CHIȘINĂU — In a ceremony attended by the Chief Rabbi of Israel and President of the Chief Rabbinate Council, Rabbi Kalman Ber, alongside chief rabbis of several countries and guests from across the Jewish world, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Axelrod was inaugurated on Wednesday as Chief Rabbi of the Republic of Moldova.

The setting carried its own weight. The ceremony was held in the Glaziers’ Synagogue, the only synagogue in the country that remained open throughout the communist era — the building from which, decades ago, Jews in Chișinău quietly obtained matzah at the risk of their families’ safety.

Memory in the room

The ceremony was opened by Rabbi Alexander Prochansky of Rishon LeZion, who spoke of his own childhood in Chișinău — of the circumcision Rabbi Zalman Abelsky performed for him at personal risk, and of the matzah his father brought home in secret from that same synagogue.

“My father said he had brought my grandmother special food for her diet,” he recalled. “He didn’t tell us it was matzah, so that we wouldn’t tell our friends at school and put the family in danger.”

Rabbi Zushe Abelsky, Head Shliach to Moldova and son of the late Chief Rabbi, offered the Priestly Blessing to the assembly before speaking of his father. He described how the Chabad community in Moldova became the central anchor for tens of thousands of Jewish refugees who fled Ukraine, and repeated a sentence one of them had said to him: “Zushe, your Chabad House is our pillow.”

He closed with particular thanks to Rabbi Shneur Zalman and Chana Tiefenbrun, who coordinated the entire event, and to the four other emissary families who live and work in Moldova around the clock.

Writing from North America, Gary Torgow, Chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, recognised “with gratitude the devoted leadership provided by Rabbi Zushe Abelsky and the Abelsky family, whose unwavering commitment has helped sustain and nurture Jewish life in Moldova.” The inauguration, he wrote, “reflects both the honoring of that remarkable legacy and the promise of a vibrant future.”

From across the border, Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki, Chief Rabbi of Dnipro, sent a message of congratulation on the inauguration. He thanked the Jewish community of Chișinău for opening its doors to Ukrainian Jews and caring for them as its own, saying that much of the pain of the war had been eased by that welcome.

Mr Alexander Bilinkis, Chairman of the Jewish Community of the Republic of Moldova, welcomed the guests and recalled entering the same synagogue as a ten-year-old boy. “It was my first encounter with a world I did not know — with Judaism,” he said. “Rabbi Zalman Abelsky revived Jewish life here on the Rebbe’s shlichus, and his grandson, the new Chief Rabbi, continues in his path.”

Rabbi Shlomo Chaim Peles, a member of the leadership of the Jewish communities in the CIS, was honoured with the recitation of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s chapter of Psalms.

Israel’s new Ambassador to Moldova, Mr Yoram Elron, conveyed the blessings of Israel and its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, noting that Rabbi Axelrod continues his own family’s rabbinic line in the country. He called the appointment a fitting one, said he had already seen the new Chief Rabbi’s work at close range, and praised Chabad’s activity over the years as having given life to Moldovan Jewry.

Thirty-five years

Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, New York, measured the moment in years. Thirty-five of them have passed since Rabbi Zalman Abelsky arrived in Moldova, and the country’s small community has since become something far larger than its numbers — never more so than in the weeks after February 2022, when Moldova stood at the crossing point for Jews fleeing the war and met them there.

Emissaries, he said, are people who choose to be doers. He closed by wishing the community and its leadership success.

“After the darkness comes a great light”

The central address was delivered by the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Kalman Ber, who opened by praising the new Chief Rabbi’s father, Rabbi Moshe Axelrod, for the privilege of bringing his son’s light into the world.

“The town of Radin became known throughout the Jewish world because the Chofetz Chaim lived there,” Rabbi Ber said. “From today, Chișinău will be remembered in the Jewish world not for the Kishinev pogroms, but for Rabbi Axelrod.”

The reference needed no explanation in the hall. In April 1903, over the last days of Passover, forty-nine Jews were murdered in Chișinău and hundreds more were injured; the violence drew protest from around the world and fixed the city’s name in Jewish memory. The Jewish cemetery in Chișinău still holds the graves of the victims, and a genizah containing Torah scrolls desecrated in those days.

Buried in the same cemetery is Rabbi Yehuda Leib Tsirelson, Chief Rabbi of Bessarabia, who led the community in Chișinău from 1908, built a Jewish school system in the region from kindergarten through yeshiva, and represented Bessarabian Jewry in the Romanian parliament. He was killed in Chișinău in 1941, in the first weeks of the German invasion.

Rabbi Ber blessed Rabbi Zushe Abelsky to continue in the path of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and of his late father, and praised Rabbi Arye Goldberg, Director of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe, for his work developing Jewish communities across the continent.

