A young Brooklyn rabbi goes to ancient Kiev to help rebuild his people’s covenant with God. Two years later, he’s presiding over . . . : A Faith Rekindled

At first it was only for three months, so the Brooklyn rabbi said,why not? We are needed. Let’s go help Ukrainian Jews who have never set foot in a synagogue or lighted Shabbas candles.

So Rabbi Yaakov Bleich said goodby to New York, gathered his wife, Bashy, and headed off to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, where Jewish life once flourished, to renew his people’s ancient covenant with God.

It was 1990, and perestroika was in full swing. But Kiev’s ancient synagogue gaped empty, haunted only by elderly wraiths who had survived Nazi horrors and Communist-sanctioned anti-Semitism and were now beyond fear. By the time Bleich arrived, they were mostly ignored by local authorities with more pressing problems on their hands than stamping out religion.

The 25-year-old rabbi found thousands more Jews--mostly the young and able-bodied--making frantic plans to leave the Soviet Union, bailing from the gray streets and endless food lines for a promised land in America or Israel. In the last two years alone, 30,000 of Kiev’s 120,000 Jews have emigrated.

It seemed beyond hope that even the most inspired rabbi could establish a community here in three months, and Bleich of Brooklyn spoke no Russian or Ukrainian.

Fast-forward two years, to 1992.

There is the synagogue that the Nazis once used as a stable, its courtyard bustling with men wearing prayer shawls, skullcaps and phylacteries on their foreheads. Next door is a booming yeshiva, where hundreds of students study Hebrew and math, English and the Torah.

There is Bashy, a scarf wrapped around her head in keeping with Orthodox tradition, instructing local women in how to keep a kosher home.

And there, in the center of it all, is Rabbi Bleich, his black robes and long beard flowing like a biblical prophet’s as he speaks in rapid Russian.

To the surprise of many--including Bleich--the three-month visit is entering its third year, and the synagogue, resuscitated from decades of neglect, is thriving.

Indeed, many say the rabbi has sparked a Jewish Renaissance of sorts in Kiev, one that is quickening as Jews seek out their religious and cultural roots in the wake of the Communist collapse.

“Before Rabbi Bleich came here, there was nothing,” says Levi Ziskind, 72. “He opened up a whole new world to us. He energized us. No one can ever understand what he did.”

Bleich, 27, is busy from early morning until late at night, teaching classes in Jewish tradition, arranging a certificate to permit emigration, overseeing synagogue repairs, starting a meals-on-wheels program for senior citizens, negotiating with school officials to get the yeshiva accredited and fielding a stream of visitors and midnight phone calls from America and Israel. He even lectures on Judaism on his own TV show.

Many are surprised at his youth and vigor.

“They come here, and they expect to see this old man with a white beard, but it’s difficult for old men with beards to come here and live,” Bleich says gleefully.

It is an exhilarating if exhausting homecoming for the rabbi, whose great-grandparents fled pogroms in Ukraine almost a century ago, building a new life in America.

Now things have come full circle as their great-grandson returns to rebuild the community. His synagogue is in Podol, the ancient Jewish quarter, where 14 temples once stood amid cobblestone streets and tenement housing.

But after more than 70 years of communism and the Nazi occupation that decimated Kiev’s pre-World War II Jewish population of 2 million, Judaism has been practically extinguished in Ukraine. The last rabbi emigrated to Israel in the mid-1980s. Bleich estimates that only several hundred Kiev Jews keep kosher.

Consider Vladislav Datotchniy, a 24-year-old entrepreneur and assimilated Jew. Datotchniy’s grandparents perished at Babi Yar, the ravine in Kiev where the Nazis slaughtered up to 200,000 people--three-quarters of them Jews--with Ukrainian help in 1941.

Datotchniy became commercially involved in the Babi Yar legacy when his firm manufactured the commemorative medals for the 50th anniversary of the killings. “Babi Yar has some significance to me, but it’s emotional, not religious,” he says. “I just feel sadness about all the people killed.”

Clearly, Bleich faces an uphill struggle in drawing Jews like Datotchniy back into the fold. Emigration also drains his flock--the first year, only two of 48 students were left at year’s end. About 150 people attended services on Yom Kippur; about 100 come regularly.

But Bleich, like many, believes Jewish emigration from Ukraine has peaked. There will always be those who stay behind, he says, because their children are here, their parents are here, their lives and businesses are here.

This stands in sharp contrast to places like Lithuania, where most of the 7,000 Jews who remain from an original settlement of 250,000 are leaving, prompted by independence and memories of the Lithuanian role in the Holocaust.

“In Vilnius, there isn’t any rabbi who came in from the outside world to build back up what was left. They certainly don’t have the Jewish institutions being set up,” says Rabbi Ephraim Sherman of Karlin Stolin Temple in New York, a close friend of Bleich. Officials at the temple originally suggested that Bleich go to Kiev.

