Rabbi’s brush with danger in Ukraine went viral

KYIV, Ukraine — It was a striking image: a bearded rabbi with a bulletproof vest over his tallit, slamming to the ground for cover as grenades rumbled around him.

Video footage the moment Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman came under fire during a humanitarian mission to flood southern Ukraine on June 8 has been viewed more than 1.5 million times on Twitter. It put a new spotlight on Ukraine’s chief rabbi, whose prominence predates that moment, and his humanitarian efforts since the full-scale invasion of Russia.

“People recognize me,” said the rabbi, his eyes twinkling, one recent afternoon from his office in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.

Rabbi Azman, 57, sprang into action when Russia invaded in February 2022, cooperating in the evacuation of Jewish Ukrainians and registering requests for help and to put a stop to the war. The bed that still stands in his office in Kiev’s Brodsky Synagogue bears witness to the intensity of those early days, he said. The rabbi initially even continued working on Shabbat, the traditional day of rest, and began filming video messages that went far and wide.

His role as chief rabbi has particular resonance in a war that President Vladimir V. Putin has falsely claimed is about “denazifying” Ukraine, a country whose current president is Jewish and whose Jewish community has historically been persecuted.

Born in Leningrad, the rabbi emigrated to Israel in the 1980s to escape the former Soviet Union. After marrying a Ukrainian woman, he came to Ukraine in the early 1990s to help children affected by the Chernobyl disaster and later led the rehabilitation of Kyiv’s main synagogue.

When Russian-backed fighters launched a war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Rabbi Azman helped evacuate civilians from the fighting. He later founded a village on the outskirts of Kiev that he called Anatevka – like the fictional shtetl in the Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof” – for displaced Jewish families.

The rabbi’s work won him national awards. Photos of him shaking hands with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain and other notable people cover a wall in his office.

But some of his prominent connections sometimes cast a shadow over his work.

He has been an outspoken supporter of Donald J. Trump and has a long-standing relationship with Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose efforts to convince the government of Ukraine to launch investigations he believed would benefit Mr. Trump were key to the impeachment inquiry against the former president. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman – associates of Mr Giuliani who were convicted of campaign finance violations – were at one point board members for the rabbi’s US-based charity Friends of Anatevka.

When asked about the saga, Rabbi Azman becomes animated and insists he has no interest in politics.

“I don’t vote in America,” he said, adding, “I work for Ukraine.”

The rabbi stressed that he is just a “silent man” trying to reach a wide audience to support his humanitarian efforts, which he says have cost millions. He sees his work not as a calling but as an “obligation,” one that brought him to Kherson to help with the floods and to draw attention to the devastation.

Although he no longer works on Shabbos, the rabbi has a packed schedule and regularly posts updates on social media about his aid efforts and Russian atrocities. He recently greeted an evacuee who had been taken to Anatevka by ambulance.

Many people ask why he stays in Ukraine despite the dangers, he said.

“I thank God for putting me in the right place at the right time so that I can save and help people 24/7,” he said.