A
four-year modern Orthodox high school
enrolled 85 youngsters in September 1995. (Ten students were boarders
from various towns in eastern Ukraine.) By late April 1996, about
25 pupils had emigrated; 90 percent went on aliyah to Israel, nine
percent went to the United States, and one went to Australia. The
school made connections for the youngsters with appropriate day
schools in their new cities and will continue to monitor their progress
in new settings. The Kharkov school is successfully recruiting new
students, including boarders, of high quality for the 1996-97 school
year. The secular studies portion of the school curriculum enjoys
an excellent reputation.
An Orthodox Union youth
center occupies three floors of a building in the center
of the city. A fourth floor will be purchased next year. The center
sponsors shabbatonim every week
for as many as 100 adolescents; the youngsters attend religious
services, eat three Shabbat meals, and participate in a broad range
of other Shabbat activities. Many youth spend Friday nights at the
center, sleeping in make-shift beds.
Other activities at the center
include a Sunday school for 18 children ages six to thirteen, a
university program (Tanakh, Rambam, Jewish history, and Jewish law)
attended by 25-30 students during the late afternoon and all day
Sunday, and various small classes. Although the major focus of the
program is clearly on youth, the center also hosts a twice-weekly
program for about 50 elderly Jews that includes both an educational
component and a hot meal. The building has a small computer center.
It also includes dormitory accommodations (being expanded to 20
beds for boys and 20 for girls) for youngsters attending the high
school, which is located at some distance from the center.
The Orthodox Union program sponsors a summer camp that attracts
200 youngsters in each of several sessions. A special program is
conducted at the camp for university students.
14. Rabbi Assraf reported that
the local political situation is more difficult than in previous
years. City officials frequently lodge petty complaints against
the center and/or the day school. A local newspaper has criticized
programs that encourage adolescents to go to Israel, charging that
the Israelis recruit only the very smartest young people. However,
the religious department of the oblast
has been helpful.
15. Rabbi Assraf and Rabbi Moskowitz
both complained about the activities of the local Israel
Cultural Center (Lishkat Hakesher), citing its arrogance
and anti-religious bias. Although the Lishka supplies Hebrew teachers
to some day schools in Ukraine and elsewhere, it does not assign
them to religious day schools. Neither rabbi referred to the activities
of the local Jewish Agency office,
except to say that it was more active than the Lishka and that it
was helpful in finding appropriate Israeli programs, including Na’aleh
16, for adolescents and young adults. Time constraints did not permit
visits to either of these offices or to the local representative
of the Joint Distribution Committee.
16. Christian
missionaries, including groups focusing on Jews, are very
active in the city. In general, municipal authorities support Rabbis
Assraf and Moskowitz in exposing these groups and restricting their
activities, but the ignorance of the majority of local Jews about
even the most basic tenets of Judaism make them very vulnerable
to overtures by well-funded foreign groups offering free concerts
and other benefits.21
The writer spent one week in
Kiev (Kiyyiv), including four days with a leadership mission of
the American Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee that was in the Ukrainian capital at the same time.
Arriving in Kiev with the JDC group was Jeffrey Weill, the professional
staff member of the Jewish Federation/Jewish United Fund Jewish
Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Chicago; Mr. Weill is
responsible for the JCRC portfolio on post-Soviet Jewry, including
the Chicago Jewish community aspects of the Chicago-Kiev sister-city
relationship. The writer and Mr. Weill participated fully in the
four-day JDC Kiev program and remained in Kiev after the JDC group
went to another city. The meetings described below with the Jewish
Agency, Vasyl Hazhaman and Mr. Novik, and with Eric Rubin were private
sessions after the departure of the JDC tour. The writer held several
meetings with Rabbi Yaakov Bleich before and after the JDC visit
described below; Mr. Weill participated in one of these discussions,
and others were scheduled after Mr. Weill returned to Chicago.
17. The JDC
group went straight from the airport to Babi
Yar, the site of the massacre of 80,000 Jews in 1941 by German
occupation forces. The writer was still en route from Dnepropetrovsk
to Kiev at this time and thus was not present at the Holocaust site
for this observance, which participants later described as appropriate.
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