom Gotlieb, chief rabbi of Nikolaev; and Shlomo Solomon, chief rabbi of Kremenchung.
Rabbi Liron Edery, chief rabbi of Krivoy Rog, presided over the festivities, emphasizing in a speech each event’s significance for continued Jewish life in the city. It was a theme echoed by Kaminetsky.
“After Mr. Vyacheslav Kapustin announced that he would donate a Torah scroll to the Krivoy Rog community when the new synagogue opened, the Jewish community responded by making a commitment to write a Torah scroll, as well,” he noted. “Such an act is a perfect example of how one [good deed] can lead to another, and today we are witnessing this commitment.”
Kaminetsky, Edery and Gennady Korban, a sponsor of the kindergarten’s construction and a member of Dnepropetrovsk’s Jewish community’s board of trustees, laid the foundation stone. Joined by Gotlieb and Rabbis Moshe Weber, Levi Seligson and Menachem Mendel Strasberg, they also filled in the first letters of the new Torah scroll.
The Jewish community of Krivoy Rog is a member of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine.
