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Trip Report November 7-20, 2001

JUDY PATKIN, ANNA PETROV, EMILY CORBATO

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ITEM PAGE

1. Table of Contents 2

2. Overview 3

3. Dnipropetrovsk 4

4. Elena Grigorievna Bogolubov & Synagogue Emergency Fund 4

5. Dnipropetrovsk Jewish Day School & Mahon 5

6. Pavlograd 5

a. Home Visits 5

b. Progressive Congregation Kabbalat Shabbat 7

7. Rubizhne 8

8. Dnipropetrovsk Holocaust Memorial 11

9. Dnipropetrovsk Girls’ & Boy’s Homes 12

10. Kharkov 12

11. Poltava 13

12. Dnipropetrovsk – Assisted Living Home for Elderly 15

13. Dnipropetrovsk - American Jewish Medical Center 16

14. Zhovti Vody 16

15. Krivoy Rog 17

16. Dniprodzerzhinsk Jewish Day School 18

17. Novomoskovsk 19

a. Home Visits 19

b. Progressive Congregation Kaballat Shabbat 20

18. Dnipropetrovsk

a. Shabbat Discussion with Rabbi Kaminezki 21

b. Joint’s Chesed, JCC 22

c. Beit Hana – Women’s Teachers’ College 22

d. Beit Baruch Choir 22

e. Meeting with Rabbi Kaminezki 23

OVERVIEW

Each trip is different. We know that the economy of Ukraine is in severe distress and, as a result, very little is provided by the State in the way of social services. However, the city of Dnipropetrovsk looks more prosperous every time we visit – more shops, more expensive cars on the road (yes, they have SUV’s), and more new building of both homes and businesses. We were told that about 300,000 of the million and a half inhabitants of Dnipropetrovsk are wealthy. There is a growing upper class, which takes full advantage of the well-stocked stores. In contrast to Soviet times, everything is available - if you have the money. This is one side of the picture.

The people we work with through our Adopt a Bubbe program, are the other side of the picture. There are some improvements – pensions appear to be paid regularly. However, the level of the pension is so low – often $10 - $30/month – that most pensioners are unable to keep food and medicine in their homes. They don’t even think about replacing worn out clothing or bed linens. Veterans of WWII often have 50% reductions in rent and utilities, but they are still struggling to keep up with medicine and food. Of course, in the smaller cities, there are fewer job opportunities, and more of the general population is in abject poverty.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint or JDC) is doing a much better job of reaching out to Ukrainian Jewish pensioners with food. Pensioners are still eating hot meals on weekdays in communal dining halls, and the homebound elderly are receiving hot meals delivered regularly. A couple of years ago, the outlying cities were not being reached on a regular basis. Now they are delivering packages of food staples even in small villages. One change has been to limit hot meals to people with pensions less than 130 hrivinas ($25)/month. It is hard to understand why this limit has been set so low, because it leaves many of the elderly without meat or medicine.

Where food programs are working for pensioners, Adopt a Bubbe is able to provide medicine, clothing and other necessities. Where pensioners are receiving food packages with staples of rice and kasha, Adopt a Bubbe provides fresh fruit, meat and vegetables. In Dnipropetrovsk, where people are fed well, many pensioners come to thank us for the free medicine they receive at the synagogue pharmacy. Our program is working in many cities and small towns to bring a measure of hope to people who worked hard all their lives and were now mired in poverty.

Dnipropetrovsk continues to be a showcase for Jewish communal living. They are about to open a new assisted living home for the elderly, which will house 80 pensioners. There is an American Jewish Medical Center under construction, which should open in 2002, which will provide state of the art care in ophthalmology, dentistry and general internal medicine. Several hundred Jews come regularly to Shabbat services at the rebuilt Golden Rose Synagogue, which opened on Rosh Hashanah one year ago. In spite of emigration, hundreds of children attend the Jewish Day School, the Yeshiva for boys and Mahon for girls. Computers and the Internet are available for these students. Beit Hana, the Women’s Teachers’ College, continues to provide teachers for Jewish Day Schools all over Ukraine and Russia. Disabled children are given education and training through a Beit Hana Resource Center, a Joint social club and in the Jewish Day School. There are two Jewish community centers – one in a building run by the Joint and another in a building attached to the Golden Rose Synagogue. A Tkumah Holocaust center has opened next to the synagogue and is working on curriculum development on the Holocaust for all of Ukraine’s public schools. A Boys’ Home and a Girls’ Home provide housing and Jewish education for close to 100 youngsters who were in unstable home situations or on the streets. The list is long and no doubt some items have been omitted. Every year a new project begins, which brings enrichment and vitality to Jewish life here. None of this was present in 1990.

