Ukrainian soldiers of Jewish fathers and sons mark holy days under the clouds of Russian war: NPR

Asher and David Cherkaskyi, Ukrainian Orthodox Jews, father and son and both on the front lines of Ukraine’s war against Russian occupation, in Dnipro in July.

Eleanor Beardsley / NPR

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Asher and David Cherkaskyi, Ukrainian Orthodox Jews, father and son and both on the front lines of Ukraine’s war against Russian occupation, in Dnipro in July.

Eleanor Beardsley / NPR

For Ukrainian Orthodox Jews Asher and David Cherkaskyi, father and son fighting together on the front lines in the eastern Donbas region, defeating Russia became especially important to them because of their faith.

While Russian President Vladimir Putin falsely claims his military is “liberating” Ukrainians from the Nazi regime, the Cherkaskys say the exact opposite – they say Ukraine is fighting what evil of the fascist dictatorship in Moscow.

NPR met the father and son in July and contacted them again by phone in September as Jews around the world were celebrating Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, and preparing for Yom Kippur, Day of atonement, beginning on Tuesday night.

Fifty-two-year-old Asher remembers what it felt like to be a Jew in the Soviet Union.

“If you say you’re a Jew, you’ll be demoted in school. And if you fight in the army, you won’t get a medal no matter how brave you are. You’ll just get sent to the the most dangerous place,” he said. “I remember anecdotes and propaganda to humiliate and intimidate us. Jews and other nationalities were considered inferior. In the Soviet Union only Russians were good enough to rule.”

He said that the Soviet Union was a land of fear and violence and that continues in the Russian Federation today.

David Cherkaskyi, 20, has only known about an independent Ukraine, which declared its independence in 1991. “Ukraine is a completely free country,” he told NPR. “You can do what you want here. You can go to church, you can be Muslim or Jewish, it doesn’t matter.”

Both men say they are proud of the Jewish President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The NPR met the Cherkaskyis in their town of Dnipro, just hours before David deployed to the Donbas front. The city has a large Jewish population and is one of the centers of religious calligraphy, home to the Torah and other hand-engraved Jewish parchments.

Itskhak Maltsev carves a Torah at the Menorah Business and Cultural Center in Dnipro in July.

Eleanor Beardsley / NPR

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Itskhak Maltsev carves a Torah at the Menorah Cultural and Business Center in Dnipro in July.

Eleanor Beardsley / NPR

Asher said he first started identifying as a Ukrainian Jew in 2014, during Russia’s occupation of Crimea, where his family lived. He recalled the referendum on reunification with Russia.

“A lot of buses have been carrying Russian citizens to vote to leave Ukraine and join Russia. We know we can’t follow this. It goes against our conscience, our values ​​and our allegiance. me towards compatriots of Ukraine.”

So they ran away, leaving behind his business and their house. He joined a volunteer unit in Dnipro, participated in several missions in the Donetsk region.

Asher Cherkaskyi says that the so-called voting process is The Kremlin has just been held in an attempt to justify occupying four regions of Ukraine was even more difficult and cynical than the Crimean referendum.

But he said that Putin’s move to the army was “by trickery”. hundreds of thousands of new soldiers – who Cherkaskyi said was “unprepared, coerced and threatened” – did not at least depress the morale of Ukrainian soldiers.

“We are protecting our country, our home, our family and our children. So how could it affect us?” he asks.

Ukraine launched a major counteroffensive in September to retake parts of the northeastern and southern parts of the country. And Russian forces are now facing another battlefield defeat in one of the areas that Putin claims Russia is said to have annexed from Ukraine.

Cherkaskyi said that Ukraine is pursuing the Russians and will continue to drive them from “our land.” He said that the elite Russian units had been killed and the Russians no longer had the weapons they had fought with at the beginning of the war.

According to their recent communication with NPR, both father and son are still fighting in Donbas.

But former Rosh Hashana, Asher says they can celebrate as usual, with blessings, apples and honey. And, according to him, they said a “prayer for the light to overcome the darkness that is approaching Europe and the whole world from the Russian Federation.”