8 | OCTOBER 6 • 2022 

opinion
Ukraine’s Jews Still 
Need Our Help
W

hen I traveled to 
Poland shortly after 
the outbreak of 
the conflict in Ukraine, I met 
a young mother who, with her 
baby, fled Kyiv without her hus-
band. More than baby food and 
a roof over her head, she needed 
a support system 
and community 
to navigate all that 
would come next. 
 With the 
outpouring of 
assistance from 
individuals and 
our partner insti-
tutions abroad who see it as their 
duty to aid our fellow Jews in 
distress and rebuild Jewish life 
for coming generations, my orga-
nization, the American Jewish 
Joint Distribution Committee 
(JDC), was there for her.
Seven months later, many 
people outside of Ukraine think 
the danger has abated, that a 
reduction in the pace of those 
fleeing signals an end to their 
plight, and that the Ukrainian 
Jewish community is diminished 
but stable. 
Such misunderstandings 
downplay the urgency of chal-
lenges we have a part in solving. 
This is especially true given the 
outsized role that the global 
Jewish community has played 
to date in the humanitarian 
response. With tens of millions 
of dollars in support from the 
Claims Conference, Jewish fed-
erations across North America, 
the International Fellowship of 
Christians and Jews, foundations, 
individual philanthropists and 
many others, we’re invested in 
this crisis for the long term. 

It is important, therefore, to 
set out three important realities 
and re-engage the wider Jewish 
public in our critical work. 

MOST UKRAINIAN JEWS 
AND THEIR LEADERS STAY 
IN THEIR COUNTRY.
One of them is Svetlana M., 
the heroic director of the JDC-
supported Hesed social service 
center in Poltava, in central 
Ukraine. Hesed serves the 
region’s needy Jews and is a hub 
for crisis support. Svetlana is in 
her 40s, a psychologist by train-
ing, who turned her volunteer-
ism and passion for Jewish life 
into a career aiding the Jewish 
community. 
 “We refuse to leave our city 
and all those people who need 
us,
” she told us. “Think about 
the elderly people afraid to even 
step foot outside. They need us, 
their community, now. We have 
a rule in our family: In good 
times and hard times, we should 
be together.
” 
It’s true that tens of thousands 
of Jews, including some leaders, 
have fled. But the vast major-
ity of the country’s estimated 
200,000 Jews, like Svetlana, have 
remained in the country. Many 
escaped to Ukrainian cities in 
safer locations. Others have left 
and then returned from abroad. 
Among the nearly 40,000 poor 
Jewish elderly and families 
served by JDC before the con-
flict, approximately 90% are still 
there. 
Tens of thousands of Jews in 
the country continue to turn 
to the Jewish community for 
support during the conflict or 
volunteer to aid their neighbors. 

They are buoyed by scores of 
brave Jewish professionals — 
social service workers, JCC staff, 
volunteer coordinators, rabbis 
and Jewish educators and, of 
course, the staff of JDC — who 
have been leading emergency 
work from Kyiv to Dnipro, 
Odesa to Lviv. 
Svetlana and the staff and vol-
unteers at Hesed have endured 
the stress of constant air raid 
alerts — more than 500 since 
Feb. 24 — and the influx of 
more than 250,0000 internally 
displaced people to the city. 
Svetlana has worked around the 
clock to address those ever-in-
creasing human needs and to 
ensure the Jewish community 
becomes a touchpoint for joy 
during these tough times. 
Svetlana and her team planned 
numerous Rosh Hashanah hol-
iday activities for seniors, teens, 
children and displaced families. 
They delivered holiday aid pack-
ages and held online and in-per-
son celebrations with singing and 
traditions like apples and honey, 
part of our overall High Holiday 
efforts around the country. 

NEED IS SPIKING 
THROUGHOUT UKRAINE
Boris R., 70, and his wife, JDC 
clients before the conflict, had to 
flee their home in the east with 
our help, when, as Boris tells 
it, “Our house was ruined by 
shelling. There’s no apartment, 
nothing. At such an age, I had to 

leave my native town.
” 
It was a harrowing journey, 
especially as Boris’ wife has 
advancing Alzheimer’s and can-
not walk. They emerged from 
the building’s basement and 
left with nothing more than the 
clothes they were wearing, their 
passports and their marriage 
certificate. 
After staying in Dnipro for 
10 days to recover, Boris and 
his wife traveled to Lviv, where 
they have been for the last three 
months. His son and family are 
also nearby. Boris has no inten-
tion of leaving Ukraine but is 
barely able to survive without 
our help. The cost of his rent, 
with increasing utility prices, 
comes to $324. He and his wife’s 
combined pensions are only 
$243. 
While headlines focus on 
the south and east of the coun-
try, their plight is part of an 
under-reported, unfolding 
crisis around the entire coun-
try. Decimated infrastructure, 
severely reduced human services 
and limited access to utilities are 
widespread. The economic situ-
ation is dire, with skyrocketing 
inflation projected to hit 27% 
and Ukraine’s GDP expected to 
contract by more than 34% in 
2022. 
Making matters worse, 
3.6 million Ukrainians who 
remained lost their jobs, result-
ing in a population of “new 
poor,
” previously middle-class 

A homecare worker from a JDC-supported Hesed social service center 
in Odessa, right, cares for a homebound elderly Jew. 

KONSTANTIN GERASIMENKO

PURELY COMMENTARY

Ariel Zwang 
JTA

