Ukrainian Jews are protesting a concert held by Jews for Jesus in Dnepropetrovsk.
The concert took place on Nov. 24, the National Memorial Day of Holodomor, the 1932-33 famine that killed millions of Ukrainians. Jews for Jesus invited residents of the city to a “Jewish festive concert,” posting informational posters throughout the city.
Jewish leaders in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine’s third largest city with a population of 1.1 million, called the concert a provocation aimed at inciting interfaith and interethnic hatred.
Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetzky, the chief rabbi of Dnepropetrovsk and the surrounding region, called the concert a blasphemy that desecrated the Sabbath for Jews as well as the memory of millions of Holodomor victims.
On Wednesday, Igor Kupeburg, the leader of Ukraine’s League Magen, an organization working to counteract extensive missionary activity targeted at Jews in the former Soviet Union, told JTA that representatives of the same Jews for Jesus group had visited the main Kiev synagogue.
Kupeburg said that under the pretext of buying Chanukah candles, group members tried to distribute their leaflets inside the synagogue calling on Jews to accept Jesus as the messiah.
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