Commentary
62. Increasingly, indigenous operators of Jewish-focus
programs in Ukraine understand the need to develop a broad-based indigenous
fundraising capacity and to lessen their dependence on foreign funders. Equally, the concept of fee-for-service is
understood and accepted; if a program is offered free of charge - with the
possible exception of welfare assistance to impoverished Jewish elderly and
handicapped younger Jews - it is viewed
as low in quality and unattractive.
Young Jewish
community professionals eagerly attend fundraising workshops and ask foreigners
for advice. To date, however, their
organizations appear to operate on a money-in/money-out basis, with little long-range
planning and only basic financial management.
To be sure, omnipresent corruption deters development of a sophisticated
financial management system.
63. Certain international Jewish organizations -
principally, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee - continue to
build Jewish community structures without input from local Jewish
communities. The new JDC Jewish Center
in Kharkiv is a case in point, modeled on counterpart institutions in other
cities rather than on expressions of interest from local Jews. No attempt was made to mobilize local
financial support, and no plan exists to enlist local collaboration in the
future. Such an approach is a dependency
model, establishing dependency on a foreign institution and limiting the
likelihood of generating local responsibility and support.
64. Jewish young adults active in Jewish
community life repeatedly express enthusiasm about peer-led Jewish organizations,
such as Limmud and Moishe House, that are non-denominational among Jewish religious
streams. They are equally admiring of
the Jewish Agency Hamama (Incubator) program that allocates seed money
for young adult initiatives. Such
activities provide young people with experience that may prepare them for
leadership roles in a future Jewish civil society.
Informed by
newly-acquired capacity in English, international travel experience, and the
Internet, Russian-speaking Jewish young adults in the 21st century live in
circumstances unimagined by their parents and by the well-meaning foreigners
who established top-down Jewish programs for post-Soviet Jews in the
1990's. Many contemporary post-Soviet
Jewish young leaders are smart and creative; in common with their peers in
other countries, they are interested in developing programs based on Jewish
tradition, but pluralist and modern in approach, content, and governance.
65. Expansion of existing programs offered by the
Masorti/Conservative and Progressive/Reform movements in Ukraine will provide
additional options for Jewish involvement.
Each of these movements requires substantially greater investment,
including Russian-speaking rabbis who relate well to young people and young
families, than is now apparent. Program premises
must be modern and welcoming.
66. A number of local Chabad rabbis - for
example, Shmuel Kaminezki in Dnipropetrovsk, Moshe Moskovitz in Kharkiv, and Yonatan
Markovich, Mordechai Levenhartz, and Moshe Asman in Kyiv - have developed and
maintain welfare services that provide important aid to local Jewish populations.
Adopt-a-Bubbe also provides significant welfare assistance in specific areas.
All of these programs fill gaps in welfare service and often are overlooked in
evaluating local Jewish communal structures.
67. Although indigenous Jewish young adults appear
to enjoy periodic visits with elderly Jews and occasional interaction with
handicapped children or peers, little interest is evident among local Jews in
developing community-based infrastructure that
addresses the
needs of Jewish at-risk children, elderly individuals, or people with
disabilities. As services are reduced by
the Joint Distribution Committee and supplemental aid provided through the
Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany is scheduled to peak and
then decline significantly within the next few years, local Jews seem
ill-prepared to bear responsibility for the disadvantaged among them. Rabbinic efforts, such as those noted above,
and independent foreign-based assistance initiatives cannot fulfill these
needs. Further, any successful
comprehensive indigenous social service agency would require the resources of a
Jewish fundraising and financial management system that does not yet exist in
the post-Soviet states.
68. Although many Jews in smaller cities and
towns continue to leave these locales on their own, remnant Jewish populations
remain in smaller population centers that are burdened with inferior infrastructures
and limited employment opportunities. Jews
in these areas also are isolated from other Jews and may feel inhibited in
expressing their Jewish identity. Notwithstanding
the reality that outreach is expensive in areas of low Jewish population
density, support should be sought for inclusion of all small-city Jewish
youngsters in such programs as Jewish camping and for their orderly departure
from these areas and systematic immigration to Israel or relocation to nearby
larger Jewish centers.
69. Those who observe Ukraine from the outside or
even from Kyiv must be mindful of the differences between regions and cities,
even cities of similar sizes. The reader
is referred to disparities in regional/local government policies in
Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv, for example, and the impact of these
dissimilarities on local economies and general daily life.
70. Equally, Jewish life has developed
differently in different Jewish population centers. Rabbi Kaminezki exerts enormous influence in
Dnipropetrovsk, so much so that leaders of other Jewish programs feel compelled
to clear major decisions with him. No
rabbi in Kyiv enjoys even a fragment of such authority. In Odesa, two Orthodox rabbis compete with
each other, diminishing the moral authority of the rabbinate and of Jewish
religious groups in general.
Betsy Gidwitz
Chicago
Illinois
October 22,
2012
Unless
otherwise indicated, all photographs and translations are by the writer. Modified Ukrainian orthography generally is
favored over Russian orthography.
|