Ukraine: "There's suddenly a feeling we are sitting on a keg of gunpowder surrounded by fire"

"I didn't feel any anti-Semitism previously in Crimea," says the young rabbi, ordained by Leo Baeck College in London. "Now I am being attacked on Crimean websites which are pointing out that I'm Jewish. There's suddenly a feeling we are sitting on a keg of gunpowder surrounded by fire."

Not all the local Jews agree with Kapustin. The president of his Simferopol Progressive Jewish Community, Anatoly Gendin, says that he was born in Russia "and I am fine with being part of Russia again. I don't feel any anti-Semitism in Crimea, nothing at all until the vandalism of our synagogue."

"That's because you don't use public transport," responds his friend Boris Berlin. "Take the bus like me and you will hear how people talk about the Jews." Berlin isn't planning to vote in next Sunday's referendum, called to affirm the local parliament's decision to unite with Russia. "I used to work for the election commission here," says Berlin, a computer engineer. "It's a circus, not democracy."

More: Haaretz