TRIP TO UKRAINE

Thursday, November 8th: Arrive in Dnipropetrovsk
Yan Sidelkovsky, our Adopt a Bubbe coordinator, told us he is now working again for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee as an instructor for their regional training center for Chesed social workers. These are the people who work with the Jewish pensioners. This is a job Yan had several years ago, but was let go. It is good that he is back teaching and accepted by the Joint. Yan said that the material he is developing for his class is also being used in the various Warm Houses we sponsor - basic information on the Jewish holidays and Jewish heritage. He was glad to be given a chance to develop this area again – something we had talked about, but he never had time to implement.
Yan gave a speech on November 8th for the 75th anniversary of Hospital #9, the Women’s Hospital where the Corky Ribakoff Women’s Gynecologic Clinic is housed. He stood in for Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki, who is in New York for a few days. This was quite an honor for him. Hospital #9 has built a new section and the Corky Ribakoff Women’s Clinic will be moving into the new area. It’s a mixed blessing because parts of the clinic will be split up on different floors and will no longer present one site for Boston’s effort. Yan is trying to sort this out for the Boston physicians who are involved. It sounded as though the hospital was reasserting its influence over the Boston program by determining location.
Dr. Eugenia Cherkasskaya’s husband passed away two weeks ago. Eugenia is still very shaken. He had gone to the hospital as an outpatient and was given a very expensive medicine to treat poor circulation in his legs. Apparently the medicine killed him rather quickly and he never came home. His doctor was a top expert who prescribes expensive medicines like this only to families he knows can afford it. It is a real tragedy. Yan said that several others had also died from this medicine. Dr. Cherkasskaya said that she had warned him about the medicine beforehand, but he finally went when she was not home.

Friday, November 9th
We joined Elena Grigorievna Bogolubov in her office in the synagogue JCC where she interviews people who are applying for emergency help from the synagogue. She now has a small room off of the room she used to occupy. The former room connected directly to the hall and was rather busy with people walking in and out. We stayed while she interviewed a woman who was seeking help, Maya Pavlovna Furman, who was born on May 1, 1940. Maya has had a hard life. She never knew her father, and her mother died at age 35 just as Maya was turning 15. She spent several years in an orphanage. Her husband died two years ago. She has a daughter, who was born in 1976, but she is not working. Her pension is 75 hrivinas ($14)/month. Maya was recently released from the hospital for heart irregularities, and she has had heart surgery. Her heart beats very slowly and also irregularly. She called it a rheumatic heart disorder. She takes Riboxin for her heart, which is very expensive. I thought she was asking for help with her medicine, but that was not the case.

Maya receives food packages from the Joint every month. She prefers this to having cooked meals delivered, because she is particular about what she eats. She finds the prepared hot meals too fatty. She also has a problem with her stomach and has lost many teeth. The packages include rice, kasha, flour, jam, vegetable oil, sugar, condensed milk, and crackers.

Her request was for funds to pay for her telephone. It was installed at no charge because she is an invalid, but she is way behind in the monthly payments of 10 hrvinas or $2/month. All her money goes for medicine and food. She was granted 100 hrvinas ($20) on the spot and given a receipt to take to the rabbi’s secretary to receive the cash. Yan said that they are authorized to give out 100 – 150 hrivinas ($20-$28) on their own, and can give this amount out to the same person again after a period of three months. If more is requested, they go to a committee which decides. This is the only way in which people can receive help immediately and they are very appreciative.

We toured the Jewish Day School and the Mahon (a Yeshiva-type education) for young women. We met the new principal, George Skorokhod, and Anna Kaplunskaya, the vice-principal for younger children. George has a son in his sophomore year at M.I.T. Anna’s husband, Simeon Kaplunsky, used to be the principal of the Jewish Day School, but he is ill, probably with complications from diabetes. He has lost hearing in one ear and his eyesight is rather poor.
1) Anna brought us up to date on the unhappy story about Ksenia (Ksushia) Lisovskaya, a 17-year-old with a long history of anorexia. Ksushia graduated from the Jewish Day School with a gold medal and went to Israel. She came back in terrible shape due to the anorexia, and she is now hospitalized. Anna said that the Zoloft we were supplying for her, is no longer effective. She showed us a booklet from Eli Lily for Zyprexa or Olanzapine, which they want us to obtain for Ksushia. She will copy the brochure for us. Ksushia always wanted to be a doctor, and now wants to be a psychiatrist. She is studying Hebrew and English at the hospital.

