They started with 12 elderly men in a forsaken shul. Their mission: Bringing Torah to the 45,000 Jews who had lost almost every vestige of Yiddishkeit to the Nazis and Communism

Photos: Rebbetzin Chasi Baksht

In 1993, Chasi Baksht had everything a woman could ask for. “My husband was a rosh kollel and I had a great job teaching and organizing 11 musicals a year,” she says. “We lived in Bayit Vegan close to my parents [Leibel and author Malka Adler, a”h], who pampered me. I never began cooking for Shabbos until the chickens that my mother-in-law cut up for me arrived together with a selection of cakes,” she says.

And yet, something inexplicable prompted Chasi to move beyond her comfort zone. “One day, I suddenly decided that we needed to be independent. I wondered if we should, gasp, leave Israel for a year,” she says.

Chasi’s husband soon had an answer. Word was out that Ohr Somayach was looking for a couple to send to Odessa. Rabbi Baksht turned to Rav Elyashiv ztz”l for guidance. “Who says I’m suitable?” Rabbi Baksht asked.

“Who says there is someone more suitable?” the Rav replied.

Family and friends were incredulous. “What about your children?” they cried. “Remember when Laiky got frostbite? Remember how Shira just had meningitis? What will happen to them in the Ukrainian winter?” Rebbetzin Baksht smiles at the recollection.

“The school secretary told me not to bother filling in the forms requesting leave without pay... I’d be back before she could process them. The more they tried to discourage me, the more determined I became to show them I could do it.” She smiles at the memory, and in her eyes, I see the determination that fueled her journey.

Over the summer, Rebbetzin Baksht prepared for the move, taking out a calendar and packing every single thing she’d need for every day of the coming year, down to dried fruit for Tu B’shvat.

As soon as the Bakshts landed, though, they realized the naysayers had been right. They’d been prepared for no phone contact. They weren’t prepared for a tiny kitchen without counters, hot water only on pre-announced dates, bedbugs, and a bathtub that flooded the neighbor below every time the Rebbetzin poured a gas-heated bucket of water over a child.

But while their initial instinct was to immediately return to Israel, flights to Israel were few and far between, and by the time the first flight out was available, a week later, the family had begun to adjust. (And thanks to Rebbetzin Baksht’s phenomenal organizational skills, one of their boxes included a can of insecticide.)

Work Begins

To the casual tourist, Odessa shows her best face: The Potemkin Steps, a giant stairway that leads from the port into the city, where the spectacular buildings include the Opera house, the second biggest opera in the world. The Seventh-Kilometer Market is the largest open-air market in Europe.

But look closer and you’ll see one of the worst economic performances in the world. Once a former economic powerhouse for the Soviet Union, today nearly 60 percent of Ukrainians live below the poverty line. With the Nazi invasion in 1941, 80 percent of the region’s 210,000 Jews were killed. The end of the war brought Soviet rule and communism until 1991, when Ukraine declared independence. Had 46 years of communism wiped out all vestiges of Yiddishkeit? The Bakshts were about to find out.