By COLlive reporter
The Ohr Avner Levi-Yitzhak Schneerson Day School in the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk has a lot to be proud of for the stellar education it provides and being the largest Jewish day school in Eastern Europe.
But one thing has irked the community about the school: Its address.
School #144 which was returned to the Jewish community after the fall of the Iron Curtain came with a thorn – being named after a Communist demagogue named Sergey Minin.
Minin was the Mayor of Tsaritsyn (today Volgograd), an important industrial city in Russia’s Volgograd Oblast. Head of the Tsaritsyn Soviet, he committed offenses in Povolzhye and ended up committing suicide in 1926 after a fall out with the brutal ruler Joseph Stalin.
With the recent decommunization process of dismantling the legacies of the communist state establishments, the Jewish community saw an opportunity to rectify the horrid address of their Day School.
The name city’s name of Dnepropetrovsk was renamed into Dnipro and Mayor Borys Filatov agreed to also change the name of Minina Street to something more fitting for the growing Jewish community.
Instead, the road was renamed and the school’s official new address is Menachem Mendel Schneerson Street, 1.
The street, located in the center of the large city near the famous Dnepr-Arena stadium, honors the memory of one of its outstanding countrymen. The Lubavitcher Rebbe was born in the city Nikolaev and grew up in Dnipro (then called Yekatrinislav).
“The idea to give the street the name of the Rebbe came from Ukrainians who have deep knowledge of their national history and take pride in it,” Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki, the city’s Chief Rabbi and Head Chabad Shliach, told COLlive.com.
“It was Ukrainian society that insisted on the fact that Dnepro should have a street named after the Rebbe and decided to give this name to the street, where there is the Jewish Day School named after the Rebbe’s father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson.”
Both students and teachers of the school cheered and clapped as the new location of the Jewish Day School was festively unveiled by Rabbi Kaminetzky and Rabbi Meir Stambler, head of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine and the Beit Chana University for the Humanities.
In his speech, Rabbi Stambler emphasized that they were witnessing a historical moment, which clearly pointed to the imminent coming of Moshiach.
Rabbi Kaminezki said that, “Every time you come to school named after the Rebbe’s father and located on the Rebbe’s street, you have to keep it in mind, you have to learn in a way you bring naches to the Rebbe, to become his genuine Shluchim and spread the light of Torah and Chassidism.”
“I’d like to point out that we live in the city named in a new way, on the streets, the names of which have changed, and it is commonly known that the name matters, and both our thoughts and our words affect us. I am sure that all those who live on Menachem Mendel Schneerson street will have special blessing and happiness.”
