Asked what they
like best about the program, parents said: the overall program is of high quality;
the parents learn about subjects with which they were unfamiliar - Jewish history,
the Holocaust, and Israel; and the madrichim (leaders) are very professional. The parents have become acquainted with each
other and developed new friendships; they are almost like a large, extended family;
their children are engaged in wholesome activities and have made new friends in
the program. Youngsters said: they learn
about future opportunities in Israel; the madrichim treat them very well; the madrichim
don't yell at them, but help them when they don't understand something.
The atmosphere in the program is very friendly.
A boy said that he likes to learn Hebrew and that the additional lessons
in English supplement his English classes in school.
Another boy said that he lives close to the building in which the program
meets.
102.
Amir Ben-Tzvi, who directs operations for the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee (Joint, JDC) in Kyiv and central/western Ukraine,
was out of town during the writer's visit to Kyiv in April.
However, she met with members of the JDC hesed staff (see pages 129-131)
during this period. She met with Mr. Ben-Tzvi
during a subsequent visit to Kyiv in June 2013.
Mr. Ben-Tzvi stated that JDC would be leaving
its current office space in a somewhat shabby commercial building for new
space that he had just leased in a better building in the Podil district of the
city. He is still looking, he said, for quarters
to temporarily re-house the hesed and Jewish community center while JDC decides
how much it would like to invest in permanent new premises.
Ideally, he continued, he would like to find a building that would accommodate
the hesed on the ground floor and Jewish community/culture activities on a second
floor. The current hesed building cannot
be renovated to meet JDC needs.
Amir Ben-Tzvi, who earlier headed
JDC operations in Dnipro-petrovsk for three years and now is completing three years
in a similar position in Kyiv, will return to Israel before the end of 2013. He will assume new JDC responsibilities in
the organization's Jerusalem headquarters.
Photo: the writer
(in 2012).
Answering questions
about the reduced client base at the hesed, as described by hesed professionals
with whom the writer conferred earlier (see previously), Mr. Ben-Tzvi said that
the JDC Kyiv area budget had been reduced in response to greater needs in Russia,
Belarus, and Moldova. Decisions to increase
or decrease services in a specific area usually reflect differences in local pensions,
he said. JDC periodically examines pensions
and purchasing power throughout its service area and changes service availability
accordingly, Mr. Ben-Tzvi explained. In the
Kyiv area, he said, a decision was reached to tighten eligibility criteria, thus
reducing the client census. Further, the
extent of services offered to those who retain eligibility also has been curtailed.
Six to eight percent
of clients die in any given year, Mr. Ben-Tzvi stated.
Usually, these are replaced by people on a waiting list.
Most of those who die, he noted, are survivors of Nazi persecution and thus
are recipients of services provided through the Conference on Jewish Material Claims
against Germany. Fewer new clients are Holocaust
survivors and thus fewer are funded through the Claims Conference.
Life expectancy of hesed clients, said Mr. Ben-Tzvi, is about 10 years longer
than that of other Ukrainians.
The hesed currently
provides hot meals only to clients in its day center program, said Mr. Ben-Tzvi,
although it subsidizes the hot meal program that Rabbi Asman offers at the Brodsky
synagogue and another program operated by Rabbi Bleich.
With support from World Jewish Relief of London, JDC has reinstated
its warm home program, now offering tea and snacks (instead of full meals)
to a maximum of 150 people in 12 different apartments in Kyiv and to additional
people in eight more homes outside Kyiv, in such cities and towns as Chernihiv,
Lviv, and Khmelnytskyi. The socialization
opportunties offered in the warm homes are just as important to participating
clients as more clinical welfare services, stated Mr. Ben-Tzvi.
The hesed also is
attempting to assist elderly Jews in maintaining contact with family members who
have moved abroad. About 10 individuals
with access to home computers have been taught how to use Skype and other programs
that ease communications. Another means of
improved communications, said Mr. Ben-Tzvi, is enhanced use of mobile phones;
a recent hesed study showed that about 40 percent of clients use mobile phones,
so the hesed is trying to determine how this technology can be best employed to
improve communications between the hesed and clients.
