opinion
BY ARIEL ZWANG
The World’s Attention May Be
Flagging, but 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 husband. 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 individ-
uals and our partner institutions abroad who see
it as their duty is to aid our fellow Jews in dis-
tress and rebuild Jewish life for coming genera-
tions, my organization, 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 challenges 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 dol-
lars in support from the Claims Conference, Jewish
federations 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 import-
ant realities and re-engage the wider Jewish pub-
lic in our critical work:
The majority of Ukraine’s Jews, and their lead-
ers, remain in their country.

One of them is Svetlana M., the heroic director
of the JDC-supported Hesed social service cen-
ter 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
training, who turned her volunteerism and passion
for the 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, includ-
ing some leaders, have fled. But the vast majority
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
18 SEPTEMBER 29, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
and families served by JDC before the conflict,
approximately 90% are still there.

Tens of thousands of Jews in country continue
to turn to the Jewish community for support
during the conflict or volunteer to aid their neigh-
bors. They are buoyed by scores of brave Jewish
professionals — social service workers, JCC staff,
volunteer coordinators, rabbis, 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 volunteers at Hesed
have endured the stress of constant air raid alerts
— more than 500 since Feb. 24 — and the influx
of more than 250,000 internally displaced peo-
ple to the city. Svetlana has worked around the
clock to address those ever-increasing human
needs and to ensure the Jewish community
becomes a touchpoint for joy during these tough
times. Svetlana and her team — including her two
sons — have planned numerous Rosh Hashanah
holiday activities for seniors, teens, children, and
displaced families in the coming weeks. They’ll
deliver holiday aid packages and hold online and
in-person 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’s
wife has advancing Alzheimer’s and cannot walk.

They emerged from the building’s basement and
left with nothing more than the clothes they were
wearing, their passports and their marriage cer-
tificate. 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 intention of
leaving Ukraine, but is barely able to survive with-
out 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 country, their plight is part of an under-re-
ported, unfolding crisis around the entire coun-
try. Decimated infrastructure, severely reduced
human services, and limited access to utilities are
widespread. The economic situation 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, resulting in a popu-
lation of “new poor,” previously middle-class folks
now facing poverty. Those who were poor before
the crisis are in even worse shape. With prices for
food and medicine increasing more than 20 per-
cent in the last year, pensioners like Boris living on
$3-4 a day have seen scarce resources stretched
even further. Add to this the widespread reality of
post-traumatic stress brought on by loss in many
forms — loved ones, homes and safety.

Our support — including food and medicines
and supplemental aid for emergency needs like
their rent and utilities — is a lifeline for these
Ukrainians. JDC has shipped more than 600
tons of humanitarian aid into Ukraine, and we are
directly supporting 35,000-plus clients today,
including more than 2,600 new poor and inter-
nally displaced Jews. This is in addition to the
tens of thousands of others to whom we have pro-
vided trauma support, medical care, evacuation or
hotline services to date. But — with no end to the
conflict in sight — more needs to be done.

The refugee crisis is not over.

While the mass exodus of refugees has slowed,
there are, according to our European Jewish com-
munity partners, some 10,000 Jewish refugees
in their remit. The actual number is likely higher,
as some have not reached out for help. As global
inflation worsens and many choose to remain in
Europe, we expect more may turn to Jewish com-
munities for support. We need to ensure they are
prepared with the ability to extend care to their,
and our, extended Jewish family.

In partnership with local Jewish communities,
JDC is currently caring for 4,000 refugees in 13
countries. In addition to food, medicine, accommo-
dation, psychosocial support and connections to
local programming, we’re moving from temporary
care to long-term support. This includes housing
solutions, health care, living stipends and work-
force opportunities. And helping Ukrainian Jews to
integrate into local Jewish communities is critical.

Rosh Hashanah is approaching, ushering in a
time of introspection and new beginnings. During
this period, we should proudly take stock of all we
have done for Ukraine’s Jews — and concentrate
on all we must continue to do in the New Year
ahead. JE
Ariel Zwang is the CEO of JDC, the global Jewish
humanitarian organization.




nation / world
Biden to Host First-ever White House Rosh Hashanah Party
President Joe Biden is bringing a Jewish High Holiday celebration to the White
House for the first time, JTA reported.

His White House is hosting a Rosh Hashanah reception on Sept. 30, Jewish
Insider reported.

As vice president during the 2009-2017 Obama administration, Biden hosted
Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot receptions at the Naval Observatory, the official vice
presidential residence, the first vice president to do so.

President Bill Clinton was the first president to host a Chanukah party for
staff, and President George W. Bush made it a public event for Jewish community
leaders, a practice continued by President Barack Obama and President Donald
Trump. Obama instituted White House Passover seders, a practice Trump did
not continue, although on at least one occasion, Jewish staffers gathered in the
adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building for a seder.

The Biden White House last year hosted a last-minute Chanukah menorah
lighting in person but has otherwise limited its Jewish events to virtual offerings.

London’s Holocaust Memorial Garden Clears Queen Elizabeth
Tributes Left on its Grounds
As Britons poured out their sadness over the death of their 70-year queen, they
deposited tributes to her all over London — including at a garden designated for
memorializing victims of the Holocaust, JTA reported.

Grace Dean, a reporter for Business Insider in London, tweeted on Sept. 18
that the Holocaust Memorial Garden in Hyde Park, not far from Buckingham
Palace, had turned into “a makeshift Queen Memorial Garden.” She posted pic-
tures showing bouquets, letters and even pictures of Queen Elizabeth II strewn
across the boulders that make up the heart of the Holocaust garden, which was
dedicated with fanfare in 1983.

The post quickly elicited expressions of anger and distress that mourning for
the queen, who died last week at 96, would usurp mourning for the 6 million
Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide during the Holocaust.

On Sept. 19, as London prepared for the queen’s funeral, the official account of
the Royal Parks, the charity that manages eight parks on royal grounds, tweeted
that the items were being removed.

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101-year-old Is Oldest to Make Aliyah From US in Five Years
A 101-year-old woman who made aliyah from New Jersey in mid-September is
the oldest immigrant to move to the Jewish state from the United States in the
last five years, jns.org reported.

Stella Rockoff was born in Jerusalem in 1921, during the British Mandate of
Palestine. Her family immigrated to Brooklyn, New York, when she was 5, and
she moved to Pennsylvania after she married Rabbi Herman Rockoff in 1940.

She later lived again in New York with her husband and four children, where she
worked as executive secretary of the Rabbinical Council of America.

She lived in Clifton, New Jersey, before moving back to Israel with a daughter
and son-in-law as part of a group of nearly 60 olim from North America.

“All my life I dreamed of returning to my native country,” Rockoff said. “This
is a day of celebration for me.”
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Central Bureau of Statistics: Israel’s Population Nears 10 million
The population of Israel is just over 9.5 million people ahead of the Jewish New Year,
according to data issued by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, jns.org reported.

The country has a population of 9.593 million people, according to the CBS.

Of them, 7.069 million (74%) identify as Jewish, 2.026 million (21%) as Arab and
498,000 (5%) as neither.

The bureau states that the Israeli population will reach 10 million by 2024, 15
million by 2048 and 20 million by 2065.

Jews in Israel who are at least 20 are identified as 45.3% secular, 19.2% tradi-
tional, 13.9% traditional-religious, 10.7% religious and 10.5% Haredi.

The average life expectancy for Israeli men is 80.5 years versus 84.6 years for women.

According to the data, 177,000 babies were born in Israel the past year. JE
— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb
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