“Donald Trump, it’s time to fight in the name of light,” is the refrain in Rabbi Moshe Azman’s song, just released on social media.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Ukraine’s chief rabbi has taken an unusual route to ask for continued American help in his country’s war against the Russian forces who invaded over three years ago, releasing a song online last week addressed personally to U.S. President Donald Trump.
Rabbi Moshe Azman’s clip begins with an air raid siren in Kyiv and Ukrainian civilians mourning, before cutting to him singing in a studio.
He is not subtle in his message, starting immediately with the words, “You are the one, the world is watching you.”
He begs the president by name to stand against the side of lies, “fear and hate,” showing not only pictures of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but also Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
As scenes of destroyed streets, injured and crying people, pale children, and emergency personnel working flash by, his refrain calls out, “Donald Trump it’s time to fight in the name of light.”
Using former president Ronald Reagan’s famed description of the Soviet Union, he sings, “It’s time to crush the evil empire” and tells Trump, “You hold the key, the page is yours to write.”
The Chabad rabbi also weaves in a scene from Trump’s presidential campaign where he declares that he will “stop the war in Ukraine, stop the chaos in the Middle East and I will prevent World War Three from happening.”
Azman’s adopted son, Anton (Matityahu) Samborskyi, was killed last September by a missile in a battle with Russian troops near Donetsk, just a few months after being drafted.
As a child of such a prominent religious figure, his funeral had been covered by many local media, some of whom pointedly praised the loyalty of Ukrainian Jewry and noted that while sons of rabbis were fighting, sons of senior government officials had left the country to be safe.
Azman himself made this point in his eulogy, saying, “Among Ukrainian Jews, there is no ‘blue blood.’ Our best sons are on the front lines, fighting the Russian invader to defend our homeland. Matityahu fought courageously for Ukraine, justice and peace, and he fell as a hero.”
Born in Leningrad in 1966, Azman was active in the refusenik movement struggling to get Jews out of the Soviet Union before being allowed to emigrate to Israel in 1987.
In 1995 he and his wife left to help re-establish Jewish life in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
Ten years later, he was appointed chief rabbi of the country by the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress.
His non-profit organization helped evacuate thousands of refugees after the Russians invaded in February 2022, and constantly distributes humanitarian aid to Jews and non-Jews alike, while Azman has made a name for himself in Ukraine from viral videos in which he urges Ukrainians to resist Russian occupation.
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