{"id":704,"date":"2022-03-11T21:18:55","date_gmt":"2022-03-11T21:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jewishvoices\/?p=704"},"modified":"2022-03-11T21:18:55","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T21:18:55","slug":"devout-jews-in-ukraine-stay-to-pray-and-await-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jewishvoices\/2022\/03\/devout-jews-in-ukraine-stay-to-pray-and-await-apocalypse\/","title":{"rendered":"Devout Jews in Ukraine stay to pray and await ‘apocalypse’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
AFP Via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
They carefully lay down their \u201ctefillin\u201d prayer boxes before heading into another room for the morning service, where their voices compete with the sound of air sirens outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe spend the whole day in the synagogue, praying, studying the Torah,\u201d says Odele, 46, who asked to withhold her surname.<\/p>\n
She left Israel a year ago to live here, some 200 kilometers south of Kyiv, to be close to the grave of the revered rabbi, Nachman of Breslov, who founded a Hasidic movement that settled in this town in early 1800s.<\/p>\n
She leans over her prayer book, lit with a pocket torch. Her son, one of her nine children, is glued to her side.<\/p>\n
The war, she says, is \u201ca sign from the messiah\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was written. It will start with war, then will come to the apocalypse,\u201d says Odele.<\/p>\n