by David Stromberg

After war in Ukraine broke out, Motl Gordon moved to Israel where he’s working with Russian-speaking Jews to nurture a vision of an audaciously welcoming new diaspora

On the morning of February 24, 2022, Motl Gordon woke up to the news that Russia had invaded Ukraine.

“It dawned on me that it’s another epoch now,” Gordon told the Times of Israel in a recent interview in Jerusalem. Within two hours he, his wife and their two kids had airline tickets, and within 10 hours they were on a plane to Warsaw.

Gordon spent the last five years leading an independent Jewish community in Moscow, Sredi Svoih (Among Our Own). Just minutes after deciding to leave, Gordon went to the synagogue to lead a Torah lesson and morning prayers. He didn’t tell his congregants about his plans–it wasn’t clear to him yet that he would succeed in actually boarding the flight.

It wasn’t a simple journey, in terms of official documents: the family was travelling through Warsaw and not all of them had visas, Israel hadn’t lifted coronavirus restrictions and the children weren’t vaccinated. They applied for special permission to circumvent the restrictions and enter Israel, but because the war started on a Thursday, approval came too late to make it to Jerusalem before the Sabbath. They ended up staying in Warsaw until Saturday night when they boarded a flight to Ben Gurion Airport. On Sunday morning they arrived in Israel.

“Sixty hours,” Gordon says, “in which I could think of nothing else but getting to Jerusalem.”

Full story here.