A Jewish wedding took place in Ukraine on Monday night, the 40th day of the war, in the first such simcha since the war began. The wedding of Alexander Tolkach and Tatiana Gvinyashvili’s was held in the city of Dnipro and was attended by only about 25 guests instead of the hundreds they invited four months previously. Almost all the couple’s friends and family members already fled the city or are at the battlefront but the couple was nevertheless determined to hold their wedding on the scheduled date. Chief Rabbi of Dnipro HaRav Shmuel Kaminetzky served as the mesader kiddushin at the wedding, which was held at the Menorah Center, which some say is the largest multifunctional Jewish community in Europe, and even the world.

Costa, a 31-year-old resident of Kharkiv, was one of the 15,000 Jews who fled to Kishinev, Moldova following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Costa is ultimately heading to Israel but due to bureaucratic issues, he hasn’t yet been able to leave Moldova. Meanwhile, he has been volunteering within the kehilla in Kishinev and assisting other refugees. Over Shabbos, the Chief Rabbi of Moldova, HaRav Pinchas Saltzman, asked all the attendants to speak about a good decision they once made or a dream they have. When it was Costo’s term, the others were surprised to hear him say that his dream is to fulfill the mitzvah of bris milah. Rav Saltzman didn’t waste any time and as soon as Shabbos was over, he began arranging for the bris.

Rav Berel Lazar, the Chief Rabbi of Russia, spoke about the difficult situation in Ukraine and Russia in an interview with Yisrael Hayom that was published on Thursday. “It’s absolutely horrible what’s going on, it’s a nightmare,” Rav Lazar said. “From the first day, we tried to use our connections in order to protect the Jews in Ukraine and the mekomos hakedoshim. There’s deep concern in Russia about the situation in Ukraine, partially because there are many families here with half of their close relatives in Ukraine. Many parents and siblings of shluchim in Russia live in Ukraine. I’m in daily contact with people there – Rabbanim, friends, and acquaintances.

Even a raging war can’t extinguish the flame of Torah. In Kryvyi Rih (Krivoy Rog in Russian), a city in the Dnepropetrovsk region of Ukraine and the birthplace of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, about 200 Jews celebrated a Hachnas Sefer Torah late last week at the Stern Shulman shul. Chabad shliach and Rav of the city, HaRav Liron Ederi, who has stayed in the city throughout the war with the remaining members of the community, said: “The Sefer Torah is dedicated to the protection of the area, its residents, and peace in Ukraine. Despite everything, no one will defeat our spirit.” Prior to the war, almost 650,000 people lived in Kryvyi Rih, including thousands of Jews and Zelesnky’s father, Prof.

The Rav of Kyiv, HaRav Moshe Azman, spoke with Kol Chai on Wednesday morning, Erev Purim. “I’m the Beis HaKnesses HaGadol of Kyiv,” he said. “I traveled to various cities yesterday.  The roads are dangerous but shlichei mitzvah aren’t harmed. I also passed through Uman. There are still Jews in Uman, as well as many refugees who fled from more dangerous areas.” “Yesterday, when I arrived in Kyiv, 150 Jews had just arrived from Chernivtsi in northern Kyiv, where there’s been heavy shelling. Every person has a harrowing story, there’s been direct hits there.” “We evacuate several buses from the large cities every day. Yesterday, we evacuated three or four buses just from Kyiv, from our shul. We send them out with police escorts toward Moldova.

Serafim Sabaranskiy, z’l, a Jewish Ukrainian, was killed in action on Sunday when a Russian missile landed near his position, JTA reported. Sabaranskiy, 29, was an active member of the Kharkiv branch of Hillel. Unlike the US, where Hillel is affiliated with universities, in Ukraine and other countries, Hillel centers are Jewish community centers for young adults into their thirties. Yuliya Pototska, the director of the Kharkiv Hillel branch, [which has been destroyed by Russian bombs], told JTA that Sabaranskiy was an active participant in local Jewish life. and traveled to Israel on a Hillel-sponsored Birthright trip two years ago. This is what is left of the Hillel in Kharkiv that I spent a summer volunteering at. Devastating and Infuriating.

Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, established in 1939 by HaGaon HaRav Meir Shapiro, is now housing Ukrainian Jewish refugees, The Jerusalem Post reported. “We have about 190 beds in Lublin,” American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) director in Poland Karina Sokolowska said Monday. “Some are regular hotel rooms, but we also have large halls in the building where we put many mattresses on the floor.” Since there are no hotel rooms available for refugees in Warsaw, Sokolowska said they had to find varous spaces across Poland, including in private homes. “Almost anyone I know in the Jewish community is hosting a Ukrainian family,” she said. “People come to us in shock – they escaped a war,” she said. “Up until now, we didn’t have any element of therapy for the refugees.

Inge Deutschkron, a Holocaust survivor who hid in Berlin during the Third Reich to escape deportation to Nazi death camps and later wrote an autobiography, has died. She was 99. Deutschkron died Wednesday in Berlin, her foundation said in a statement. No cause of death was given. “A long life of fighting for justice and against anti-Semitic and right-wing tendencies in our society has come to an end,” the Inge Deutschkron Foundation said in a written statement. “We are losing a combative friend.” Deutschkron became known to a wider audience when in 1978 she published her autobiography “I Wore the Yellow Star” about her dramatic survival story as a Jew in Berlin.

At the invitation of HaRav Pinchas Saltzman, Chief Rabbi of Israel HaRav Lau on Wednesday flew to Moldova, where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees have been arriving in recent weeks. HaRav Lau visited the shul in Kishinev, which has been transformed into a place to sleep for Jewish refugees. Prior to Shabbos, HaRav Saltzman told the mispallelim not to come to shul on Shabbos as he needed the space for the refugees. “I hope that the shul will revert to a place of tefillah but people are made to feel at home here – it’s simply moving,” Rav Lau said. Apart from providing chizzuk to the refugees, HaRav Saltzman also requested that HaRav Lau come to Kishinev to assist him with complex halachic shailos that arose due to the war.

Amid the pain and suffering of Ukrainian Jews fleeing from the war front came a moving story on Tuesday that symbolized the continuation of life amid travails – a Jewish toddler entered the bris of Avraham Avinu. The mother, a Jewish refugee from Kharkiv, was not connected to the Jewish kehilla in Kharkiv and was not interested in a bris milah when her son was born. But when she arrived in Kishinev and saw the special welcome that the Jewish community showed to every Jew, she decided that she wanted her son, now two and a half, to have a bris. She turned to Rav Mendy Axelrod, a Chabad Rav in the city who serves as the Rav of the shul in Kishinev and is involved in the reception of Jewish refugees to Moldova, and requested that he arrange a bris for her son as soon as possible.