Ukrainian Jew In Serious Condition After Altercation With Neighbor

By JTA May 14, 2017

(JTA) — A Ukrainian Jew in his twenties was critically injured by his neighbor.

The incident happened in Dnepropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine on Friday, according to a statement on the community’s website, which identified the injured community member only as Abraham, 26.

The neighbor attacked the man with a sharp object, hitting his leg, according to the statement. The incident is the subject of an ongoing investigation, the Politeka news website reported. Police apprehended the neighbor.

Chabad.org reported that the man was rushed to surgery, which was successful and saved the man’s foot, but that he remains in serious but stable condition.

Separately, media in Ukraine reported last month that the prosecutor’s office in Uman, a city in central Ukraine, is investigating an ultra-Orthodox Jew for alleged abuse of a horse.

Passersby filmed the man, who was identified only by his first name, Maxim, standing by a car with a prostrate horse tied with a rope to its rear bumper. He said the horse had escaped the stable and that he was trying to retrieve it before the horse lay down in the middle of the road.

Like Dnepropetrovsk, Uman has a population of several hundred Jews who live there permanently.

In addition, Uman receives tens of thousands of observant Jewish visitors annually who come there to pray on the grave of the Breslover movement’s founder, Rabbi Nachman.

The pilgrimage often has created friction between the predominantly Israeli new arrivals and locals, many of whom resent the cordoning off by police of neighborhoods for the pilgrims.

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