The Jewish community of Kherson in southern Ukraine is repairing its only synagogue after a Russian projectile pierced the structure on Thursday but did not explode, the city’s rabbi said.
The projectile is thought to be one of about 130 drones that Ukrainian authorities said Russia had launched into eastern and southern Ukraine on Thursday.
Emergency services said that one rescue worker was killed and five others were wounded putting out a fire caused by one of the drones in the town of Zelenyi Hai in the eastern Kharkiv region, AFP reported.
At the synagogue, “There’s damage but it’s not destroyed and it’s fixable, because whatever hit the place miraculously passed right through its walls without exploding,” Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Wolff, an Israel-born Chabad-Lubavitch emissary whose has been living in Ukraine with his wife, Chaya, for more than 30 years, told JNS on Friday.
Wolff narrowly escaped, having left minutes before the projectile hit, he told JNS. He had gone out to affix a mezuzah at the home of one of the members of the Jewish community, which has several hundred households, the rabbi said.
In July, Wolff, Chaya and their daughter narrowly escaped a Russian suicide drone that hit their car while they were in it. The Wolffs were about a mile from a checkpoint outside the city when the drone hit, mangling the engine without injuring any of the passengers.
In August, a Russian drone damaged and caused a fire at the Old Peresip Synagogue (also known as the Nahalat Eliezer Synagogue) in Odesa. A few days earlier, the home of Israeli Ambassador Michael Brodsky’s secretary was hit in a Russian drone and missile strike on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.
The current war between Russia and Ukraine erupted in February 2022, when Russia invaded its smaller neighbor. The frontline stabilized after months of fighting, leaving the two armies in a gridlock and prompting both armies to rely increasingly on drones, airstrikes and missiles to inflict damage on the other.
