The rabbis came from Israel and Ukraine, from Azerbaijan and France, from Thailand and farther still, as thousands of Jews filed into a graveyard in Queens under a sea of black hats.
The roughly 6,500 orthodox rabbis, in New York City for an annual conference, arrived in a city convulsed by protests over the war between Israel and Hamas.
“We are losing everything we have,” Rabbi Avraham Wolff, the chief Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi of Odesa, Ukraine, said in Hebrew.
And just before he left for New York, Russian rockets fell on Odesa.
“For them I have to be strong.”He added, “If I have to cry, I do it under my blankets.”
Persons:
—, Avraham Wolff, “, ”
Organizations:
Lubavitch, Hamas
Locations:
Israel, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, France, Thailand, Queens, New York City, Odesa, New York, Russian