‘We can do what people didn’t do for us’: Triangle Jews unite for people in Ukraine

When Russia launched its large-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Rebecca Olla immediately sought ways to get her adopted daughter, Rina, out of there. The 17-year-old had moved back to Ukraine to reconnect with her biological family last November.

“I was like, ‘We must get you out!’” Olla, a member of Beth El Synagogue in Durham, says she told her daughter over the phone. “She also belongs to her family, and I understand that and respect that, but ... that’s my kid!”

After a “really harrowing” journey through the Ukraine-Hungary border, Rina landed safely in Charlotte on March 4.

Olla says without the money she raised through her Jewish peers, Rina wouldn’t have been able to get out of Ukraine and be safe at home in Durham.

“I’ve had a huge outpouring from Jewish people in my life,” Olla said. “I think for so many Jews, whether we had relatives who survived or perished during the Holocaust, that, in this moment, we can do what people didn’t do for us.”

Ukraine, Judaism and North Carolina

While complicated, Ukraine’s ties to the Jewish faith are deeply intertwined.

“Jews have been living in Ukraine for a millennium,” Rabbi Zalman Bluming, co-director of Chabad of Durham/Chapel Hill, said. “In the 17th and 18th centuries, 80 percent of Jews of the world lived in Ukraine.”

Many of today’s Jews in the United States are descendants of Ukraine and other Eastern European countries, said Rabbi Daniel Greyber of Beth El Synagogue. But the biggest reason behind that diaspora was the persecution Jews faced in Ukraine and surrounding countries even before the Holocaust, when an estimated 1.5 million Jews were shot to death by Nazi soldiers.

“Twenty years before the Holocaust, there were huge pogroms,” Greyber said, referring to the violent riots that targeted ethnic groups like Jews. “There were probably — a conservative estimate — 100,000 Jews who were murdered in the Ukraine.”

In the late 19th century, Jews also faced pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe that led to mass emigration of Jews to the United States and Latin America.

“A huge Jewish population, probably on the order of 3 million Jews or more,” Greyber said, “a large percentage of those Jews came to the United States.”

In North Carolina, there are approximately 46,000 Jews, according to a 2019 report by Jewish Heritage North Carolina. The Triangle has the largest share with nearly 23,000 Jews total in the Raleigh-Cary and Durham-Chapel Hill areas.

Because Jews can trace their history to countries around the world, Greyber says the Jewish community in the U.S. feels a connection to other Jews in countries like Ukraine and Russia. Many of Beth El Synagogue’s efforts to “rescue the Jewish community of Ukraine” have been through organizations like the Joint Distribution Committee, Masorti Olami and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society’s Ukraine crisis response.

Rabbi Eric Solomon of Beth Meyer Synagogue in Raleigh says Ukraine’s top leader being Jewish also brings the conflict home.

“We feel a sense of kinship with Mr. (Volodymyr) Zelenskyy,” he said. “He’s demonstrating tremendous heroism, kind of the best of what we could hope a member of the Jewish community would do in the face of oppression and power coming in.”

Supporting refugees in Poland

Over the past four years, Bluming the rabbi and co-director at Chabad, and his wife have traveled to Poland at least twice a year for educational trips on the Holocaust.

They didn’t think this year’s trip would turn into a humanitarian one — until Russia invaded Ukraine and more than 1 million Ukrainians began crossing into Poland seeking refuge.

“Just when the news of what broke out in Ukraine took place, there were a lot of questions about how to, you know, really focus on making sure that we’re there for those that are in need,” Bluming said.

Together with a group of students and other area Jews, Bluming will travel to several cities across Poland to help them learn about their Jewish heritage and visit Jewish communities that need help.

“An important element is going to be aiding the local Jewish communities where we will be visiting the hundreds and thousands of refugees, together with the Chabad organization, who are at the forefront of helping Jewish and non-Jewish people alike for this crisis,” he said.

‘We’ve always prayed’

As “people of faith,” Bluming says, the Jewish community has been praying for the people of Ukraine.

“Prayers matter,” he said. “Over the millennia, and we’ve always prayed, we’ve opened up to God.”

Along with monetary donations and good, Solomon also said prayer has been key to Beth Meyer’s members.

“We certainly have been praying for the people of Ukraine and praying for their safety and freedom,” he said. “Praying for wise foreign policy on behalf of the United States, as well as other European powers, and those who have the power to influence the Russian leadership.”

Four days after Russia’s attacks began, during the Shabbat morning service, Greyber took a moment to address the war. After a brief history of Jews in Ukraine, he recited, a Jewish “Prayer for Peace” before reading the Torah:

In this fragile moment

May we see the day

When war and bloodshed cease

When a great peace will embrace the whole world.

Then nation will not threaten nation

And the human family will not again know war

For all who live on earth shall realize

We have not come into being

To hate or destroy

We’ve come into being

To praise, to labor, to love.



Compassionate G*d, bless the leaders of all nations

With the power of compassion.

Fulfill the promise conveyed in Scripture:

“I will bring peace to the land and you shall lie down

and no one shall terrify you.

I will rid the land of vicious beasts, and it shall not be ravaged by war.”

Let love and justice flow like a mighty stream

Let G*d’s peace fill the earth as waters fill the sea.



To which all present responded, in unison, “Amen.”

This story was originally published March 13, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "‘We can do what people didn’t do for us’: Triangle Jews unite for people in Ukraine."

Laura Brache

The News & Observer

Laura Brache is a former journalist for News & Observer, N&O