Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky, lit candles with the country’s Chabad rabbis on Wednesday, marking the third wartime Hanukkah since Russia’s 2022 invasion.
“It’s very good that Ukraine we can all live together, all fight the darkness, as Shmuel Kaminetsky said,” Zelensky said in a video released by his office, referring to the chief rabbi of the city of Dnipro, Chabad’s historic center. His comments come as Ukraine prepares for the likely loss of U.S. support as Republican Donald Trump assumes the presidency.
“In Ukraine, people have a nature that makes them inherently light. So I’m sure that as you say and as Hanukkah says, the light will definitely overcome the darkness,” Zelensky added. “I am sure of that. And there will be a just peace for our country, for all our children.”
The video shows Zelensky flanked by 11 rabbis, emissaries of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement who are the main purveyors of Jewish leadership in Ukraine. While many who could leave the country have done so over the course of the war, the rabbis have remained in place, ministering to an increasingly needy population of Jews who remain.
This week, they are taking on the task that is likely Chabad’s most visible effort around the world — ensuring that Jews participate in the commandment to light Hanukkah candles. Last year, the movement said, Chabad rabbis organized more than 15,000 public candle-lightings.
Zelensky has downplayed his own Jewish identity and the video marked both Christmas and Hanukkah. (The Chabad rabbi in his home city of Kryvih Rih says his parents are engaged members of the local Jewish community there.) Still, he showed familiarity with the rabbis, whom he first met before Rosh Hashanah last year, at one point acknowledging the personal loss suffered by Moshe Azman, whose adopted son died in battle earlier this year, and held a candle during the lighting.
Afterwards, a rabbi presented Zelensky with a large menorah emblazoned with an image of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Holding it, he noted that the menorah used in the official lighting had been given to him by Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, during his inauguration last year in Buenos Aires when he cited the Hanukkah story as a parable for his improbable victory.
Early in the war, Zelensky, too, earned comparisons to the Maccabees, the ancient Jews and heroes of the Hanukkah story who, though outflanked in every way, fended off the efforts of foreign fighters, directed by a power-hungry ruler, to quash their independence and culture.
“You see, we are using the gifts,” Zelensky joked to the rabbis on Wednesday. “Next year we’ll light candles here.”
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