Welfare
56.
Hesed Chana shares a building with a JDC Jewish community center. Vyecheslav
Botvinnik, director of JDC operations in the city, stated that the hesed
serves 1,700 clients, almost all of them elderly, in Krivoi Rog and 39 smaller
population centers in the periphery. In some of these smaller locales, only
one or two Jews remain.
About 180 of these clients receive homecare services; many of these
housebound individuals are very isolated and lonely said Mr. Botvinnik. Their
only visitors are the homecare workers.
Notwithstanding
his severe mien, Vyecheskav Botvinnik is eager to explain JDC operations in
Krivoi Rog and environs to visitors.
Photo: the writer.
Hesed Chana operates a day center for
mobile seniors, scheduling each of six groups of 20 individuals for a full day
of activities once every two weeks. Hesed vans visit 24 different places to
pick up and drop off participants, Mr. Botvinnik said.
As is the case in other cities and towns, the
number of Holocaust victims continues to decline and revenue from the
Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany has diminished
accordingly. Some years ago, Mr. Botvinnik stated, 70 percent of all hesed
clients were Holocaust victims; now only 40 percent of clients share that
history.
In addition to elderly clients, the hesed
also attempts to assist disabled Jewish children through its Tikvah program,
although it can offer only limited programs, such as speech therapy, to about
20 special needs youngsters who live in the city. With assistance of World
Jewish Relief, a British organization, it brings these youngsters to the hesed
for periodic assistance. Additional Jewish children with disabilities reside
in the periphery, Mr. Botvinnik stated, but it is too difficult and too costly
to provide them with services other than occasional food parcels and some
financial support for medical needs. Local governments, including the
municipality of Krivoi Rog, are insensitive to the needs of disabled people,
continued Mr. Botvinnik. Schools are inaccessible to children who use walkers
or wheelchairs; stores and other buildings are not designed with access ramps.
The industrial base of Krivoi Rog contributes
to a very unhealthy environment, Mr. Botvinnik stated. The quality of
both air and water is poor, leading to chronic health conditions. Wealthy
people, he continued, move away. The local steel industry is old-fashioned and
many mills have closed. Mines have been depleted. The unemployment level is
very high, and many individuals who are nominally employed work only part time.
The
JDC hesed and JCC building in Krivoi Rog is surrounded by a high security wall
not visible in the adjacent photo. A formidable entry gate awaits visitors.
Photo: the writer.
When asked about inflation, Mr.
Botvinnik responded that he had seen a local news item on the Internet that
very morning that reported inflation in Krivoi Rog at 14 percent. However, he
knew from his own professional and personal experience that the local inflation
rate was much higher. For example, the hesed kitchen staff (who prepare meals
for day center clients) tell him that the cost of food has risen 30 to 40 percent
in the last few months.
People cannot afford to pay for cataract
surgery or chemotherapy, said Mr. Botvinnik. Hospitals do not have certain basic
medicines, he continued.
Parents of school-age children cannot afford to feed their children and help
their own elderly parents at the same time. Public schools demand
"contributions" from parents for school repairs, and parents can no
longer afford to give their children a monetary allowance. Seniors fear that
the Ukrainian government, facing major economic difficulties, will enact
pension "reforms" that will reduce pensions.
Obviously, Mr. Botvinnik said, the stress
level in the community is very high. Russian intervention has aggravated
an already dire economic situation. Local Jews, Mr. Botvinnik continued,
understand that JDC is unable to provide all of the support that they need, and
they are very grateful for any assistance at all.
Synagogue-Related Programs
57.
Rabbi Liron Edri, a Chabad rabbi from Israel, arrived in the city in
2001 to provide leadership for a Jewish population that lacked effective
indigenous Jewish leaders. He has worked well with local government officials
to obtain land for a synagogue and for a Jewish day school. He has secured
funds for new buildings from individuals with Krivoi Rog roots who no longer
live in the city.
Rabbi
Liron Edri has worked with donors to build structures that now exceed the
capacity of the shrinking Jewish community to maintain them. He worries about
the future for Jews in a rust
belt city with a declining economy.
Photo: the writer.
The synagogue,
which was completed in 2010, includes a prayer hall, classrooms, conference
rooms, a kitchen and kosher dining facility, a Judaica store, a welfare
service, and a small Jewish Agency office. The welfare office, which is
separate from the JDC hesed, dispenses food parcels, clothing, and some cash
payments to needy individuals. A Jewish war veterans group meets in the
facility, and a Jewish history museum occupies a room on the second floor.