Ukraine, with its much larger Jewish population, has a greater chance for Jewish revival, Bleich says, pointing out that his religious schools--one for boys and another for girls--enroll 450 students and have a waiting list of 150. It is for these that Bleich perseveres, fashioning a community from shards of memories and ritual.

Oleksander Burakovsky, director of the Kiev Sholom Aleichem Cultural Society, says the elderly, who never lost their faith, and the children, who are learning it for the first time, are the pillars.

But members of the two generations in between, who grew up without any Jewish consciousness, also are beginning to visit the synagogue to ask questions.

“They knew they were Jewish, and they had been persecuted for being Jewish, so they came to me and asked, ‘What’s yevrei ?’ ” Bleich says, using the Russian word that denotes Jewish origin.

He continues: “I tell them that the reason they were persecuted is that they were Jewish, and it’s what kept them Jewish, so some good has come out of it.”

Today, Bleich says, the Ukrainian government is reaching out to the Jewish community. Schoolchildren are finally being taught that most of the Babi Yar victims were Jewish. Last fall, an extensive exhibit on Krishchiatik, the main boulevard of Kiev, featured written accounts by survivors of the Holocaust and grisly photos of piled-up corpses.

At the 50th anniversary commemoration, Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev acknowledged their nations’ history of anti-Semitism and vowed it would never happen again. Still, as Kravchuk talked of the “black pages” in Jewish-Ukrainian relations, he stopped short of probing the Ukrainian complicity.

So it’s not surprising that many Jews are still wary. Some say they see anti-Semitic graffiti, are called names or have trash thrown at them. But others say life has improved tremendously.

“I don’t feel anti-Semitism here,” says Michael Zhidovetsky, an elderly man who is waiting to emigrate to Los Angeles, where he has a son. If someone calls him a name, “Well, that happens all the time. It’s no matter.”

Bleich says the most difficult task is teaching people to live honestly. “It was so natural for them to lie, to steal. They had to do it to survive,” he says.

Keeping kosher dietary laws also is tough in the former Soviet Union, wracked by food shortages and distribution snafus as the economy breaks down.

“If you can’t get meat, how are you going to do the ritual slaughter?” Bleich asks.

(The rabbi’s family keeps kosher by having supplies shipped in from the West, Bashy Bleich says.)

When Bleich stepped into the void two years ago, he took up Russian and within several months was speaking well enough to get around. Shrewdly, he enlisted the support of Communist officials as well as local Jews. Bleich now speaks regularly with Kravchuk.

He also met with Kiev city officials, cajoling, begging and negotiating permission to set up religious schools that would be accredited within the Ukrainian public school system.

For that first sabbath in Ukraine, Bleich taught eight young voices to sing the most central Hebrew prayer, “Hear, O Israel.” When Passover neared, he persuaded a local bakery to make matzoh, hosted a Seder dinner and urged the students to do the same at home.

Boris Lerner, 18, a yeshiva student, is one Ukrainian Jew who is eager to learn Jewish ritual. “I want to learn the history, the religion of Judaism,” he says. “The Soviet system didn’t permit it.”

With his many connections, Bleich also raised thousands of dollars from temples and organizations in America and Israel to provide funds for everything from religious books to teachers.

The Kiev synagogue also enjoys close ties with Karlin Stolin, Sherman’s Hasidic synagogue in Brooklyn. Bleich graduated from its rabbinical seminary, where he earned the admiration of temple leaders.

“He’s not afraid to take courageous steps,” Sherman says. “He was the first. When life was extremely difficult in the U.S.S.R., he went there to rekindle Jewish awareness. After he showed it could be done, others followed.”

But even in Kiev, where he was welcomed, Bleich’s arrival caused some waves. Burakovsky, for one, says he is skeptical of the American rabbi’s methods.

“He doesn’t understand the subtleties and complexities about Jewish life here,” Burakovsky says. “He creates situations of tension. He said, ‘I need a school. Who do I pay and how much?’ ”

Burakovsky fears such tactics may reignite prejudices about Jews. But in the same breath, he also praises the rabbi’s success in establishing religious instruction.

As for Bleich, he is too busy to heed such grumbling. He envisions a time when Ukrainian Jews will get religious training in Israel, then return to teach in Kiev. But he realizes the paradoxical risk of such programs.

“The closer the people come to religion, the more they want to leave,” Bleich says, noting that it is easier to be a practicing Orthodox Jew in the United States or Israel than in Kiev, where there are no support networks.

But these are hypothetical situations--and meanwhile, much work remains. Bleich says creating a vibrant Jewish community in Ukraine provides challenges and rewards that he couldn’t find in Israel or America. He can’t say how long he’ll stay. But the young rabbi has a sardonic retort for those who ask:

“I tell them, ‘When the last Jew leaves, that’s when I’ll leave.’ ”