2) Anna also showed us a brochure about a conference which the Special Needs children’s program had participated in in Kiev. She will copy the brochure for us.

3) The Jewish Day School has 630 pupils. Classes start at age 6 now and go through 12th grade. This is new – 6-year-olds used to stay in nursery school and school ended at 11th grade.

4) All Ukrainian schools are starting to teach the Holocaust. The curriculum is being developed by Tkumah, the new Holocaust center attached to the right side of the Golden Rose Synagogue in Dnipropetrovsk. There was a recent seminar on how to teach the Holocaust within the Jewish Day Schools. We were later shown plans for a splendid new multi-story building to house Tkumah next to the synagogue.

5) The Mahon program, an intensive education in Jewish subjects and basic secular subjects, has 54 girls. The rabbis’ girls are in this program. The classes we saw were very small, with three to six children in them. They take place in the building behind the Jewish Day School.

6) The building for the Mahon classes also holds the ORT computer labs and a library. I counted 30 computers in two different classrooms. The computers seemed to be networked to a master teacher’s computer. Children come over from the other building to study here, as well as the Mahon students. Computer instruction for Jewish Day School students starts at fifth grade because there aren’t enough computers to have everyone on them. The class we observed were filling out a form from information on the screen. Every student was on the same page on the screen. The information had something to do with technology and the sociological consequences, but I didn’t quite understand what that meant. It appeared to be a very controlled Russian way of dealing with computer education.

Drove to Pavlograd, an hour away, where we had a couple of home visits led by our Adopt a Bubbe coordinator, Nella Zatz. We also attended a Kaballat Shabbat with the progressive congregation.
1) Home visit with Isaak Abramovich Kherson, born in 1916, and his wife, Lydia Alexandrovna, born in 1917. Lydia is not Jewish, which she told us early on. She got teary a couple of times when she was given a food package and some shampoo, soap, etc. Isaak was very talkative and quite lively. He paints and had many pictures hanging on the walls of the apartment, many of them copies of famous Russian art works. He also plays the piano and showed us the piano which he had brought back from Germany as WWII loot. He studied in a military academy and graduated with the rank of major. He also studied engineering at the Dnipropetrovsk Mining and Minerological Institute. Lydia also attended the institute and majored in economics.

Lydia was married to Isaak’s brother, but the brother was killed very early in the war. They had a son, who now lives in Kiev. Isaak and Lydia decided to marry because Isaak also lost his wife around the same time. The families had known one another for many years because they lived in the same neighborhood. During the war, Lydia was evacuated and was sent alone to Altai in the Barnaul region, beyond the Ural Mountains. She was the head of a collective farm there. Her parents had sent her away because they were afraid that she would be picked up by the Germans for slave labor in Germany, which was common practice throughout in Ukraine.

Isaak said that both he and Lydia had always worked hard and always had a nice home. Their pensions are relatively high because they are war veterans. Isaak’s is 144 hrivinas ($27)/month and Lydia’s is 111 hrvinas ($21). However, they need to spend a lot on medicine, so it is never enough. Lydia has very poor eyesight. She complained of frequent cataract formation due to the Chernobyl explosion. They lived in Kiev at that time. She now has 2% vision in her good eye and none in the other one. She has had cataract surgery several times because it keeps growing back. Her eye drops alone cost 14 hrvinas ($3)/bottle. Isaak has stomach and pancreatic problems. A niece of Lydia’s has lived in New York for about three years, and the niece sent them $50, a one-time gift for dental work.

When Nella came with her package of fresh fruit and meat, they said that it was the first time in a long while that they had seen such food. There were apples, bananas, oranges, lemons, a large piece of meat, and butter.

2) The second Home Visit was to a family I had seen once before – Gennady Nikolaevich Stahl and Alexandra. They are both in wheel chairs now. Gennady had lost a leg years ago in a work accident. They live on the first floor and their stairs to the entrance have a special ramp, which can be unfolded for their wheelchairs. I remember that when we last saw Gennady, we had tried to arrange for a therapist to teach him how to negotiate stairs on crutches. Apparently that never worked out. I was not certain why Alexandra was in a wheel chair, but she does have a very bad heart. Alexandra told us that she used to dress very fashionably, but now she dresses like an old lady.

