With public school doors wide open, will these Ukrainian refugee children get locked out of a Torah education?
The large venue, which normally hosts Christian pilgrims who visit adjacent Nazareth, is now home to a group of refugees. Sitting quietly amid the faded ’90s décor of the lobby, clutching documents and new Israeli IDs, their status is unmistakable.
The meager possessions make a mockery of a luggage cart standing around. The menfolk are noticeably absent — left behind fighting or unable to leave. But it’s the refugees’ expressions that really give them away, a certain resignation, and an intense sadness about their eyes.
“We never thought that Putin would actually invade — he’d been threatening Ukraine for years,” says Dima, a young software engineer from Odessa, and due to his eye problems, one of the few men allowed to leave. “It all began so suddenly.”
The scene is being duplicated at hotels and absorption centers across Israel, as hundreds of refugees arrive daily, in the largest wave of immigration since the fall of the Soviet Union.
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