Exile and Endurance: An Odesa Student’s Journey to YU
The war in Ukraine, ongoing since 2022, tends not to occupy much of our attention, likely due to other more recent unfortunate world events such as the war in Israel. But for one member of the YU community, the war in Ukraine is not just a tragedy happening far away — it’s happening at home.
Rafael (Ruslan) Gokhman is a 25-year-old Ph.D. student in mathematics at YU’s Katz School of Science and Health. He holds a master’s degree in artificial intelligence from Katz, completed in 2024. Yet Rafael’s hometown is not NYC, but Odesa, Ukraine. After attending Jewish schools through high school in Ukraine and earning both undergraduate and master’s degrees, he applied to YU in 2021 to further his graduate studies, while seeking a strong Jewish environment where he could practice his Jewish identity. Little did he know that his native Ukraine would soon be under attack.
In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, setting off a war that continues to this day. Odesa was attacked on the first day of the war, and the Jewish community of Odesa decided that the only way to ensure its safety would be to relocate. Initially, part of the community (including Rafael) fled to Chisinau, in bordering Moldova, while many others fled to the western part of Ukraine, away from Russian troops. The community’s rabbi decided that due to the extreme danger of remaining in place, they were to continue traveling on Shabbos; they made kiddush on the bus. It was while Rafael was in Moldova that he first heard back from YU, inviting him to continue with the next steps of his application. After a few weeks, the two parts of the Odesa community were able to reunite in Romania, ending up in the resort city Neptun, on the coast of the Black Sea.
The recent history of Odesa’s Jewish community dates to 1993, when Rabbi Shlomo Baksht came from Israel and founded the Tikva organization to help revive Orthodox life after the fall of communism. He started by opening Jewish high schools for boys and girls and invited Rabbi Refael Kruskal to become Tikva’s CEO and partner with him in leading the community, which grew to include an elementary school, yeshiva, kollel and even a Jewish university. Due to widespread poverty, many families in Ukraine are unable to raise their children, leading to hundreds of “orphans.” A large part of Tikva’s work is raising these children in its children’s home. Many alumni of Tikva’s children’s home move to Israel, with some serving in the IDF and others learning in yeshivas, while others remain in the community.
Since the start of the war and the community’s relocation to Romania, Tikva’s work is now focused there, though some Jews, particularly the elderly, do still remain in Odesa. In Neptun, Rabbis Baksht and Kruskal started to rebuild the community’s infrastructure. With the help of donors, they built a school, shul and mikvah and found sleeping accommodations. But after about a year in Neptun, with no sign of the war abating, they decided the community would be better served in a less isolated, more urban area, with more job opportunities and city infrastructure. Before Pesach of 2023, the community relocated to a residential complex in Bucharest, Romania’s capital.
In Bucharest, the community reestablished itself much as it had in Neptun and Odesa, with a large shul, cafeteria, grocery store, children’s home, boys and girls schools, yeshiva and kollel. Community members live in the apartments of the residential complex and find work in various forms. Some work at the community’s hand matzah bakery (which bakes matzah for the community’s Pesach needs but also fulfills orders internationally), or at one of the small number of kosher restaurants in Bucharest as mashgichim or kitchen staff, while others work within the broader Romanian community. Ukrainian refugees in Romania have temporary protected status, which is set to expire in 2027.
Rafael was accepted to YU’s Katz School and started his master’s degree in artificial intelligence in fall 2022. In addition to his AI studies, he learned in Rabbi Wiederblank’s and Rabbi Simon’s shiurim and dormed for a time in Muss Hall. Rafael felt welcomed by the YU community, and has taken the opportunity to visit local Jewish communities and meet people from diverse Jewish backgrounds. While Rafael’s two siblings are no longer in Ukraine — his older brother lives in NYC as well, and his older sister lives in Ireland — his parents remain in Odesa. When YU is not in session, such as during Pesach and Sukkot, Rafael travels to Romania to spend time with his community, and his parents have sometimes been able to travel there to meet him. Otherwise he speaks with them on the phone and can sometimes hear air defense systems fighting drones and missiles in the background.
When asked what his message to YU students would be, Rafael emphasized the fact that the war in Ukraine is ongoing. Ukrainian Jews, both those still in Ukraine and refugees around the world, have been struggling for nearly four years, and it is incumbent on the rest of us to pray for them and to do whatever we can to help.
My grandparents live in Bucharest, and when I went to visit them this summer Rafael invited me to spend a few hours with his community. Rafael gave me a tour of their facilities and arranged a chavruta for me with one of the members of the kollel in the large shul and beit midrash. The two of us learned Mishnah Berurah together speaking Hebrew, mine American-accented and his Ukrainian-accented, until it was time for Mincha. I was impressed by how even in a foreign country and with an uncertain future, the community successfully sustains high-level Torah study. Seeing little children walking around in kippahs and tzitzit was inspiring; while the general Bucharest Jewish community is in decline, Rafael’s Ukrainian corner of Bucharest is thriving.
Photo Caption: The shul in Bucharest
Photo Credit: Tikva UK
