Welfare
19. Hesed Menachem, a welfare
center operated by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, moved into
the sixth floor of the Menorah Center in February, 2014, after many years in a
two-story former preschool building. The new premises are somewhat smaller
than the old school structure, but the Menorah Center is new, does not require
clients to climb stairs, and is in the center of Chabad-organized Jewish
communal activity in the city.
Anatoly
Pleskachevsky,
director of the hesed, stated that some clients were apprehen-sive about moving
to the much larger Menorah Center building, fearing the elevators and worried
that they might be unable to navigate among other building users who were
younger and moved more quickly and more nimbly. However, Mr. Pleskachevsky
said, Menorah Center management has been superb in arranging schedules and
assisting any hesed clients who require aid. Mr. Pleskachevsky added that it
was good for elderly people to be in a large community building; the presence
of other people and the occurrence of many activities add "life" to
the perspective of individuals who often are isolated. Security, he noted, was
much less complicated in the large Menorah Center, which had its own protective
arrangements, than in an isolated building like the old preschool structure.
Hesed director Anatoly Pleskachevsky
is a 34-year veteran of the Soviet armed forces, having retired as a colonel
after serving in the artillery corps in Afghanistan.
Photo: Chabad of Dnipropetrovsk.
The hesed currently is serving 6,000
clients, almost all of them elderly Jews, in the city and 45 points in the
surrounding region, stated Mr. Pleskachevsky. The client census continues
to decline, he observed, down from 7,000 in 2013. The reduction in clientele
does not reflect a decline in need, he acknowledged, but a reduction in
financial resources available to serve vulnerable Jewish elderly. Further, Mr.
Pleskachevsky averred, the ratio of clients eligible to receive services
provided by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany has
declined to 40 percent of total clients, an enormous drop from the 85 percent
who received Claims Conference funds when he began to work at the hesed 14
years ago.
He observed that 18 clients died in March, an unusually large number; perhaps,
he mused, they died due to the "situation" in eastern Ukraine, that
is, they were frightened that hostilities further east would spread to
Dnipropetrovsk and that they would be enveloped in another war (after World War
II).
Financial aid to needy clients now is
transmitted through PrivatBank debit cards, which are recognized almost
everywhere in the hesed service area, said Mr. Pleskachevsky. PrivatBank has
cash terminals even in small towns, he stated.
Outside Dnipro-petrovsk, Mr. Pleskachevsky continued, Dniprodzerzhinsk is the
largest hesed base in the area; approximately 400 clients live there. About
280 clients reside in Pavlograd and another fairly large group resides in
Novomoskovsk. Other clients live in any of 42 other points, some of them small
villages and remnants of Agrojoint farms established by the Joint Distribution
Committee in 1924.
Some of these very small villages lack dependable electricity, Mr.
Pleskachevsky said; 14 people in such locales receive periodic food parcels and
medicines because, obviously, bank terminals cannot function without
electricity and/or there may be no accessible retail outlets in which to
purchase supplies. Hesed Menachem manages a "hesed on wheels" that operates
20 different periodic routes to deliver medicines to specific clients and to conduct
assessments of local situations.
The hesed also distributes health
care apparatus and implements, such as wheelchairs, walkers, therapeutic
mattresses, and other items that are too expensive for many clients to access
through conventional retail outlets. Due to space limitations, this service is
administered from a large utility closet on the same floor as the hesed that
serves unofficially as warehouse space.
The hesed provides patronage or
homecare services (cleaning, cooking, shopping) to about 800 homebound
clients, stated Mr. Pleskachevsky. Approximately 200 homecare workers are
employed in this endeavor. Mr. Pleskachevsky said that this homecare team is
very stable; pay is low, but salaries are paid on time.
Asked about inflation, Mr.
Pleskachevsky said that it is severe and that the hesed monitors the cost of
living on a daily basis. It used to fix prices with suppliers at the beginning
of the year, but now vendors are reluctant to set prices even on a monthly
basis. The prices of specific medicines may increase two or three times every
day, he stated, because most are imported and subject to heavy import taxes and
other fees. The cost of locally grown vegetables and certain other foods are
relatively stable, but any items transported over significant distances have
increased markedly in cost because fuel prices have escalated sharply. Citing
a specific economic burden for the hesed, Mr. Pleskachevsky mentioned the
birthday parcels that traditionally are presented to clients on their
birthdays; these parcels usually include chocolates, oranges, and other gift
items, but the cost of oranges has risen so much that this custom has become very
burdensome financially for the hesed. Yet, clients still expect to receive
oranges on their birthdays.
Pensions are being
delivered on time so far, Mr. Pleskachevsky averred. However, he is not
confident that this practice will continue. "Who knows about next
month?" he asked rhetorically.
The hesed operates a day center
program for its mobile elderly clients, dividing them into 22 groups of 30
people each according to the areas in which they reside. Participants engage
in various social activities, celebrate holidays, arrange medical services in physicians'
offices, and are served a midday dinner in a Menorah Center restaurant. They
also may have their hair cut and receive other services. Special events are held in
Menorah Center banquet halls and the Sinai Theater. Clients are transported
between their homes and the Menorah Center by hesed vans. Groups usually
attend the center three times during each two-month period, said Mr.
