Dedicating Ourselves to the Rebuilding of Jewish Life in Ukraine

This week, as my family has lit the Hanukkah candles, I have placed the Soviet Jewry Movement and Boston’s participation in the Dnepropetrovsk Kehillah Project alongside the rededication of the Temple as miracles to be thankful for.  This inclusion is especially appropriate because last week, we celebrated the 25^th Anniversary of the March on Washington for Soviet Jewry.

On December 6, 1987, over 250,000 people, representing 300 Jewish Federations, Community Councils, synagogues, youth groups, and other Jewish and non-Jewish organizations, rallied at the Washington Mall to urge President Reagan to prioritize human rights in his upcoming meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev.  The March was the culmination of the struggle to free Soviet Jewry and it succeeded. Like present-day Maccabees, Jews came together against mighty odds and contributed to the ultimate fall of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Jewry Movement was about more than rescuing Jews from the USSR. It was about the freedom of Jews to celebrate their culture and religion. Over the following months and years, more than one million Jews emigrated from the USSR to Israel, Europe, and the United States. 

At least as many remained behind in the Former Soviet Union, a place where generations of Jews were forbidden to practice Judaism and where many hid or even forgot their Jewish identity.  With the fall of Communism, however, came the opportunity for renewal, even as Jewish life remains a challenge throughout the region.

Amid the heroic efforts of many individuals and agencies, we in Boston were fortunate to partner with Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, where a thriving Jewish community has risen out of the ashes of the Holocaust and Communism to become one of the most important communities in Europe.

Through JCRC's 20-year partnership in the Dnepropetrovsk Kehillah Project, which thrives thanks to generous funding from Combined Jewish Philanthropies, many Jews in Greater Boston have been privileged to play a small role in the miracle that has happened there: the rebuilding of Jewish life. In the process, our partners have inspired many of us to reengage our own Jewish identities.

Today in Dnepropetrovsk, 400 students attend the Jewish Day School, Dnepropetrovsk Hillel recruits the largest Birthright delegation from the FSU, and the largest Jewish communal center in Europe has just opened.

At the same time, the community continues to honor its obligation to the heroes and heroines of the past. With Boston’s support and expertise, they have opened the assisted living facility Beit Baruch and the new Jewish Medical Center to care for elderly Jews. Ida Tzypkina, one of the first residents of Beit Baruch (and known to many in Boston as “Yiddishe Mama”), now lives her life in dignity and safety, celebrating her Jewish heritage in ways she never thought possible during the war.

Challenges remain, and Jews in Dnepropetrovsk and beyond still struggle with antisemitism, poverty, alienation, and the lingering effects of the Soviet suppression of Jewish life.  But this year we recall our partners in Ukraine, along with the countless FSU Jews in other lands, who have accepted these struggles and have dedicated themselves to rekindling Jewish life. For this blessing, we thank the heroes of the Soviet Jewry Movement who helped bring this miracle to reality.  We will strive to follow their example.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Hanukkah!

Dnepropetrovsk Trip Report – Executive Summary

October 17-23, 2012

JCRC’s very productive visit to Dnepropetrovsk coincided with the opening of the Menorah Center, the largest Jewish communal building in the world.  With this opening, Dnepropetrovsk confirms its status as a central Jewish address in Ukraine and all of Eastern Europe.  Thanks in part to the advocacy of the Boston Jewish Community, the building is wheelchair accessible and offers an unprecedented opportunity for the inclusion of people with disabilities and their families.  Most of the Jewish community’s offices will be located in the Menorah Center, which also houses a Museum of Ukrainian Jewry and the Holocaust (with the support of the JDC), a hotel, a youth hostel, a kosher supermarket and restaurants, a concert hall, and a large scale ballroom facility. 

Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki has made it clear that the relationship with Boston has helped make the Menorah Center become a reality.  To give a specific example, the community acted on advice from Boston partners to make the management of the Menorah Center independent of its other activities, which has both improved the building and freed the community to focus on its religious, education, and charitable priorities.  Unfortunately, they do not expect to receive any dividends from its operations for some years. 

Beth Moskowitz, the chair JCRC’s Committee for Post-Soviet Jewry, received the honor of cutting the ribbon for the new museum, and was the only woman to be named during the ceremony—another example of subtle Boston advocacy!

Invited to cut the ribbon at the entrance to the museum were Yuri Kiperman, one of the pioneers of the Jewish renaissance in Dnepropetrovsk, Beth Moskowitz, leader of the delegation from our sister Jewish Community of Greater Boston (USA) and the chair of their Committee for Post-Soviet Jewry, and Leon Sherman, a philanthropist who has donated a unique collection of artifacts to the museum (http://djc.com.ua/news/view/new/?id=8101).

Much of our visit was devoted to developing our medical partnerships with old and new partners.  The Corky Ribakoff Women’s Clinic will soon celebrate its fifteenth anniversary, and we hope to celebrate that milestone in the spring.  We were proud to learn that the training Dr. Valeria Sidelkovskaya received this past spring in Boston has paid off: her new skills with the Doppler feature of the Ultrasound Machine we donated in 2009 allowed her to make a life-saving diagnosis.  With our friend Yuri Bolbot, we made plans for a post-graduate course in pediatrics in the spring, including an effort, in cooperation with the Medical Academy and the Dnepropetrovsk Municipality, to spur a media campaign encouraging the immunization of infants and children.  Finally, one of our Boston doctors, a psychiatrist, lectured about postpartum depression at Hospital No. 3 to twenty doctors and nurses from throughout the city.

We also had meetings with several of our agency and Dnepropetrovsk partners, including one with Marsha Frankel of JF&CS, who works (among many other projects) with the Educational Resource Center for Special Needs, and Susan Wolf-Fordham, co-chair of the ERC Steering Committee, where we came together to sketch out a strategic direction as Beit Chana Teaching College (the host of the ERC) begins plans to move downtown next to the Menorah Center.  Our collective vision is to make the ERC a lab school for a new Department of Special Needs Education at Beit Chana.  Both Beit Chana and the community at large are committed to the inclusion of children with special needs throughout the community.  For instance, our Jewish Big Brother and Big Sister program for the first time includes “littles” with Downs Syndrome who have been welcomed with open arms by the other children.

Thanks to the generosity of an individual donor, the ERC has been able to add an accessibility ramp to the new van they received from Women’s Philanthropy during the Community Mission last May.

 Beth Moskowitz watches as Tamara Olschanitskaya and Svetlana Efimova ride the new accessibility ramp. 

   Larissa, Sonia, and Sonia, littles from Jewish Big Brother Big Sister of Dnepropetrovsk at the Day School.

Finally, Beth and Noga Nevel had a productive conversation with the leaders of Dnepropetrovsk’s Next Generation Movement, making plans for a trip to Boston in the spring of 2013 and ongoing social media communication.

The trip culminated in a beautiful Shabbat, with dinner at Rabbi Kaminezki’s and lunch with Zelig Brez and his family.  As usual, we came away with an infusion of yiddishe ruach in our souls and a sense of the blessings of this remarkable partnership.