Escalating Drone Attacks Couldn’t Stop Tishrei Deliveries

Despite escalating drone attacks and dangerously close fighting along Ukraine’s front lines this year, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine succeeded in delivering Tishrei packages to more than 50,000 Jewish households across 169 communities, along with special kits to over 1,000 Jewish soldiers serving on the front, in time for the Yomim Tovim.

This marks the fifth Tishrei that Ukrainian Jewry has faced since the war began, and by all accounts, this year’s distribution was the most difficult yet.

“The major challenge this year was the expanded range of Russian FPV drones,” said Alina Teplitskaya, CEO of the Federation. “The Russian army has ramped up production to tens of thousands of drones a month, and the destruction is clearly visible. These drones aren’t only hitting the front line, they’re striking civilian targets deep inside Ukraine.”

She noted that this put the Kherson, Chernihiv, Dnipro, Sumy, and Zaporizhzhia regions at serious risk for the truck deliveries which are specifically being targeted because they claim trucks carry military equipment.

The solution was to shift to smaller vehicles, but that brought its own complications.

“There’s a severe shortage of drivers and vehicles across the country,” Teplitskaya said. “Many of the drivers we worked with in the past were drafted into the army this year, and those who remain are afraid to knowingly enter a danger zone, even for high pay.”

They started looking for drivers right after Tisha B’Av, and it took two weeks of negotiations to secure the number they needed. As a result, this year’s distribution took longer than any previous year of the war, including even the year it broke out. “We’re still learning the new rules of the game,” she said.

The Federation reported that drivers carrying packages to Nikopol and Marhanets in southern Dnipro region, and to Pavlohrad in the east, had to turn back after spotting Russian drones striking vehicles ahead of them on the road.

In the end, those packages were sent along with local Jews who had come to Dnipro, where the Federation’s offices and warehouses are based, and who brought the boxes back themselves for their families and neighbors.

The full-country effort, a joint undertaking between the Federation and the Rebbe’s shluchim living and working in cities throughout Ukraine, moved thousands of boxes by truck to Jews far from the front as well.

Separately, Yaakov Sinyakov, who works with Jewish soldiers year-round on behalf of the Federation, personally distributed the kits at bases and camps along the front and spoke with the soldiers about the upcoming Yomim Tovim.

Each package included a Hebrew-Ukrainian calendar, a booklet on the Tishrei Yomim Tovim, a jar of pure honey, grape juice, a special-edition liqueur, a yarmulke, water bottle, a refrigerator magnet with candle-lighting times, a wall calendar, and a set of Shabbos and Yom Tov candles.

New this year was a toy shofar for children, so they too could take part in preparing for the Yomim Tovim. The Federation also supplies communities with food for Yom Tov meals for the thousands expected to fill the shuls, on top of the humanitarian aid it provides year-round.

“We’re confident that the sound of the shofar blown by Jewish children in Ukraine will rise before the Kisei Hakavod and bring a good and sweet year, a year of peace and hope,” Rabbi Meir Stambler, chairman of the Jewish communities of Ukraine, said about the shofars distributed to children. “When the war broke out, none of us imagined it would last this long or take such a heavy toll.

“We pray that this coming year we merit the true and complete geulah, and the sound of Moshiach’s shofar.”

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