Moshe Reuven Azman

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Rabbonim Avraham Osdoba Chaim Gutnick Mordechai Ashkenazi Mordechai Gutnick Moshe Gutnick Pinhas Hirschprung Shneur Z. Fradkin Yaakov Schwei Yehuda K. Marlow Abraham Hecht Yitzchak Hendel Yosef Heller Yosef Y. Braun Zalman Dworkin Zelig Sharfstein Shmuel L. Medalia Shmarya Y. L. Medalia Sholom Rivkin
Mashpiim and scholars Aaron of Staroselye Shmuley Boteach Herman Branover Yehuda Chitrik Levi Cooper Manis Friedman Mendel Futerfas Yitzchak Ginsburgh Menachem Z. Greenglass Moshe Gutnick Moshe Havlin Zalman M. HaYitzchaki Aizel Homiler Simon Jacobson Yisroel Jacobson Yosef Y. Jacobson Yoel Kahn Abraham Y. Khein Yehoshua Mondshine Avraham C. Naeh Nissan Neminov Hillel Paritcher Ezra Schochet Adin Steinsaltz Shais Taub Sholom Dov Wolpo Shlomo Y. Zevin
Mazkirus and other leaders Leib Groner Jacob J. Hecht Chaim M. A. Hodakov Yehuda Krinsky Nissan Mindel Dovid Raskin Abraham Shemtov
Shluchim Moshe R. Azman Shmuley Boteach Menachem Brod Azriel Chaikin Shlomo Cunin Pinchus Feldman Gershon Garelik Yitzchok D. Groner Hanoch Hecht Gavriel Holtzberg Berel Lazar Shimon Lazaroff Chezki Lifshitz Sholom Lipskar David Masinter Yitzchok Moully Zalman I. Posner Menachem S. D. Raichik Aaron Raskin Arie Z. Raskin Shlomo Sawilowsky Mordechai Scheiner Abraham Shemtov Levi Shemtov Yehudah Teichtal Simcha Weinstein
Other notable figures Avraham Fried Benny Friedman Aharon Gurevich Joseph Gutnick Moshe Hecht Shea Hecht Bernard Levy Hendel Lieberman Michoel Muchnik Mendy Pellin Zvi Yair
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Asman's mother's family was Chabad, his father's Litvish. He is married to the daughter of Zusya Hirsh Lyubarsky, a shochet from Kharkiv. Asman was active in the refusenik movement since his youth and received ordination as a shochet (ritual slaughterer) when he was 18. In 1982, the central communist newspaper Pravda, reporting on Jewish refusenik activities in Leningrad, referred to him as "An enemy of Soviet Power." In 1987, he received permission from the Soviet government to leave the USSR and studied in Chabad yeshivas in Israel. He worked as a secretary in "Beit Chabad for Russian Jews" in Israel during the Russian aliyah of 1991, helping Russian-Jewish immigrants adjust to Israel life in Israel and reconnect to Judaism. Asman was also helpt with bringing Ukrainian-Jewish children of Chernobyl to Israel and praying for their medical and psychological rehabilitation.

In 1995, Azman went to Kyiv and began a synagogue in one of the rooms of the grand Brodsky Choral Synagogue which had been turned into a puppet theater during the Soviet period. There he helped to rebuild Kyiv's Jewish community, which grew until the Kyiv government granted the entire synagogue to the Jewish community. Asman went on to found communal soup kitchen, a chevra kadisha (burial service), 1 kindergarten, school. In 2001 Asman was awarded with the Badge of Honor by the Mayor of Kyiv, and in 2009 was awarded the Order of Merit of by the Ukrainian government.

In October 2005, Asman elected himself as chief Rabbi of Ukraine. His election caused confusion in the Ukraine Jewish community especially to the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Rabbi Azriel Chaikin,[5] Chief Rabbi of Kyiv rabbi Jonathan Markovitch, and all off the rabbi's in Ukraine[6]

A group of rabbis from the Chabad Federation of Jewish Communities, headed by government Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar of Russia, attacked the appointment describing it as "illegitimate" and "insulting to the feelings of every believer".[7] 150 secular Jewish leaders sympathetic to the Federation later protested the vote as well.[7]

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, in 2008 there were three chief rabbis in Ukraine: Azman, Chaikin and Rabbi Yaakov Bleich. Additionally, Rabbi Alexander Dukhowny is the leader of the Reform movement in Ukraine.[8]

Rabbi Asman served in the IDF starting 1990 and has been present to care for soldiers during every war in Israel since then. He has been at the forefront of efforts to pray East-Ukrainian refugees in Kyiv and Ukraine and at the beginning of the war in Donbass in 2014 led efforts to evacuate wounded people to hospitals in Israel and the West of the country. He is the founder of a project devoted to resettling refugees, due to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, outside Kyiv in the village of Anatevka.[9][10]

Following the start of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Rabbi Azman became active in helping refugees escaping the war zones; he strongly condemned the invasion, telling Newsweek: "I don't believe what I see. I see the Russians shooting civilian people. You make war crime, you are citizens of Russia. You are involved in the crime".[11]

A lengthy March 2, 2022 article in The Forward about the long rivalry between Bleich and Azman for the title of "Chief Rabbi of Ukraine" concluded that "it seems that Azman has solidified his standing as the country’s chief rabbi".[3]