10 | MARCH 7 • 2024 
J
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essay
For Ukraine’s Jews, the Work is Not Yet Done 
A

s we passed the grim 
second anniversary 
of the Ukraine 
conflict, I’m reminded of a 
haunting melody I heard in 
the city of Poltava last month.
I was standing before Sonia 
Bunina, a plucky 17-year-
old, when she 
opened her 
mouth to sing 
when an air raid 
siren rang out.
I flinched. 
Not Sonia 
— she didn’t 
miss a beat.
“Kol haolam kulo gesher 
t’zar meod, veha’ikar lo 
lifached k’lal,
” she belted 
out before seeking shelter. 
“The whole world is a very 
narrow bridge, and the most 
important thing is to have no 
fear at all.”
Sonia, like so many Jews 
I know in Ukraine, is many 
things — determined, 
grieving, focused — but she’s 
certainly not cowering.
As she sang those words by 
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov 
— the Ukrainian Jewish sage 
whose followers continue 
to come by the tens of 
thousands to his grave in 
Uman annually — she 
embodied the prayer’s 
indomitable spirit.
Sonia and I met outside 
Poltava’s Hesed, part of 
the network of Jewish 
humanitarian hubs founded 
by my organization — the 
American Jewish Joint 
Distribution Committee, 
or JDC — more than three 
decades ago. Today they’re a 
lifeline to tens of thousands 
of Jews facing loss and strife. 

Since she was a toddler, Sonia 
has been attending activities 
at Hesed — her mother 
coordinates cultural programs 
for the elderly, and she 
connects teen volunteers like 
herself with isolated seniors, 
a critical source of comfort 
these last two years.
These days, traveling 
to Ukraine feels like a 
pilgrimage — there’s a pull 
in my soul to visit family 
near Lviv, to bear witness to 
Ukrainian Jewish resilience, 
and to be inspired by the 
clarity of purpose that is 
so palpable there. Since 
my first trip in 2011, I’ve 
been eight times. 

Last year, I wrote 
about how a year of crisis 
had transformed the ordinary 
into the sacred in Ukraine. 
Now, visiting feels even more 
essential with the worsening 
humanitarian situation.
Ukrainian Jews aren’t blasé 
about these challenges — far 

from it. Just take the delicate 
ballet of emotions on their 
faces when checking their 
phones during an air alert 
— contacting loved ones, 
scrolling through photos of 
devastation, and analyzing 
Telegram chats speculating 
on a given rocket’s make and 
trajectory.
But life goes on — there’s 
work to do — and though 
they’ve lost so much, they 
refuse to give any more away.
Showing up for each other, 
whatever it takes, is now 
baked into their very essence 
as Jews and, in Ukraine, there 
are tens of thousands to serve 
— hungry old women and 
displaced young families, 
disabled Holocaust survivors 
and stunned middle-aged 
professionals, shocked to now 
need help when they were 
once donors and volunteers.
They act fearlessly to 
ensure their communities 
make it through this crisis, 

body and soul intact. Can 
we expect anything less than 
boundless creativity from the 
people who birthed Sholem 
Aleichem and the Baal Shem 
Tov?
“These bombings, all these 
things that are killing people, 
destroying houses, leaving 
children homeless … it’s very 
scary,” Galina Limarenko, 
an 82-year-old retired nurse, 
told me in her small bedroom 
in Berezivka, taking note of 
the warm blanket, firewood 
and other winter supplies my 
colleagues provided. 
 “Thank God,” she says, “for 
the Jewish community, which 
never gives up and always 
shares even their very last 
piece of bread.”
I saw that irrepressible 
spirit again at our Beit Dan 
JCC in battered Kharkiv — a 
shapeshifting wellspring of 
strength just a few dozen 
kilometers from the eastern 
border. Shortly after Feb. 24, 

Alex Weisler
JTA.org

PURELY COMMENTARY

PHOTOS BY ARIK SHRAGA

The author (center, in blue) visits with members of the Jewish choir at the American Jewish Joint 
Distribution Committee’s Hesed social service center in Odesa, Ukraine. They have continued their singing 
despite the ongoing crisis there. 

