Belaaz Speaks with Rabbi Wolff One Week After Surviving A Russian Drone Attack – “Hashem Covered Us Like a Blanket“

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Wolff, Chief Rabbi of Kherson, Ukraine, has survived not one, but two attempts on his life during the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.

First, in 2022, he was shot at by Russian soldiers while trasnporting desperately needed medication for Ukrainian Jews. And last week, a kamikaze drone exploded on his car, yet he, his wife and 19-year-old daughter emerged unscathed, while these explosions always result in death or horrific injuries.

Belaaz spoke with the Rabbi, who shared both of his stories of miraculous salvation.

Could you tell us a little bit about what happened?

Well, we were on the way to Kherson. It was exactly a week ago at this time, maybe 10 minutes earlier. It was 7:40, maybe 7:45 PM.

And it was maybe two kilometers before the military checkpoint at the entry to our city. And then, out of nowhere, to the right, right in front of my car, the drone, the kamikaze drone, came out of nowhere.
It’s not shooting; it’s blowing up by itself. And then I saw the drone. For less than a second, I tried to figure out where it was coming from. And then it blew up.

Well, I stopped the car. I opened the door. I looked at my wife and my daughter, and I saw we were all alive. We opened the doors, walked out of the car, and… it was a neis.

This is because what happened defied all statistics. All of the other people who were in the same situation were either wounded very, very seriously, or they were killed. There’s no situation where you walk away from something like that with absolutely nothing. The only thing that happened was the airbag damaging my glasses. But we walked out alive. And Baruch Hashem .. a big, big neis.

To give you a mashal…Once, many years ago, when we had a new child. My wife was born in Israel, so we went specially to Israel for the birth. And then after, we went back to Ukraine. In Israel, the temperature was 25 degrees Celsius. We were on the airplane, and when we landed in Kyiv, it was minus 25. So the difference between Israel and Ukraine was 50 degrees, right away.

So, I took a blanket and I put it all over my son to make him comfortable and warm. So what happens when you cover your son like that? He doesn’t see anything. He feels comfortable, he feels safe, and he doesn’t see anything because he was completely covered, right? This is the same situation with the Aibishter. He was throwing a blanket over our family… full of love, full of protection. He protected us 100%. He said, “Don’t worry, I’m with you.”

What was going through your mind when the drone first hit?

I don’t know. I asked my wife… The next day, when we walked from my house to the synagogue, I asked her, we walked together to say the Gomel blessing in the synagogue. We made a big farbrengen.

So I asked my daughter, “What is Hashem trying to show us? Can you understand what the siman (sign) was?”

My daughter, she’s 19 years old, told me right away. She said, “Abba, the miracle happened right here in our city, in Kherson. The miracle didn’t happen in Kyiv, not in Odessa, not in Israel. The miracle happened here in Kherson. This means that we must continue our activities. We must continue to do the job for the Jewish people who are in Kherson, who are staying in Kherson in such a difficult situation.”

Amazing.

It is. I’m waking up every day this last week and crying from happiness. You know, everything is for a reason. Nothing happens just like that. So, on the same day, a week ago, it was the birthday of our older son.

How many people do you usually get in the Chabad House?

Before the war, it was a full synagogue. A full synagogue every Shabbos. And until today, Baruch Hashem, we have a minyan every day.

Even now?

Even now. We don’t have Maariv because of the curfew, so you’re not allowed to be on the street. But every day, Baruch Hashem, we have a minyan for Shacharis at 9:00 AM and Minchah at 1:30 PM. Every day.

How many people come, usually?

On Shabbos, it can be 50 or 60 people, if you count men and women. Every day, approximately 15 to 20 people for the minyan.

How many years have you been there?

I’m a shliach [emissary] since 1993.

So when the Lubavitcher Rebbe was still alive.
Yes, he sent me to Kherson. We asked a question [to the Rebbe], where should I go? Because somebody had invited me to go to Tarzana, California. We’re talking 1993. Can you imagine? California and Kherson in those times. And the Rebbe told me to go to Kherson. The rest is history.

But you were born in Eretz Yisrael.

Yes, I was born in Israel. I studied in 770 [Chabad headquarters] in Brooklyn, and from there I came to Kherson.

Do you have a message for our readers?

Do good things. Because when a Jew does a good thing anywhere, it helps a Jew in another place in the world, because we are like one body. When you do a good thing in Kherson, you help Jewish people in Thailand.

And once, I had another miracle. It was in the beginning of the war, two weeks after the war started in 2022. It’s another story, another miracle that I got through.

Do you want to share that with us?

I can share. Right in the beginning of the war, which started February 24, 2022, one of the biggest troubles we faced because of the occupation, because the Russians had occupied our city right in the beginning, was a big problem with medicine and food.

So I tried to figure out where I could get medicine from. I decided to get it from the other side, from the Russian side. I spoke to my brother, who is a shliach in Russia—in Sevastopol—and I sent him a big list of medicine that people needed for high blood pressure and for diabetes. We decided that he would send his car from his side to the border, and I would send another car from my side to get the medicine.

Everything was okay, but there was just one problem: it was impossible to find a driver. Everyone was afraid to do it because from Kherson to the border was approximately 100 miles, maybe 85 miles, and there were 25 military checkpoints. It was very, very dangerous to go, but I understood that we needed medicine, so I told my wife that I must go.

She gave me her blessing to go. I took a van and removed all the seats so it was empty, to put in as many boxes of medicine as I could. And then, before I left, a friend of mine called me from New York. He said, “Hey Rabbi, how are you? What can I do for you?” I told him, “You want to do something good for me? Find a Jew who hasn’t put on tefillin today and have him put on tefillin in my merit.” He said, “Okay, no problem.”

Then I went to the border to get the medicine. The problem was that the car from the other side was delayed for four hours. By the time it passed the border, it was already curfew. I’m talking about March 10, 2022. It was dark and freezing outside, and I started to drive back to my city during the curfew. It’s very, very dangerous. At every military checkpoint, I had to stop the car and put on the interior light so they could see who I was, because there was nobody else on the street at that time.
Okay, I passed them one by one, very, very carefully. Then, at one of the intersections, I wasn’t sure where I had to make a left turn. So I stopped the car to figure it out: “Should I make a left here, or in another mile?” There was no GPS, no Waze, no nothing. I had shut down everything because of the military; it’s very dangerous.

I stopped the car for maybe five seconds, and then, from the right side, they started shooting at the car. It was a military checkpoint, but not an official one. It was like a trap. They were positioned so that you couldn’t see them. And when I stopped the car right next to them, I didn’t see them.

And then they started shooting. Because who is stopping the car? It’s not a military car. It was a van with dark windows, at night. It was already maybe 9:00 PM in March, so it’s dark.

I understood that the game could be over any second. I fell on the floor [of the van] and started screaming. They were shooting and I was screaming. I was screaming, “My name is Yosef Yitzchak Wolff, and I’m the Chief Rabbi of Kherson. I have humanitarian aid in the car! You can check my documents! You can check with your commander that I have permission to go!”

And then, in the same second that I was on the floor and they were shooting at the right side of my car, I got a picture on WhatsApp from my friend in New York. He had put tefillin on his friend, who hadn’t put on tefillin for 15 years. I got the picture. So, a Jew in Long Island, New York, put on tefillin, and I’m in Kherson, Ukraine, on the floor, with them shooting at the right side of my car.

Wow, that’s amazing.

You asked me for a message. I’m saying: do something good. When you do something good, you don’t even know it, but you are definitely helping a Jew on the other side of the world.

Hashem should continue to protect you.

Amen.