Gomel, has been the cradle to a Jewish kehilla as far back as the late 1630s/early 1640s, as evidenced by the gruesome history of the Chmielnicki Massacres, commonly referred to as “Tach v’Tat”. With God’s help, that bitter period didn’t last too long.
One generation later, Gomel blossomed anew. 700 Jewish families populated the area within a century, and the kehilla had 20,000 souls by 1979. But following the 1986 nuclear catastrophe in nearby Chernobyl and the fall of communism, most Jews left Gomel.
And yet, thousands of Jews remained in the vicinity, driving a rebirth by Rabbi Yosef Joludev and his fellow activists Rabbi Duvid Kanterowitz and Rabbi Hirsh Binkin. All born in Belarus or Ukraine, they studied out of town and returned with smicha to resurrect the kehilla. Mikva Tahara is now building a beautiful mikva for Gomel and nearby cities.
9 families already make the 4-hour trek to Minsk, and the potential exists for many more families to use a mikva accessible locally