Changing the topic
to Jewish renewal, the writer asked Mr. Ben-Tzvi to describe the highly publicized
program for Jewish young adults known as Juice.
Mr. Ben-Tzvi responded that he initiated Juice as a platform for Jewish
young adults who are reticent about affiliating with established Jewish institutions,
such as synagogues and, he acknowledged, JDC.
He selected the name <Juice>, he said, because English-speaking young Ukrainians
often pronounce the word <Jews> in such a way that it sounds like <juice>. In order to mollify Jewish young adult concern
about associating with JDC, the visibility of JDC in the program is very low-key. However, he stated, a staff person in the JDC
office coordinates Juice activities and the involvement of JDC in Juice is greater
than many Juice participants would prefer.
A typical Juice
event, said Mr. Ben-Tzvi, is a moderated chat with public figures.
About 50 to 60 Jewish young adults attend such events, he continued, and
an entrance fee is absolutely required. A
Purim party attended by about 260 people had an additional fundraising element and
raised approximately $5,000 for a diabetic child (identified by JDC) with serious
medical issues. Juice also has provided networking
opportunities with local businessmen. Juice
advertises its programs in local Jewish media and Internet platforms. It holds some
of its events in cafés and private clubs.
All Juice programs,
Mr. Ben-Tzvi continued, are discussed with a seven-person leadership council
of Jewish young adults. In the future,
said Mr. Ben-Tzvi, Juice must become "totally independent" and much more
sophisticated than it is now.
The JDC Jewish Renewal
program in general is very dependent upon development of a true Jewish community
center, Mr. Ben-Tzvi stated. JDC has no space
of its own in which to operate Jewish identity-building programs, he said.
Responding to a
series of questions that the writer asked about the Jewish future in Kyiv,
Mr. Ben-Tzvi predicted that "at least 50 percent" of current Jewish young
adults in the city will leave. Not all of
them will go to Israel, he stated, but the majority will leave the country and settle
elsewhere to raise their families. He said
that current JDC activity for young adults is "fun and games" and acknowledged
that JDC programs (including Juice) contain no educational content about responsibility
for vulnerable Jewish population groups that remain in the country.
He concurred with the writer's view that the current JDC hesed system is
not tenable in the long run, but offered no suggestions about development of a Jewish
welfare system that might be viable in coming decades.
103. Jeremy
Borovitz, a resident of New Jersey, was approaching the end of a one-year
term as a Fellow in the Jewish Service Corps, a program operated by JDC. His main project, said Mr. Borovitz, was conducting
research about former shtetls and making films describing his findings.
He explored Buky (northeast of Uman) and Berezhany (west of Ternopil); in
each case, he said, he worked with local non-Jewish high school students, doing
research in local archives and interviewing senior citizens who remembered their
former Jewish neighbors. The projects caused
much excitement, Mr. Borovitz continued, because foreigners rarely visited these
small towns. In socializing with local inhabitants,
he learned that some people wanted Jews to return to their towns, believing that
Jews would open new businesses and improve the local economy.
The completed films, Mr. Borovitz said, would be shown at a film festival.
Jeremy Borovitz joined the Jewish
Service Corps program of the Joint Distribution Committee after spending two years
as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine. His
father is an American rabbi and it is likely that he will enter a rabbinical seminary
in the United States and "join the family business," he said.
Photo: the writer.
In addition to conducting
his own projects, Mr. Borovitz assisted JDC in Kyiv with the Juice program, hosted
Shabbat dinners and a Pesach seder for Hillel in Kyiv, and taught in a regional
Jewish Sunday school in Korsun-Shevchenko.
Responding to a comment from the writer about the extensive travel required to move
from one of these assignments to another, Mr. Borovitz said that the logistics were
greatly eased by access to a car and driver provided by JDC.
Both JDC and his previous employer, the Peace Corps, prohibit employees from
driving cars in Ukraine, a common policy among foreign organizations in the country.
Asked about his
responsibilities in the Peace Corps, Mr. Borovitz said that he lived in a village
and taught English in the village school.
He also helped people in the village build modern sanitation facilities, i.e., toilets,
and taught Jewish history whenever he could find people who were interested in it.
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