Rabbi Levitansky Addresses Chicago Gathering

good evening chicago [Music] leaders laymen eden [Music] for the jewish people jewish communities in ukraine and i'm honored to represent those who are living in ukraine praying [Music] my grandparents fled from a small village in the chernikov county in ukraine and they came to chicago and they built a beautiful family in chicago many of whom are still there there so i feel the privilege to address you in chicago as history repeats itself here i am running from ukraine but the difference is that over a hundred years ago my grandparents ran because of pogroms because of hatred that was being addressed towards the jewish people and like someone just mentioned before today jewish people are leaving ukraine with their heads held high they're privileged to be able to go somewhere but even more than that those that stay behind are also privileged because the local communities the local people the non-jewish people are praising the jewish people from around the world for praying for them for doing all different types of acts of goodness and kindness which is spilling over not only to the jewish community but also to the non-jewish people living in ukraine they are praising the jews from around the world all of these um zooms and and gatherings which are being live fed online in today's day and age these things are watched they're looked at from all over the world people are watching they're watching you and they see the posts on all the social media they are getting strength and support and comfort from the fact that the jewish community around the world has come together to give them blessings and support up until thursday morning of last week i was in my uh city where i've been for over 17 years now i had no plans of leaving i was there with my community and um as most of my other colleagues throughout ukraine in 35 cities throughout ukraine um almost all of us were here and here to stay with our communities and the reason is because when we came here we didn't come here on vacation we didn't come here because um it was a luxurious lifestyle i didn't move to sumi from harmonica california in order to live a luxurious life where they turn off the water at night or they'll turn off the electricity etc and anyone who's been to ukraine i think understands what i mean we have built up communities yidden these are jewish people who went through the second world war they went through communism um they they're thirsty to learn about their jewishness that's thirsty to learn about anything that's jewish thriving communities shows schools universities all types of programs that you would have in any american or or any anywhere else in the world the largest jewish center in the world is in the nepa petrovsk ukraine a thriving jewish community with hundreds of families all of these families are running and they're running for their life and um it's hard it's horrendous to watch and i know that you probably see a lot more than we do because we try not to look at what's going on we're very we're busy throughout the night it's now already 4 30 in the morning here um we're busy on the phones we're busy trying to get a hold of buses to get people out of places where they can't get out of um who are in sumi today are pretty much locked down they can't leave the city we're trying to get them out other cities like mariopol her son where um is in her son till today and he can't leave neither can anybody else in the city leave um these are these are things that we're busy with all day and getting phone calls from all over the world about my brother and my cousin and my uncle and and my bubba who were stuck in this place or in that place and can somebody get to them and somebody get them some food all of these are real um real real things that are happening on the ground we don't have time to really think about everything else that's going on and uh to be honest the most difficult decision that we had to make on thursday morning last week when we decided that it was time for us to leave the city i had to take my wife and my kids i couldn't find one driver for any price to take us out of the city and i just ended up packing everyone up in our car and doing the drive by myself with my wife 24 hours straight driving we joked along the way that our car turned into a tesla along the way because we had no idea how it was driving with the amount of sleep that we had for the past week it was impossible to just holding the wheel and and we were driving um and it was a very difficult decision we came to maldavia we spent shabbos in kishin of with other other rabbis their families from kharkov um from denver petrovsk from cherkasi it was a shabbos of unity shabbos of tears every one of us i'm not the biggest i'm not the most emotional uh of the group as you might see but the tears were just flowing the only thing we can think about is our communities who are locked in who need people who need food people who need medicines i on on friday as i was driving on my marathon drive one of the jews in in our community called me and he says rabbi he's on dialysis he hadn't had a chance to go to the hospital to get his dialysis for the whole week he's feeling extremely weak and he says i can't breathe and i and i i know i need a blood transfusion and i called the clinic and i asked them to give me a blood transfusion and they denied it they said we can't give it to you because it's all safe being saved for the soldiers for the army um i had to call the head doctor who i know very well to try to get