Although
the $1.5 million sum of his budget may sound impressive, said Rabbi
Lepkivker, it is far from enough to cover the needs of the regional
Jewish population. The JDC agenda in the municipality of Dnipropetrovsk
is among the more extensive in the transition states, embracing
both welfare and one of the larger community center (общинный
центр; obshchiny tsentr) programs
in any post-Soviet city. In fact, the relatively large and spacious
building of Shaarei Hesed is now called the общинный
центр, rather than Shaarei Hesed.44
Concentrating on JDC operations in Dnipropetrovsk,
Rabbi Lepkivker stated that its welfare
services provide over 1,200 needy individuals with hot meals
at least five days weekly at a total of seven different sites. Another
1,000+ meals-on-wheels are provided to homebound elderly. Nearly
7,500 people have received food parcels thus far this year, and
3,300 individuals received winter relief kits. Patronage services
(homecare, including shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc.) are provided
to over 300 elderly clients.
Shaarei Hesed also offers various health care services
to more than 400 elderly. This program includes medical exams in
the community center's own medical offices or in regular clinics
and hospitals; provision of free and/or subsidized medications;
inexpensive rental of medical equipment, such as wheelchairs and
walkers; and such services as repair of home appliances and home
plumbing, hairdressing, and legal advice. A day care center for
Jewish elderly has recently started operations at the hesed, its
enrollment limited by budgetary and transportation constraints.
Other programs for the elderly include Shabbat and holiday programs,
lectures on various topics, several clubs, a choir, and physical
training sessions.
As noted elsewhere in this report on Dnipropetrovsk,
a hesed club at the Jewish day school participates in the provision
of services to Jewish elderly. Some youngsters deliver food parcels
to hesed clients and visit older Jews on Fridays. JDC works with
the paraprofessional social work training curriculum at Beit Chana
and supervises the new Ner Shabbat
program in which Beit Chana students take challahs and Shabbat candles
to Jewish elderly every week.
The Dnipropetrovsk hesed was the first in the transition
states to offer programs to handicapped
children, focusing on those with cerebral palsy and developmental
problems.45
Because local schools will not attempt to educate or train such
youngsters, most are isolated at home in the care of parents thus
forced to forgo employment.46
Almost unavoidable under such circumstances are family instability
and impoverishment. Beginning with 12 children two years ago, the
Tikvah Club at the hesed now
is overwhelmed with 80 such youngsters, far more than its meager
resources can serve adequately. It attempts to provide various medical,
therapeutic, educational, recreational, and social programs for
children and support services for their desperate parents. Many
families also require clothing, household items, and general welfare
assistance. However, Tikvah lacks qualified professional personnel,
appropriate educational materials and toys, adequate space, and
financial resources. Rabbi Kaminezki provides some support through
a special class at the Jewish day school for a few of the youngsters
and special sessions of his summer camp for many Tikvah children
and their parents.
Rabbi Lepkivker regards inclusion of handicapped
young children in the hesed alongside elderly clients as psychologically
questionable. He intends to transfer the Tikvah program into the
community center segment of JDC services.
Rabbi Lepkivker believes that JDC must strengthen
its efforts in Jewish renewal
among children, youth, and young and middle-age adults. He thinks
that it is possible to build a Jewish community in Dnipropetrovsk
over the next 10 to 20 years for those Jews who will remain in the
city. It is "our responsibility" (наша
ответсвенность)
to raise the Jewish consciousness of the many Jews who believe that
assimilation is desirable (because it reduces antisemitism), he
declared. The community center
segment of JDC programming is key to this effort.
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Irina
Sviridenko supervises the community
center sector in space that is inadequate and also inefficiently
utilized. Nonetheless, it has more room than exists for such activity
in JDC facilities in many other communities. Its children's
and youth activities include the Simcha
creative arts classes, children's theater group, Tsivos
Hashem club, a medically-supervised exercise program for
children with scoliosis, and Jewish holiday celebrations. A youth
club involves 60 adolescents, 20 of whom participate on a regular
basis. A Hillel program for local
students also is based at the community center.
A major goal of the community center is to attract
individuals in the emerging Jewish middle class between the ages
of 25 and 55. Few such people are involved in any Jewish activity.
Prior to Pesach, the community center taught a select group of local
Jews how to conduct seders in their own homes, recognizing that
few individuals of that particular intellectual and economic level
would attend communal seders. Instructors from the local Jewish
Peoples' University present lectures on various Jewish subjects,
such as Jewish history and Jewish tradition, throughout the year.
Other programs for adults include a library and
reading room, a literary club and a women's club. Some activities
of the latter are intergenerational, bringing together middle-age
women and their young-adult daughters. The community center recently
began a class in women's aerobics or "shaping" (шейпинг).47
One 10- or 11-day session of a family camp will be offered this
summer for about 20 families.
