New Ukraine Office Will Help Immigrants Prove Jewishness
The office, which opened last week in Dnepropetrovsk, aims to facilitate the process for those seeking to immigrate to Israel under its Law of Return for Jews and their kin. It is a joint initiative of the Jewish Community of Dnepropetrovsk, the Israeli organizations Tzohar and Shorashim, and the Triguboff Institute of Australia.
“It will prevent situations in which there is no ability to prove a Jewish origin once aliyah to Israel was made and the documents were left behind,” representatives of the groups involved in the office wrote in a joint statement published Tuesday. Aliyah is the Hebrew word for Jewish immigration to Israel.
The process of proving a Jewish ancestry has become especially difficult for thousands of Jews from eastern Ukraine, where a stagnant civil war has resulted in loss of access to documents that may help to establish such a family connection.
At the office’s opening, the delegation of rabbis from Israel included David Stav, chief rabbi of the city of Shoham and chairman of Tzohar, a rabbinical organization that helps to involve non-religious couples and their families in religious wedding ceremonies and other life-cycle events.
“There is no bigger aid for a Jew than helping him to prove his Jewish status and consequently his identity as a Jew,” Stav said at a meeting with Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki, the chief rabbi of Dnepropetrovsk and one of Ukraine’s most influential rabbis.
Kaminezki said the new office will be “saving lives,” adding that he will refer many applicants to the office and “supply an abundance of work” to its staff.
Aliyah from Ukraine totaled 5,840 individuals in 2014, a 190 percent increase over 2013, when the unrest that led to the fighting began. More than 6,000 people from Ukraine have come in 2015.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