this man a blood transfusion i said whatever the price is just you'll tell me later whatever it is i'm willing to pay the price just make sure this this man gets a pint of blood he just needed a blood transfusion and um he said rabbi i'll i'll get it for you it's going to be expensive but i'll get it for you after shabbos i called him something which should have been for free on a regular day cost me a thousand dollars um all of the food that that we're getting for people it's becoming less and less available it's becoming more and more expensive a bus ride out of the city which on a regular day would cost a few hundred dollars you can't even get that bus ride for 10 20 000 people don't want to drive people don't want to get out on the road um and it's difficult to get people out to safety and what i mean out to safety the cities that many of the cities not all of them but many of the cities are being bombarded and it's very very it's it's a sakana it's it's it's it's literal um it's a people are in danger they can't go out of their homes they can't go out on the street there's curfews you can't go out at night etc i have to reiterate that the to phyllis the tahilan the mitzvas that people are doing around the world are being broadcast people see it they're getting physical from that they are they are going down to the bunkers with their tohilum because they know that jews around the world are saying to him for them and they literally feel i hear this from my community and i know from the other rabbis they hear from their communities they know that they're in hashem's hands and they know that at this point the only thing that's going to help them in any way are the phyllis the the prayers of people around the world and with that said in order to save them in a physical sense we do need we do need funds we need funds and i wanna um just clarify because i get a lot of calls even from from colleagues and from people around the world and they wanna know how much do you need what do you need the funds for um what can i give money to and the answer is going to change on the minute today i need a blood transfusion for somebody tomorrow i need a loaf of bread for somebody the next day i need a car or or a bus to get people out of the city um on a another another day i might need money to bribe somebody in order to get him out or to get him in it's it's endless um and there's no way that anybody could put a price tag on any of these things because it changes as we speak so it's it's a very i understand it's a very difficult thing to just um give to dhaka to donate and to feel like you're actually helping the fact is that when we on the ground know that we have the backing when i know that there that there is a fund which is there and i can turn to them and i can say i need i need the five thousand dollars right now wired to this bank account or i need um this amount of money i know it's going to be there it gives me the ability the mobility and i can get around i can do what i need to do and this is not i'm not speaking for myself i'm speaking again for rabbis in 35 cities some of whom are still there very few unfortunately and most of us are out of our cities but we're still in touch 24 7 and i reiterate 24 7 this shabbos was was a regular day for all of us we were literally on the phones speaking to people making sure that they're safe this is a matter of success it's a matter of saving lives many people were traveling on the roads the whole shabbos and we need to be in touch with them etc so um that's that's one thing another part of this whole story is that many of the people who are getting out and barak hashem they are getting out they're coming out to the borders and they're being greeted by the who are on the borders on the border cities on the side of ukraine and then on the side of maldavia or or romania or poland and the amount of food and clothing and uh when we came to moldavia the children were there my kids went into this room that was that had bags of toys who was thinking about toys we're thinking about saving our lives they were thinking about making sure that kids that come in are have a bag of toys that they can choose toys toys clothing um mattresses are being bought kitchens are being put together in order to cook in maldavia in in kitchener they're cooking for hundreds of people daily and the meals are just going out all over there's it's an incredible amount of money that's being spent it's being spent well and people are getting what they need barak hashem the more we have the more we can provide so our plea to you is in rookies in spiritual sense keep up the keep it up storm the heavens we want to see mashiach right now the first siren that i heard a week and a half ago on thursday morning i told my children this is the the chauffeur of mashiach this is the the sound of the chauffeur because we never heard a siren before um and and i i still believe that that can that could and could and will be and uh we're all going to israel with mashiach now keep up the the spirit storm the heavens and it's going to happen and on the other hand we still have to worry about the physical lives of these people they're our brothers we're uh the whole jewish people are one one being i can tell you that we feel it here the jewish people feel the non-jewish people have they'll feel it as well and uh whatever you can do to support the work of the different children around it will be much appreciated and they should should bench you and all of us that we should see the goula right now thank you very much