JDC programs in smaller Jewish population centers
throughout the region are necessarily more limited, but each offers
a selection of services and activities. The central hesed in Dnipropetrovsk
operates a van that delivers food parcels, library books, and other
items to small communities.
The JDC community center building in Dnipropetrovsk
houses the Dnipropetrovsk Institute
for Communal and Welfare Workers, a branch of a larger and
similar JDC organization in St. Petersburg. The Dnipropetrovsk affiliate
operates workshops for JDC professional and paraprofessional staff
in the region, such as hesed directors, library workers, homecare
workers, and others.
54. The Boston-Dnipropetrovsk
Jewish community kehilla/sister-city project has brought
three medical programs to Dnipropetrovsk. Project
Vision, whose roots are in the American
Physicians Fellowship, Inc. for Medicine in Israel, has worked
with JDC and other organizations on eye care improvement in Israel
(including Arab communities) and for Jewish populations in Russia,
Romania, and Cuba. In November 1997, a medical group (ophthalmologists,
optometrists, internists, and oncologists) from Boston conducted
a five-day consultation based at the JDC hesed. They brought with
them 25 cartons of American diagnostic equipment, medical supplies,
and eyeglasses. More than 600 patients, most of them elderly clients
on the rolls of Shaarei Chesed and other Jewish charities, were
diagnosed and treated. Home visits were made to housebound patients.
Seven individuals received laser treatment, and other patients were
recommended for later surgery. Eventually, Project Vision hopes
to train local medical personnel in such procedures. Action for
Post-Soviet Jewry (Waltham, MA) worked with Project Vision and JDC
in arranging and implementing this program.
Two ambulatory medical
clinics, one in obstetrics/gynecology and the other in pediatrics,
were opened at Gynecology Hospital #6 and Children's Hospital #9
respectively. Located in a separate wing of the Gynecology Hospital,
the Women's Clinic is unusually clean and pleasant in comparison
with other Soviet/post-Soviet medical facilities. Modern diagnostic
equipment and training is supplied by physicians associated with
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
The Pediatric Clinic lacks a defined space, but
focuses on physician education and the provision of recent medical
literature, including textbooks. The collaborating hospitals are
Mt. Auburn Hospital and Cambridge Hospital in Cambridge, MA. The
Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston has been an
important link between the two Dnipropetrovsk clinics and medical
programs in the greater Boston area.
55. Global Jewish Assistance
and Relief Network (GJARN), directed by Rabbi
Eliezer Avtson, began various welfare operations in Ukraine
in 1991. Although Rabbi Avtson is associated with Chabad Lubavitch,
GJARN operates on a non-sectarian basis and thus is able to work
collaboratively with United States government agencies. It has managed
a welfare service in Dnipropetrovsk for several years and will soon
open a clinic, with U.S. government funds, that will specialize
in treatment of diabetes and several other medical conditions.
Zaporizhya
56. The city of Zaporizhya
(known until 1921 as Aleksandrovsk) is the administrative center
of Zaporizhya oblast, which lies immediately south of Dnipropetrovsk
oblast. The cities of Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhya are about fifty
miles apart. The city of Zaporizhya was established in the late
sixteenth century by roving bands of local Cossacks known as Zaporizhya
Cossacks. Their descendants remain in the area today, although they
are less numerous and less well known than the Don Cossacks to the
east and Kuban Cossacks to the southeast.
Extensive deposits of lignite as well as electricity
generated by a hydroelectric station on the Dnipr River supported
development of an economy based on metallurgy, chemicals, and transportation
equipment. In common with other centers of heavy industry in the
post-Soviet transition states, much of this enterprise is obsolescent
and currently non-operative. Agricultural production (especially
winter wheat, corn, and potatoes) in the oblast sustains a food
processing industry.
The current population of the city of Zaporizhya
is approximately 880,000, including 10,000 to 14,000 Jews. Much
smaller concentrations of Jews live in Berdyansk and Melitopol,
both in the southern part of the oblast.
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44. Rabbi
Lepkivker noted that the new JDC facility in Lugansk, an industrial
city further east in Ukraine with a much smaller Jewish population,
will be called a community center and will accommodate all major
Jewish institutions in the area, including a synagogue, hesed, and
community center program.
45. The
program was initiated at the urging of Dr. Judith Wolf and her family
in Boston. (The Jewish communities of the two cities have a twinning
relationship.)
46. Prior
to the inception of the hesed program, many of the children had
not been out of their apartments for five to seven years.
47. Publicity
for the aerobics class generated a controversy with Rabbi Kaminezki
and his colleagues due to the wide distribution of promotional circulars
featuring a large picture of a shapely blonde in a skimpy two-piece
outfit that may have been nothing more than underwear. Rabbi Kaminezki
declined to post the announcements. Commenting on the divergence
of views, Ms. Sviridenko smiled and said, "We have different
tasks." ("У нас разные
задачи.")
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