MAGAZINE ABOUT LIFE IN ISRAEL

An Odyssey from Odessa to Israel

in Monthly Report

When Golda (name has been changed) visited her hometown of Odessa last summer, she considered moving back to Ukraine. While the strictest Corona regulations still prevailed in her new home country of Israel, Odessa was bursting with life. Holiday-goers strolled everywhere, cafés and restaurants were open as normal again, and people seemed happy and relaxed. Not even a year later, everything changed. War was already raging. “When I came back, people’s faces had completely changed. They all looked at least ten years older.”

Golda’s last visit to Odessa in April of this year was part of a nearly month-long odyssey to bring her children back to Israel and leave the war behind. An odyssey that actually began when Golda’s ex-husband didn’t let the children go back to Israel after a visit in the summer of 2017. The four had made Aliya in 2015, but while Golda was coping well with her new life in Haifa, her then-husband grew increasingly dissatisfied. So dissatisfied that he no longer saw his life in Israel, and kept the children with him. Since then, Golda has been fighting to get her sons, now 14 and 16 years old, back with her in Israel. She often felt like she didn’t stand a chance from the start. “I’ve never had anything to do with lawyers in my life before. I also didn’t know anyone who had gone through something similar. And I encountered resistance everywhere, people in Israel sent me to Ukraine and vice versa. Nobody could really help me, the process dragged on like chewing gum and then Corona came along,” says Golda on the phone. She would prefer to remain anonymous because of her work as a teacher, but also because of her children, who are now finally in Israel and have to find a new footing here.


Last year life was still flourishing in Odessa (Photo Credit: Pixabay)

When Russia attacked Ukraine, which also came as a complete surprise to Golda and many of her Ukrainian friends, the early 40-year-old decided that she must and will bring her children back to Israel, whatever the cost. For Golda, the war was almost like the first real chance she got in the fight to get back her children, because now everyone understood that she had to get them out of the country, especially since their father had disappeared in the meantime. “My children were away at the beginning of the war in the south of the country. The easiest way would have been to go to Moldova, but the war had also disrupted air travel there, so I bought a ticket to Bucharest. I’ve never been to Romania in my life, but I was just lucky because I found friends and acquaintances everywhere who helped me.” Golda experienced the first happy coincidence when she visited her manicurist in Israel.  Her manicurist also had family in Ukraine and knew a Romanian taxi driver who could drive Golda and her children safely out of the war zone.

With the help of her parents, who temporarily took care of her two children in Ukraine, Golda scraped together the necessary funds for the driver and all three of them safely arrived in Bucharest. Thankfully this was just at the right time, as a few days later it was reported that the fighting was right where the kids had been staying.

One of her sons no longer had a passport, but the Romanian border officials turned a blind eye. In Bucharest, the three were finally safe together. But because their father had destroyed the children’s Israeli passports and one of her sons had also lost his Ukrainian passport, a bureaucratic wrangling began. You can only apply for passports for minors at the Israeli consulate if both parents are physically present. But now what Golda had been missing in all the previous years had happened, she finally had a bit of luck. Things started falling into place when she got help from everywhere, from her friends, colleagues from work – together her acquaintances thought about how they could help Golda and her children. And help her they did.

Since Russia attacked Ukraine in February, the country has been at war (Photo Credit: Pixabay)

One of the most important supporters became the Chabad Rebbezin in Bucharest. Mediated by a Swiss friend, she organized an apartment for Golda and her children in the Romanian capital. This gave Golda financial freedom to figure out the next steps. The three found a temporary home at Chabad and even celebrated Passover. “Almost no one worked over the Passover holiday, so we got nowhere with our request to the Israeli Ministry of the Interior. The Jewish Agency only catered to newcomers, but we weren’t. So we waited and, thanks to all the help, just enjoyed our time in Bucharest. We went to the parks and looked at the city.”

Three weeks later, the three finally landed in Israel with a temporary permit. “I’m so happy to finally have my kids with me. Israel has a very slow and gentle integration program for teenagers and my children feel comfortable here. We have a lot of picnics and barbecues with friends,” says Golda and then emphasizes what absolutely needs to be included in this article because it is so important for her to say once again: “Without the help of my friends and acquaintances, it would all have taken much longer, we would never have made it alone.” Thankfully for Golda and her sons, she wasn’t alone, and she will never be again.

Based in Kadita, an off-the-grid village in the Upper Galilee, Rebecca is a curious dreamer who dedicates a lot of her time to learning the works of our ancient sages, walking along rivers, and empowering tech companies to pursue mission-driven product work. Rebecca is obsessed with all forms of creative expression and hopes to help others share their own creations as a way of healing and learning from one another.

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