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COMMUNITY VIEWS
REBUILDING from page 24
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ish culture, eager to learn and practice
Judaism. Today, there are 23,000 Jewish
youngsters in the former Soviet Union
who are studying in some form of Jew-
ish school.
While the younger Jews are
embracing their new identities, the
elderly and impoverished older genera-
tion has little or no real grasp of what
Judaism means. Eighty percent of
these elderly Jews lives below the
poverty line. Many Jewish communal
organizations struggle daily just to
meet the needs of these people. It is
with these unique needs in mind that
the Chesed programs were established.
There are more than 70 Cheseds
functioning today in the former Soviet
Union. They represent a social-service
concept developed by the American
Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
and serve as multi-functional centers,
providing both outreach and in-house
services through paid professionals and
volunteers.
We visited three such facilities: the
Chesed Avraham Welfare Center in St.
Petersburg, Russia; the Chesed Avot
Welfare Center in Kiev, Ukraine; and
the Chesed Shalomo in the town of
Zhitomir, Ukraine.
Programs include meals on wheels,
medical and dental services, home care
services, Friday night Shabbat services
(where it was not unusual to find 200
people in attendance), the printing and
distribution of a Chesed newspaper,
child day care, libraries housing books
of Russian literature as well as books on
Judaism in both Russian and Hebrew,
lectures and classes, and a brigade of
volunteer hairdressers and handymen.
After the collapse of the Russian
economy in August 1998, the number
of food packages distributed by
Chesed Avraham alone jumped from
600 to 15,000 per month.
Our visit to the Synagogue of Podol
in Kiev and the Great Choral Syna-
gogue in St. Petersburg made it clear
that Judaism is filling a "value vacu-
um" that followed the fall of Commu-
nism. A minyan is held in the Kiev
synagogue three times a day. In 1989,
almost all the Jews of the former Sovi-
et Union were potential emigrants.
Now there is a desire to stay and
rebuild the Jewish community.
The young college students espe-
cially are committed to staying. They
all know Israel would welcome them
with open arms, and many leave, but
large numbers do not. The true beauty
— at the moment — is they know
they still have a choice. I hope that
choice will remain open to them.
While spending Shabbat in the
presence of enthusiastic college Hillel
students, while listening to their beau-
tiful voices singing in Hebrew, while
seeing them eager to take up the chal-
lenge of making their community
work, I could not help thinking of my
own daughter. Rachel is also involved
in Hillel, at the University of Michi-
gan, and she is like the students in St.
Petersburg and Kiev.
One of the most memorable parts
of the trip was our visit to a shtetl. Yes,
they still exist and, I would imagine,
they look much the same as they did
when our grandparents left them to
come to America.
In tiny Radomyshl there are 24
Jews. Before World War II, the Jewish
population was approximately 3,000.
Our bus wound its way through thick
forests and I could imagine my ances-
tors hiding there, running between the
trees, trying to flee the onslaught of
extermination.
The ghosts of so many nameless
Jews still linger in those woods. Elder-
ly Jews live in thatch-roofed hovels
with no hot water or indoor plumb-
ing. Yet even in the most isolated of
villages, the Cheseds reach out and
make the human contacts that make
all of us feel part of the Jewish family.
Ben and I returned to Michigan
with a renewed respect for our people's
ability to bounce back from adversity.
What is it about Jews that makes us
willing to help one another, inspire
each other and remain faithful to our
ideals in the face of any challenge?
On our "Zuckerman" trip, we saw
Jews who barely knew they were Jews
and Jews who were just beginning to
express their Jewishness, all nourished
by a larger Jewish community that
believes every Jew is important.
May we always cherish each and
every member of our most remarkable
and widely scattered family.
PUBLISHER
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GUARD DOG from page 25
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Detroit Jewish News
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