Shmuel Kaminezki
Israeli-born Chabad-Lubavitch emissary and chief rabbi of Dnipro, Ukraine, since 1990
| Shmuel Kaminezki
| |
|---|---|
| Born | 1965 Kfar Chabad, Israel |
| Occupation | Rabbi; Chabad-Lubavitch emissary |
| Known for | Chief rabbi of Dnipro and the Dnipropetrovsk region; rebuilding of the Dnipro Jewish community; the Menorah Centre |
| Spouse(s) | Chana (Khana) Kaminezki, née Lipsker (married 1989) |
| Children | Six daughters and three sons (community biography) |
| Education | Yeshiva in Lod; Rabbinical College of America, Morristown, New Jersey; rabbinic ordination 1988 (770 Eastern Parkway) |
Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki (also spelled Kaminetsky, Kamenetzki and Kamenetzky; born 1965) is a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary. He has been the rabbi of Dnipro (Dnepropetrovsk until 2016) in Ukraine since 1990, and is chief rabbi of the city and region.[1][2] Under him the Dnipro community, backed by the PrivatBank owners Gennadiy Bogolyubov and Ihor Kolomoisky, built the Menorah Centre, which opened in 2012.[3][4] Dnipro is the headquarters of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine,[5] and since 2022 the community he leads has been a hub for Chabad's wartime evacuations and relief.[6] In 2008 the Kyiv magazine Focus listed him among the 15 most "powerful foreigners" in Ukraine.[7]
Early life
According to his biography on the federation's site, Kaminezki was born in Kfar Chabad, Israel, in 1965; his parents had come there from the Soviet Union in 1946 "due to religious persecution". He studied at the yeshiva in Lod, and in 1981 went to the United States "to study with the Lubavitcher Rebbe" (Menachem Mendel Schneerson). He graduated from the Rabbinical College of America in Morristown, New Jersey, and taught there and at the yeshiva in New Haven, Connecticut. He received rabbinic ordination in 1988 at the yeshiva at 770 Eastern Parkway and married Khana (Chana) Lipsker in 1989 (Chabad-side).[1] In a 2021 interview he said that his family were "businessmen" and that he "should have been sitting on Brighton Beach today ... managing buildings where emigrants from Odesa live" (translated from Russian).[8]
Arrival in Dnepropetrovsk
In 1990 the Rebbe sent Kaminezki and his wife to Dnepropetrovsk as his emissaries.[1] The Dnipro community dates his arrival to June 1990.[2] The city has a special place in Chabad history: the Rebbe's father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, had been its chief rabbi until his arrest.[9] Kaminezki said in 2021 that the head of the community in 1990, Grigory Korol, had written to the Rebbe inviting him to take his father's post, and that the Rebbe chose the young couple instead (translated from Russian).[8]
His accounts of the early years, all Chabad-side or his own:
- "The rabbi's first office was located in the only synagogue kept open during Communist rule", which the KGB "controlled" (Chabad.org, 2009).[9]
- The couple came on a humanitarian visa and lived in a hotel under KGB watch; "the KGB immediately began to follow us" and "even the Jews were afraid of us!" (2021 interview, translated from Russian).[8]
- Zelig Brez, later the community's executive director, said Kaminezki invited him to his first Shabbat meal: "This was the first time that I saw the Shabbat candles, a kiddush and challah."[9]
Building the Dnipro community
In 2008 JTA described Kaminezki, then 43, as "the Chabad emissary who spurred the first wave of growth here after his arrival in 1990". It reported that "Three of Ukraine's four richest men are members of the city's Jewish community and they have bankrolled a raft of construction projects", and that Bogolubov headed a community "parliament" with a "$7 million annual budget". He told JTA: "The idea is to identify who can do what the best way, and squeeze them out and use them up as maximum as possible, in a good way." He also said: "We give the rebbe all the credit because he sent me here and he gave me a plan, and he told me how to work and he gave us blessings."[3]
