Choosing to Stay in Ukraine to Preserve its Jewish Future

Rachel Strugatsky made aliyah as a teenager but was pulled back to her native Ukraine -- twice. Now 46, and with Russian shells falling uncomfortably close to her home in Kyiv, she could leave for Israel again-- this time with her three children. But she won't. Hers, she said, is the only family in her congregation -- the Brodsky Synagogue -- that remains in the city. "I ask myself, 'Why am I here?'" she said. "And my answer is: 'So that Kyiv Jews who escaped have a reason and the place to return to.'"