8 | MARCH 2 • 2023 

PURELY COMMENTARY

continued from page 7

firewood, power generators and portable 
heaters. They know their Jewish values 
demand action and compassion, and so 
they’ve stepped up. 
Daria Yefimenko, the head of our 
network of 25 volunteer centers across 
Ukraine, is that resolute determination 
personified. The air raid siren went off the 
other day as I was interviewing her — a 
shocking noise, made more frightening by 
its maddening vagueness: What’s happen-
ing? Where? Am I in danger, or is this just 
background noise? 
I learned later that just hours before I got 
to Ukraine, a missile had struck Drohobych, 
only 10 kilometers from the Shabbaton. 
Yefimenko seemed unshaken. She and 
her team — her “family of superhero vol-
unteers” — live here, of course. They must 
cope with brutal shelling and unpredictable 
electricity cuts. They have daily fears for 
their loved ones and rising anxiety about 
what the future holds. They help their 

neighbors even as they share their pain and 
struggles. 
And they keep on going. 
There are so many stories in this part of 
the world — World War II stories, Soviet 
stories, stories of rebuilding and reimagin-
ing Jewish life after the Soviet Union fell. 
I’m curious about the one we’ll tell when 
this is all over. 
Will we remember how Jews support-
ed each other in the darkest days? We 
should. 
Before the massive Shabbaton Havdalah, 
I led a smaller version at the hotel down the 
road where we have housed hundreds of 
internally displaced people since the earliest 
days of the Ukraine crisis. 
Six elderly Jews from the Zaporizhzhia 
region joined me for their first Havdalah 
ever. Among the group was 76-year-old 
Alla Hodak, who fled from a place with sig-
nificant devastation. 
Here, observing Jewish rituals in a third-

floor alcove, she had begun to form a make-
shift community — not quite home, but not 
alone either. “You made sure we were never 
abandoned to fate,
” she told me. 
In that moment of stark intimacy, our 
small group blessed the wine, smelled 
the cinnamon and felt the warmth of the 
braided candle. It bound us together and 
reminded us that drawing a distinction 
between then and now can be holy, too. 
As we take stock of a year of grief and 
grit, we must guarantee that the next one is 
a kinder one. We must recognize our own 
hands as sacred tools and each member of 
our global Jewish family as holier still. 
There’s nothing ordinary about that. Each 
person and each day has become an oppor-
tunity to do good for those who need us 
most and build their future together. That’s 
the only way forward. 

Alex Weisler is a former journalist and the JDC’s senior 

video and digital content producer. 

E

very year, Detroit Jews for Justice 
throws what we call our “
Annual 
Purim Party Extravaganza.
” Every 
year, we focus on a relevant issue of the 
times — last year we focused on abortion 
rights. In years past, it’s been 
water shutoffs or evictions. 
This year, we’re partnering 
with the Hate Won’t Win 
Coalition to shine a light on 
the struggles of the LGBTQ+ 
community to gain and 
retain our everyday civil 
rights. 

As a transgender Jew watching the cur-
rent news cycle, I can’t help but feel the 
Purim story acutely — the scapegoating, 
the persecution, the decrees that limit us 
and may threaten our very lives. It isn’t hard 
to see the correlations. As transgender and 
nonbinary people become more visible and 
more comfortable with showing ourselves 
in the public eye, we have been targeted 
as a way to gain political power. Some of 
the most aggressive religious conservatives 
have called for our eradication, much as 
Haman called for the eradication of the 
Jews from Persia in the time of Esther. In 
the same way as Ahasuerus, in many ways 

our current administration has turned a 
blind eye to this. It’s coalitions like Hate 
Won’t Win that are our Esthers, calling out 
for change and a reversal of the transphobia 
and homophobia that threaten our safety in 
the world.
Hate Won’t Win is a Michigan-based 

coalition of LGBTQ nonprofit organi-
zations and their allies that works to 
secure and expand rights for LGBTQIA+ 
Michiganders. Right now, members of the 
coalition have introduced a bill to trans-
form the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act 
of 1976, or ELCRA, which protects the 

Elijah Silver

guest column

A ‘Hate 
 Won’t Win’ 
 Purim

A prior Detroit Jews for Justice 
Purim Extravaganza