In 2009 he told Chabad.org that the growth was "all locally supported", with Bogolubov as "president of the community's board of directors, a group of 70 leaders". He added: "Just 500 meters from the cell where Rabbi Levi Yitzchak sat in jail, we have a synagogue with a school called the Rabbi Levi Yitzchak School. On the street where he was arrested, we are building the largest community center in the world."[9] By 2021 the community said it owned 20 buildings, including schools, an old people's home and eight synagogues, and that its education system reached 2,500 children (translated from Russian).[8]
The Menorah Centre. Kaminezki led the community that built the Menorah Centre, funded by Gennadiy Bogolyubov and Ihor Kolomoisky and opened in October 2012.[10][11] He told JTA in 2014 that it was meant as "a great beacon of light that tells the Jews of Ukraine: 'We are here. Come join us. The time for hiding is over'", and: "Those who didn't want the rebbe and other Jews here now have a 22-story building celebrating their tradition ... That's the story of Ukraine's Jews."[4]
Titles and standing
- The community and federation call him chief rabbi of Dnipro and the Dnipropetrovsk region and chairman of the board of the Dnipro Jewish community.[1]
- JTA in 2014 called him "one of the Chabad movement's most senior envoys to Ukraine".[4]
- The Forward called him "the chief rabbi of Ukraine's Dnepropetrovsk Jewish community", and reported that Focus had named him and Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich among the 15 most "powerful foreigners" in Ukraine in 2008.[7]
- In 2020 the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter described him as "the head of the Council of Hasidic Rabbis of Ukraine and a recognized authority in the Chabad world".[12]
- Jewish Relief Network Ukraine, the US-registered Chabad relief network, lists him on its advisory committee of Ukrainian rabbis.[13]
No source found shows him claiming the national title "chief rabbi of Ukraine". In 2003 the Dnipro community welcomed the federation's election of Azriel Haikin to that post as "a milestone in the history of the rebirth of Jewish life in Ukraine".[14] See Chabad and Ukraine for the dispute.
Links to the Privat partners and their associates
Kaminezki's community has been funded by Gennadiy Bogolyubov and Ihor Kolomoisky since the 1990s; the community's site says Bogolyubov was elected its president in 1998.[15] In 2008 JTA reported that Kaminezki had recently spent a Shabbat at Bogolubov's "second, glatt kosher home" in Vienna.[3]
RFE/RL reported in 2020 that Mordechai Korf arrived in Dnipro in 1991, a year after Kaminezki, and Uriel Laber in 1994. In a 2002 book Laber said Kaminezki had introduced him to his "Russian partners": "Without [Kaminezki] saying that 'this is an honest person' we wouldn't have known."[16] Korf and Laber were later named in US civil forfeiture complaints as associates of Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov; those complaints are allegations.[17]
Legal status. No proceedings against Kaminezki himself were found. Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov have been held civilly liable in England for the misappropriation of PrivatBank funds (a civil judgment, not a conviction), and Kolomoisky is in pre-trial detention in Ukraine on criminal charges that have not led to a conviction as of October 2026.[18][19] Details, with each status kept separate, are on Chabad and Ukraine and Menorah Centre (Dnipro).
- Editor's note: RFE/RL's account of Laber's 2002 book is second-hand; the book itself was not seen. No source found says that Kaminezki knew of, or took part in, any of the transactions at issue in the PrivatBank cases.
Since 2022
After the Russian invasion, Chabad.org wrote that it was "only natural" for Dnipro, "led by the city's chief rabbi and Chabad-Lubavitch emissary Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki", to become "the center of refugee and aid activities for the Jews of eastern Ukraine" (Chabad-side).[6] In 2024 JTA reported that the community had lost "many of the sources of income that allowed it to be fully self-sufficient before the conflict" but kept its schools, clinics and Menorah Centre running.[5] In March 2025 the community marked his 60th birthday in the Menorah Centre.[2]
- Editor's note: his exact date of birth was not found; the community's 60th-birthday celebration in March 2025 is consistent with a birth in 1965. The site spells his name "Kaminetsky"; Chabad.org and JTA use "Kaminezki" and "Kamenetzki".
