Odesa Chabad

The Chabad-Lubavitch community of Odesa, Ukraine, led since 1998 by Rabbi Avraham and Chaya Wolff; runs the Ohr Avner schools and the Mishpacha children's home

Chabad Odesa (Jewish community "Chabad Odesa")
Type	Chabad-Lubavitch religious community
Founded	Congregation Shomrei Shabbos founded by Ishaya (Shaya) Gisser in the early 1990s; led by Chabad since August 1998
Headquarters	The former tailors' synagogue, 21 Osipova (V. Korzhenka) Street, Odesa
Services	Synagogue; Ohr Avner Chabad schools and kindergartens; Mishpacha children's home; Jewish university; Shomrei Shabbos newspaper
Key people	Rabbi Avraham (Avroom) Wolff (chief rabbi of Odesa and southern Ukraine); Chaya Wolff (co-director); Rabbi Mendy Wolff (director of the Mishpacha children's home from 2022)
Website	https://www.chabad.odessa.ua

Odesa Chabad (the community calls itself Chabad Odesa, in Ukrainian Хабад Одеса; also Chabad of Odessa) is the Chabad-Lubavitch community in Odesa, Ukraine. Its synagogue is the former tailors' synagogue. Since 1998 it has been led by Rabbi Avraham Wolff, who is styled chief rabbi of Odesa and southern Ukraine, and his wife Chaya. It runs the Ohr Avner Chabad schools, a Jewish university and the Mishpacha children's home. In March 2022, after the Russian invasion, the community took about 120 children and staff from Mishpacha to Berlin with the help of President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. About 100 of the group were due to return to Odesa in late February 2023. In a 2024 academic study, Marina Sapritsky-Nahum describes it as one of the city's two Orthodox congregations. The other is the Litvak (non-Hasidic) congregation Tikva Or Sameach, which is not part of Chabad.

History

Before Chabad. According to Sapritsky-Nahum, the city's religious revival began with Ishaya (Shaya) Gisser, a native of Odesa who had emigrated to Israel. He returned around independence and founded the congregation Shomrei Shabbos. "In 1992, he persuaded the city council to grant it the old tailors' synagogue, which at that point had long been used as a mere warehouse." Gisser identified as a Lubavitch Hasid, but "refused to follow the agenda of the Ohr Avner Foundation, which was funded by the famous billionaire Lev Leviev". "By 1998, Shaya Gisser could no longer sustain his independence against the pressures from outside Odesa, so he left the city." One woman told her: "He couldn't compete financially with the money and influence of foreign donors". Gisser himself said: "I didn't want to follow their agenda."

Wolff's arrival. Sapritsky-Nahum writes: "Shaya was succeeded by a Chabad Lubavitch rabbi, Avraham Wolf, who transformed the Shomrei Shabbos congregation by aligning it with the Chabad Lubavitch movement." The community's biography of Wolff says that he was born on 23 April 1970 in Kiryat Malachi, Israel, to a father who was deputy head of Chabad's schools office. He studied at yeshivas in Jerusalem, Migdal HaEmek and New York and served in the Israel Defence Forces. From 1992 to 1998 he led the Jewish community of Kherson. In July 1998, at the suggestion of the Council of Rabbis of the CIS and the Chabad leadership, the Council of Rabbis of southern Ukraine elected him chief rabbi of the South Ukrainian regional association of Jewish communities. In August 1998 he took over the Odesa community "Shomrei Shabos" and the Odesa Society of Jewish Culture (translated from Ukrainian; Chabad-side).

Chabad.org wrote in 2010 that Wolff "arrived as a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary in 1992". That fits his arrival in Kherson (1992), not in Odesa (1998). Sapritsky-Nahum spells his name "Wolf".

Institutions

• Schools. In January 2010 Chabad.org reported that the Ohr Avner Chabad network had been "Founded by Rabbi Avraham and Chaya Wolff, who began with a kindergarten and day school of 57 students", and "today boasts some 600 pupils", with "11 couples from Israel who teach here". It said the network "is one of more than 100 educational institutions throughout Eastern Europe funded by the Federation of Jewish Communities of the Former Soviet Union and the Ohr Avner Foundation" (Chabad-side). The community calls its school complex "Chabad-Odesa"; it includes kindergartens, primary, middle and high schools and a boarding school.
• University. The community says the South Ukrainian Jewish University was set up on Wolff's initiative. Chabad.org described it in 2010 as "a university specializing in business and economics".
• Newspaper. Wolff is director of the newspaper Shomrei Shabos, which the community calls the largest Jewish newspaper.
• Mishpacha children's home. According to Lubavitch.com, the Wolffs "were introduced to the disturbing phenomenon in the summer of 2001 when an old Jewish woman walked into the Chabad synagogue with her two young grandchildren". She told Wolff: "I leave them to you. I have faith in you." By the time of that report, "over 80 Jewish orphans live and learn at Mishpacha, Chabad of Odessa's orphanage" (Chabad-side). Chabad.org gave about 60 children in 2010, and 120 children in 2022. JTA reported that "Most of the children in the orphanage have parents who are unable to care for them".

Membership. Sapritsky-Nahum reports that, according to the synagogue's secretary, "the congregation had as many as six thousand members in 2006, based on the number of subscribers to the Shomrei Shabbos newspaper, though only 10 percent of them might have attended services on high holidays". On her own Friday visits she counted "around seventy or eighty men and an average of thirty to forty women".

Buildings. "The famous Brody Synagogue was officially handed over to Chabad in 2016, but the building still serves as the state archives."