Turning to the date — the eve of Rosh Chodesh Elul — Rabbi Ber noted that Hallel is recited each new month in thanks for the renewal of the moon after it has disappeared from view. “After the darkness comes a great light,” he said. “That is exactly what is happening here. After years of cruel severance — pogroms, Nazis, communists — the light of Judaism is shining again.”

Speaking as the son of Holocaust survivors, he said that the Jewish people mark their victories not with parades of weapons but by adding light. “Today, here in Moldova, we kindle a great light,” he said. “That is our real victory over every pogrom carried out in this city.”

From the presidency

The President of the Republic of Moldova, Maia Sandu, wrote to the new Chief Rabbi on the day of the ceremony, on presidential letterhead and addressing him by the office.

“I congratulate you on your inauguration as Chief Rabbi of the Republic of Moldova,” the President wrote — “a moment of profound significance, taking place for the first time in twelve years.” Assuming the mission, she added, is a source of joy for the Jewish community of the country and for society as a whole.

“The history of the Republic of Moldova is indissolubly linked to the history of the Jewish community,” she continued. “For centuries, Jews have contributed to the cultural, economic, scientific and spiritual development of these lands. This heritage obliges us to respect, to gratitude, and to a firm commitment against every form of antisemitism, xenophobia and intolerance.”

The President assured the Chief Rabbi of her openness to work together in fostering interfaith dialogue and mutual respect among all faiths.

A former President of Moldova, Igor Dodon, also sent his wishes.

Letters of blessing arrived from chief rabbis and Jewish leaders around the world, among them Rabbi Berel Lazar, Chief Rabbi of Russia, who wrote from Moscow expressing confidence that the new Chief Rabbi would merit “to restore the crown to its former glory.”

The inauguration

Among those present were Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, New York; the Chief Rabbi of Odessa and Southern Ukraine, Rabbi Avraham Wolff; the Chief Rabbi of the Netherlands, Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs; the Chief Rabbi of Romania, Rabbi Rafael Shaffer; the Chief Rabbi of Chernivtsi and head emissary to Bukovina, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Glitzenstein; Dayan Levi Raskin, Rov and Dayan of the Lubavitch community of London; Rabbi Meir Stambler, Chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine; Rabbi Arye Goldberg, Director of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe; Rabbi Shlomo Chaim Peles of the leadership of the Jewish communities in the CIS; Rabbi Dovid Nachshon, Chairman of the Chabad Mitzvah Tanks in the Holy Land, of Tzivos Hashem and of the Chabad institutions of Nof HaGalil; and his son Rabbi Menachem Mendel Nachshon, Chief Rabbi of Nof HaGalil.

The ceremony reached its climax with the inauguration itself. Rabbi Moshe Axelrod, the new Chief Rabbi’s father, together with the Chief Rabbi of Israel and Rabbi Meir Stambler, helped Rabbi Axelrod wrap himself in a tallit as he recited the Shehecheyanu blessing. Many in the hall were in tears at a scene without precedent in Moldova for decades.

A lineage continued

Rabbi Axelrod, 36, was born and raised in Atlit, the son of the Chabad emissary to that city, Rabbi Moshe Axelrod. He is the grandson of Rabbi Zalman Abelsky, of blessed memory, who was sent to Moldova by the Lubavitcher Rebbe in 1989, while the country was still under Soviet rule, and who became its first Chief Rabbi after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Following his grandfather’s passing, Rabbi Axelrod came to Moldova and took up the work. Thousands of Moldovan Jews — and the tens of thousands of Jewish travellers who pass through the country each year en route to the holy gravesites in Ukraine — came to know his devotion, in material matters and spiritual ones alike. For several years he served in practice as the rabbi of Moldova. On Wednesday the role became official.

The appointment followed a vote two months ago, when the heads of the country’s six Jewish communities convened for a special election. Rabbi Axelrod was chosen by a wide margin, and the state authorities recognised the result immediately.

He studied in Chabad yeshivos in Lod and Be’er Sheva and received rabbinic ordination through the Lemaan Yilmedu ordination board, whose certificates bear the signatures of Rabbi Eliyahu Yochanan Gurary, Rav of Holon; Rabbi Chaim Shlomo Diskin, Rav of Kiryat Ata; and Rabbi Chaim Yosef Ginsburg of Ramat Aviv, among others. He was separately certified to officiate at weddings by former Chief Rabbi Lau.

Rabbi Hershel Schachter, Rosh Yeshiva of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University, sent a blessing to the Jewish communities of Moldova on the election of their new Chief Rabbi, with a prayer for his success.

“To every Jewish home”

In his own remarks, Rabbi Axelrod spoke of the weight of the responsibility placed on his shoulders, and of his readiness for it. He pledged to do everything in his power to bring the light of Judaism into every Jewish home in the country.

“We will bring redemption to every Jewish home,” he said, “until we merit, with God’s help, the true and complete redemption.”