Timeline
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1965 | Born in Kfar Chabad, Israel |
| 1981 | Goes to the United States to study |
| 1988 | Rabbinic ordination |
| 1989 | Marries Chana Lipsker |
| June 1990 | Arrives in Dnepropetrovsk as Chabad emissary |
| 2008 | Focus lists him among Ukraine's 15 most "powerful foreigners" |
| October 2012 | Menorah Centre opens |
| 2014 | Community shelters refugees from the Donbas |
| 2022 | Dnipro becomes a Chabad evacuation hub |
| March 2025 | Community marks his 60th birthday |
See also
- Menorah Centre (Dnipro)
- Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine
- Chabad and Ukraine
- Chabad Lubavitch of Ukraine
- Moshe Reuven Azman
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Dnipro: Shmuel Kaminetsky", Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine, consulted 20 October 2026. Chabad-side; self-published.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "The community celebrates the anniversary of its Chief Rabbi!", Dnipro Jewish Community, 16 March 2025. Chabad-side; self-published.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Ukraine city building toward prominence", Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 25 September 2008.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Cnaan Liphshiz, "Giant Ukraine JCC provides shelter from the storm – in style", Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 1 October 2014.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Marcel Gascón Barberá, "Baking matzah and defying blackouts, Dnipro's Jews press on despite the grind of Russia's war on Ukraine", Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 26 August 2024.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Mendel Super, "Rocket Attacks on Dnipro Intensify, Jewish Community Evacuating Hundreds Daily", Chabad.org, 15 March 2022. Chabad-side.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Jacob Kornbluh, "Meet the two men who claim to be chief rabbi of Ukraine", The Forward, 3 March 2022.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 "Раввин Шмуэль Каминецкий: «Когда я приехал в Днепропетровск, евреи, увидев меня, переходили на другую сторону улицы – боялись»" (Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky: "When I came to Dnepropetrovsk, Jews crossed to the other side of the street when they saw me – they were afraid"), Kstati+ (from Informator), 17 March 2021. In Russian. Interview. Originals: "моя семья — бизнесмены"; "Я должен был сегодня сидеть на Брайтон-Бич на берегу океана и руководить домами, в которых живут эмигранты из Одессы"; "Глава общины в 1990 году Григорий Натанович Король написал Любавическому Ребе письмо"; "Мы с женой приехали по гуманитарной визе. КГБ сразу начал следить за нами"; "даже евреи нас боялись!"; "Сегодня в Днепре 20 принадлежащих общине зданий"; "Система еврейского образования охватывает 2,5 тыс. детей".
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Dini Harris, "Ukraine Community Transformed 20 Years After Leaders Arrive", Chabad.org, 19 October 2009 (a version first appeared in Hamodia). Chabad-side.
- ↑ Tamar Runyan, "World's Largest Jewish Center Opens in Dnepropetrovsk", Chabad.org, 17 October 2012. Chabad-side.
- ↑ "Concept and history", Museum "Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine", consulted 20 October 2026. Self-published by the museum.
- ↑ Shimon Briman, "The spiritual leaders of Ukraine's Jewish community", Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, 28 May 2020.
- ↑ Jewish Relief Network Ukraine, home page (staff and advisory committee list), consulted 20 October 2026. Chabad-side; self-published.
- ↑ "Rabbinical Election Stirs Confusion in Ukraine", The Forward, September 2003.
- ↑ "Guideline", Dnipro Jewish Community, consulted 20 October 2026. Chabad-side; self-published.
- ↑ Todd Prince, "How Two U.S. Religious Aid Workers May Have Helped A Ukrainian Tycoon Launder Millions", Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 19 August 2020. Critical.
- ↑ "Justice Department Seeks Forfeiture of Two Commercial Properties Purchased with Funds Misappropriated from PrivatBank in Ukraine", US Department of Justice, 6 August 2020. Primary source (allegations).
- ↑ JSC Commercial Bank PrivatBank v Kolomoisky & Anor [2026] EWCA Civ 658 (22 May 2026). BAILII. Primary source.
- ↑ "Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky detained on suspicion of fraud and money laundering", The Guardian, 3 September 2023.