Critical assessment

Sapritsky-Nahum's study, based on fieldwork from 2005–07 and later interviews, gives an independent, academic view (critical):

• Wolff's community "was usually regarded as 'more relaxed' than the Tikva Or Sameach community, though no less Orthodox, and Wolff himself was widely admired for being 'more open'".
• The Wolffs "were sometimes criticized for being too socially active with the city elite, such as potential donors and supporters, and overlooking the 'problematic social pasts' of congregants who had served time in prison". Some members felt the leadership "was crossing a moral line in their affiliation with what some called 'Jewish bandits'"; others "admired Rabbi Wolf for welcoming Jews whatever their background".
• "Gossip spread during the years of my initial research as both rabbis, each claiming the status of chief rabbi of the city, acquired properties, bought cars, and expanded their programs."
• She describes the strict halakhic checks of Jewish descent used by the Orthodox congregations. A congregant with a Jewish father but not a Jewish mother told her that a Chabad youth club was meant "to separate them from the nonhalakhic Jews".
• She concludes that the "dominant position of the two Orthodox congregations, especially the stronghold of Chabad Lubavitch", is in the words of another scholar "an ironic renewal of Hasidism in a city that was always better known as a center for liberal Jewish traditions".

The 2022 evacuation to Berlin

In early March 2022 the community sent the children of Mishpacha out of Odesa in two buses. Chabad.org reported that German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, "a close friend of Chabad-Lubavitch of Berlin", was "instrumental in securing the passage of 120 children from Odessa's Chabad-run Mishpacha Children's Home". The buses left on 2 March and took 52 hours, through Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia. Rabbi Mendy Wolff, aged 25, "became the director of the orphanage overnight" when his parents stayed behind. The group was "the 60 boys and 60 girls in Chabad's care". He said 40 hotel rooms cost "4,400 euros [about $4,800] each night" (Chabad-side).

JNS reported from Chișinău that the group of 120 comprised "105 Jewish orphans, more than 40 of whom were without passports, and 15 support staff", and that the escape "was made possible by a joint effort of Chabad and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), which financed the operation". Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal of Chabad of Berlin received them.

The sources differ on the journey. Chabad.org gives 52 hours, seven countries and "six international borders"; JTA gives 53 hours and "five international borders". They also differ on the group: 120 children (Chabad.org) or 105 children and 15 staff (JNS).

Berlin and the return, 2023. In February 2023 Deborah Danan of JTA reported:

• the Chabad emissaries in Berlin had secured "VIP status for the young refugees to bring them across EU borders as personal guests of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier";
• "For 40 children for whom no living relatives could be found, Rabbi Avraham Wolff and his wife, Chaya, signed on as legal guardians";
• the group moved to the Hotel Müggelsee, which it rented whole, so that the government housing subsidy no longer covered all its costs; Chaya Wolff put the total at "750,000 euros — close to $800,000 — a month";
• an online fundraiser "netted $685,500 in small gifts from more than 5,000 donors", short of its $1 million goal;
• about 100 people were to return to Odesa by bus "mostly out of economic considerations".

Dispute with Israel. Chaya Wolff told JTA that "Israel had refused them entry". Mark Dovev, regional director of Nativ, the Israeli government's immigration liaison office, told JTA "that taking in a minor from another country is 'tantamount to kidnapping'". Chaya Wolff replied: "Just as Germany turned a blind eye, Israel could have also taken them in temporarily as refugees."

Funding

Sources name these funders:

• the Federation of Jewish Communities of the Former Soviet Union and the Ohr Avner Foundation (schools, 2010);
• the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (the 2022 evacuation);
• the German government (hotel rooms for refugees), the Berlin Jewish community, the IFCJ and private donors (Berlin, 2022–23).

Sapritsky-Nahum writes that the Ohr Avner Foundation was "funded by the famous billionaire Lev Leviev". The relief network Jewish Relief Network Ukraine lists Wolff on its advisory committee.

Not to be confused with Tikva

Odesa's other Orthodox network, Tikva Or Sameach, is not Chabad. Sapritsky-Nahum writes: "In 1993, Rabbi Shlomo Baksht came from Israel and established the Litvak Orthodox congregation, Or Sameach, later renamed Tikva Or Sameach." It holds the Glavnaya (Main) Synagogue and runs its own schools, a Jewish university and "a home for needy and homeless Jewish children called Tikva". She found few "floaters" between the two congregations and "strained" relations among the city's religious leaders. Reports on Jewish orphans in Odesa should be checked to see which network they mean: Mishpacha is Chabad's, Tikva is not.

Timeline

Date	Event
1992	Gisser's Shomrei Shabbos congregation receives the tailors' synagogue; Avraham Wolff begins in Kherson
1993	Rabbi Shlomo Baksht founds the Litvak congregation (later Tikva Or Sameach)
July–August 1998	Wolff elected regional chief rabbi and takes over Shomrei Shabbos in Odesa
c. 2000	Ohr Avner Chabad schools founded (ten-year celebration in January 2010)
Summer 2001	Mishpacha children's home begins
2016	Brody Synagogue handed over to Chabad (building still used as state archives)
2–4 March 2022	120 children and staff evacuated to Berlin
7 March 2022	President Steinmeier visits the children at Chabad of Berlin
February 2023	About 100 due to return to Odesa by bus

See also

• Chabad Lubavitch of Ukraine
• Chabad and Ukraine
• Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine
• Menorah Centre (Dnipro)
• Russian oligarchs and Chabad