(See pages 77-78.) The syna-gogue also displays the work of con-temporary
Jewish artists, some of whom have been able to attract purchasers through this
exposure.
The synagogue in Krivoi Rog is a
striking building located on a major street close to the Chabad day school.
Photo:
http://www.godaven.com/detail.asp?Id=17493&C ountry=Ukraine. Retrieved
August 26, 2013.
As he has done in the past, Rabbi Edri
expressed concern about the ability of the Jewish community in Krivoi Rog to
sustain itself in a declining economy and an era of emigration. In ten years
at the most, he predicted, possibly only five to seven years, only three
Jewish population centers in Ukraine will survive as active Jewish
communities: Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Odesa. Jewish young adults, he
observed, are not staying in smaller cities and towns; assimilation also is
taking its toll.
Few local young Jews go on Taglit tours
to Israel or participate in MASA Israel pro-grams, Rabbi Edri said,
simply because there are few local Jews in the relevant age groups. These
programs work best when a significant local cohort participates and creates a
momentum that motivates others, he stated, but Krivoi Rog lacks the Jewish
population mass to create such a force.
Kyiv
Situated
on both banks of the Dnipr River in the north central part of the country, the
origins of Kyiv are lost in antiquity. The Ukrainian capital is, however,
known as the “mother of all Russian cities,” long pre-dating cities in Russia
itself. Kyivan Rus – the city and territories around it - is considered the
forerunner of the modern Russian state. In 988, Prince Volodymyr of Kyiv designated Orthodox (Byzantine
rite) Christianity as the state religion of Russia and established its seat in
Kyiv. Kyivan Rus attained its greatest powers in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries when it was a trading center between the Baltic and Mediterranean
seas. Sacked by Mongols in 1240, the lands of Kyivan Rus were successively
under Tatar, Lithuanian, and Polish control from the fourteenth century and
then annexed by Russia in 1686. The third largest city in the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics, Kyiv was occupied and almost completely destroyed by
German forces between September 1941 and November 1943.
Now the capital of
independent Ukraine, Kyiv is the political hub of the country and an
important center of Ukrainian commerce, industry, culture, and education. The
city is known for its location on the Dnipr River, its historic buildings and
monuments, and the Kreschatyk, the broad boulevard that is its main street.
However, in April 2014, at the time of the writer's visit, the Kreschatyk
remained closed to vehicular traffic; political protestors, as well as some
homeless people, still maintained encampments from the earlier anti-Yanukhovich
demonstrations. Barricades of old tires, some painted in Ukrainian blue and
yellow, and protest detritus constituted an obstacle course for pedestrians. Large
political placards, memorials to victims of police violence, and Ukrainian and
European Union flags added to the color. A portable stage, its walls covered
with political slogans, accommodated entertainers, especially on weekends when
local demonstrators and spectators were joined by fellow protestors from out of
town.
On
adjacent streets, one found additional protest sites and a medical dispensary tent
complex staffed by volunteer physicians and nurses. Somewhat defiantly, most
nearby businesses and other institutions remained open, vehicular traffic
diverted when necessary, but pedestrians going about their business as if in
normal conditions.
 
At left, woman walks
down the Kreschatyk, which is blocked to vehicular traffic, early on a week-day
morning in April. The burned-out building is the former trade union building,
which had been partly occupied by protesters as their headquarters, press
center, security center, and kitchen; Kyiv police occupied other parts of the
structure and are believed to have set the fire in an attempt to rout the
protesters on the night of February 18-19. At right is a makeshift theater in
the middle of the Kreschatyk; blue and yellow banners above and below the stage
urge people to enlist in the new national guard. A banner on the side of the
stage advertises an "open university of Maidan."
The general population of Kyiv includes
somewhat more than 2.8 million permanent residents and unregistered migrants.
Although the number of the latter has increased in recent months as people flee
violence in the east, the city always has hosted seekers from less well
developed parts of the country as well as foreigners who have overstayed visas
and lack the means to move elsewhere.
Estimates of the size of the Jewish
population of Kyiv range from 25,000 to 70,000. Unlike many other large
Jewish population centers in the post-Soviet states, Kyiv lacks unambiguous
Jewish leadership. The chief rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine, Rabbi Yaakov Dov
Bleich, frequently is absent from the city, and no other individual has
emerged as a credible leader of Kyiv Jewry. The majority of Kyiv Jews remain
aloof from organized Jewish activity.
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