Pleskachevsky. In addition to the large day center in Dnipropetrovsk, the hesed
operates a smaller center serving 18 people in Dniprodzerzhinsk.
 
Left: Day center clients gather in the
large day room at Hesed Menachem. The group in the middle is dancing, the
women in front are doing various kinds of handwork, and the men barely visible
in the rear are playing chess. Art on the wall depicts symbols of the 12 tribes
of Israel.
Right: Hairdressing services are
available to day center clients.
Both photos: the writer.
Veterans of World War II are honored in the
hesed and elsewhere in the Jewish community. A major commemoration is held
every year on Victory Day, which is marked in the post-Soviet states on May 9.
The writer met briefly with retired Col. Solomon Flaks, age 87, who is
the official "emissary" of Jewish World War II veterans in
Dnipropetrovsk; Col. Flaks gives public lectures and appears on various
television programs. He has been a hesed member for more than 20 years.
Col. (Ret.) Solomon Flaks is
well-known in Dne-propetrovsk as a representative of World War II Jewish war
veterans. In a conference room adja-cent to the day center, he holds a volume
of a post-Soviet book collection written to commemor-ate the wartime heroism of
Jewish Red Army combatants; Soviet accounts usually ignored their achievements.
Photo: the writer.
20. The Joint Distribution Committee
also sponsors a Jewish Family Service that focuses on the needs of
at-risk children and families. According to director Natasha Gusak, the
JFS has 1,531 child clients, each of whom is at risk due to poor parenting, impoverishment,
and/or disabilities. A modest daycare program attempts to prepare a small
number of targeted children between the ages of 18 months and three years for
successful entry into regular preschools (kindergartens); classes on parenting
are held for their mothers. Some at-risk school-age youngsters are invited to
regular JCC activities and limited tutoring is available to those who need
assistance with school work. Material support in the form of food parcels and
medicines is provided to some impoverished families.
A related program is Mothers for a
Better Future, which targets single parents in need of "psychological
rehabilitation". Women are offered counseling, basic English and computer
skills, workplace skills, and referrals to programs that might help them to
become hairdressers, bookkeepers, or comparable specialists.
The Tikvah special needs
program enrolls 130 children, some of whom also attend the Special Needs
Educational Resource Center at Beit Chana.
Tikvah program components focus on speech and animal therapy, crafts work, and
occasional swimming lessons. Some youngsters also receive massages. Thirty-seven
families of children in this group receive financial aid, said Ms. Gusak. Three
bedridden youngsters receive certain services at home.
A major issue in dealing with
special-needs youngsters in Ukraine, Ms. Gusak con-tinued, is parental denial
that a child requires assistance. Parents may repudiate a diagnosis that their
youngster has an autism spectrum disorder, for example, and simply keep a child
at home after he/she has been expelled from a conventional public school for
behavioral reasons. They do not seek support, perhaps because they are
reluctant to acknowledge that their child is different, they are unaware of
support programs, special education services are poorly developed, and/or such
services have poor reputations or are costly. Families come to Tikvah through
physician referrals, said Ms. Gusak, but then Tikvah must deal with reluctant
parents. In response to parental issues, JFS has formed a parent support
group.

Individuals in the photo at left are
par-ticipating in Yadid
(Heb., Friend), a group for adults with developmental disabilities.
Yadid organizes occasional recreation and social programs, some of which are
held in conjunction with Jewish holidays.
Photo: the writer.
21. Adopt-A-Bubbe/Adopt-A-Zayde is an independent
assistance program created by Dr. Judith Patkin, the Executive Director
of Action for Post-Soviet Jewry in Waltham, MA. The Dnipropetrovsk
organization supports elderly Jews in Dnipropetrovsk itself and in 18
additional cities or large towns and numerous smaller towns in eastern,
central, and southern Ukraine.
However, the total number of towns served has declined as Jewish populations in
these villages have diminished to the point where service calls are
economically prohibitive. At any given time, said Yan and Tanya
Sidelkovsky, who direct AAB operations in the Dnipropetrovsk region,
approximately 800 to 850 individuals are on their client list, a reduction of
approximately 200 since 2013 due to financial constraints. Some clients are
rotated in and out of their service census periodically in order to serve more
people, Mrs. Sidelkovsky stated.
Elderly clients who die are replaced by
younger pensioners; the younger pensioners may have greater needs because they
do not receive the government bonuses and other government benefits (such as
discounts on use of utilities) given to veterans of World War II. The program
also supports some working-age Jews who are chronically ill or handicapped, as
well as some Jewish families with young children in which the parents are
unemployed.
The major form of AAB service is the
distribution of general food parcels to a long list of needy Jews. The
organization also provides food, clothing, and medicine tailored to the
specific requirements of particular clients, such as food and medications for
diabetics. Further, it assists patients in hospitals who usually must bring
their own linens and medicines, as well as food, for their hospitalization.
AAB provides medicines and medical supplies (such as catheters, syringes, and surgical
instruments) to several hospitals, both as general assistance and as an
incentive for hospitals to admit and treat AAB clients who require
hospitalization.
The program also operates in several other regions of
the former Soviet states. However, this report deals only with work that is
directed from its Dnipropetrovsk office. In addition to assisting Jews,
Adopt-A-Bubbe also reaches out to elderly Righteous Gentiles, i.e., those from
families who helped Jews during the Holocaust.
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