The Ukraine Seminar Tour - Part One

After the first Seminar Tour of the employees of the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem to Warsaw, Brisky, Grodna and Vilna in 2016 (Part One is here. There are five more posts: Two; Three; Four; Five; Six), in the footsteps of Begin, this year I was invited to participate in the second, to Kyiv, Umman and Odessa, in the footsteps of Ze'ev Jabotinsky.

Eve Harow already interviewed me on her Rejuvenation program about the tour.

Jabotinsky was born in Odessa:

So, here we go:

Arriving at Ben-Gurion Airport at 2:45 AM

Waiting to board for a 5:30 AM flight

First stop, the PodolInn in Kyiv 

for breakfast

It adjoins a synagogue built in 1895

From there, to Babi Yar:

and the memorial ceremony

where I said the Kaddish after reciting Psalm 35:

There is no Hebrew writing on the entrance explanatory sign, no toilet either. The ravine surprised me as it is some 27 meters deep (before the 33,771 [the Nazis kept records] and more Jews later who were killed here and dumped into the ravine, the height was 50 meters).

From there, we drove to the center of town and boarded a river boat for an hour's cruise down and op the Dneiper River.

Our tour leader, Yehiel Fishzon:

And back to the hotel, the Premier Palace, built in 1912 and rennovated:

For Shabbat services, we were at the Brodski Synagogue

and on the way said 'Shalom Aleichem' to Sholom Aleichem:

Food was there via Chabad.

To be continued:

Part Two.

Part Three I.

Part Three II.

^