There is a photo of Alexandra’s grandmother on the wall. She was Jewish and Alexandra had inherited her dark hair, so she said she had often been taunted as a child. The couple met as students at a Sverdlovsk Institute, at the same time and the same place where Boris Yeltsin studied. Gennady showed us a form letter he had received from a San Francisco group which is litigating Holocaust victim asset claims. It wasn’t clear what was happening with this.

This visit was rather short because we were running late. Nella also delivered a substantial food package of fresh fruit and meat to this couple. While we were there, the Joint worker delivered their hot meals to cover two days. It looked good – two containers of vegetable soup, two containers with two small pieces of chicken and kasha, a bag of bread with two small challah and some pieces of white bread, and a package of tea bags. Everyone seems to have Lipton tea bags now. We helped them get the food into the refrigerator.

3) We met with the Progressive Congregation on the second floor of a building used for the agricultural ministry. The group is led by Leonid Serdukhovski, but he no longer leads the actual service. A younger man, Genya Ivanovich Shevshenko led the service. Genya said that his grandfather changed his name from a very Jewish one to a very Russian-sounding name. I didn’t catch the original name, but part of it was benYohanan. There were about 30 people present, a mix of young and elderly, and a couple of young children. Nella’s daughter and grandson were there. This is the boy who is a severe diabetic. He looked good, but was rather quiet. Services began at 5:00 P.M., after sunset, but to give people time to get there from their jobs. A few individuals came late, but most were there before we arrived.

The last time I had seen this congregation, there were around 70 people present and a large oneg was provided by Vadim Rabinovich, a very wealthy Kiev Jew with shady financial connections. The U.S. will not allow him to enter the U.S. due to his mafia contacts. At that time, people did not seem to participate in any part of the service, but sat in stony silence until the oneg began. It was very disconcerting. This Shabbat service was a pleasant change from that experience with members participating and familiar with tunes and prayers.

Genya told us that attendance fluctuates widely. At this time of year, when it gets dark very early, people don’t want to travel very far to go to services. There is a fair amount of hooliganism and mugging, so they tend to stay home at night. Sometimes there are even fewer people. However, in contrast to my first visit, those who came participated in the service, knew many of the songs and were fairly lively. Genya played tapes of the musical parts of the service – not just the songs, but prayers as well. We brought them a new tape recorder because theirs was on its last legs. They could no longer control the volume and had to poke it with a stick to get it to play. I also left them a large box of Shabbat candles, a dozen green velvet kippot (donated from a Bar Mitzvah at my temple), several boxes of Chanukah candles, a plastic cut-out to trace Hebrew letters, some Jewish theme stickers and a dozen dreydels.

Genya is a good leader. He is around 25 – 30 years old, married with a two-year-old daughter. He works as a salesman in a bazaar and earns about 5 – 15 hrivinas ($1-$3)/day. It sounded as though he worked seven days a week to make ends meet. His Hebrew is self-taught and he easily went from Russian to Hebrew without a problem. He said that he cannot afford to attend any seminars to improve his Jewish knowledge. The prayer books have a transliteration of the Hebrew in Russian for those who do not know the language, and most passages were also translated into Russian on the opposite page. Genya would indicate what page they were on for each part of the service. He said they would shorten the service a little this evening so people could talk with us afterwards.

Genya told us that out of 88 children younger in age than 18, only eight go to the Jewish Sunday School. Jewish education consists of once a week, an hour and a half classes on general Judaic topics. They need a new teacher. There is no rabbi in the community, but they do have a cantor who covers all religious functions. The cantor also helps prepare students for Bar Mitzvah.

Leonid delivered a talk before the service began about how Jews should live together in harmony regardless of their religious practice. He also welcomed us and mentioned the events of September 11th. Genya’s wife and Nella’s daughter lit the Shabbat candles at the beginning of the service. Genya said that they would like to have a well-educated assistant to help them lead services. They know they cannot have a rabbi, but would like someone more knowledgeable. I mentioned to Leonid that a group of reform rabbis would be coming from Boston in the spring, and he already seemed to know about it. They want very much to be allied with an American reform congregation, and I took Leonid’s e-mail address. He has a Jewish student at the college where he works who is fluent in English.

It was difficult to talk for any length of time with one individual because so many people were there to talk with us and to ask questions. Most of the questions had to do with medical help. Until now, we had been unable to find a physician in this city to lead our modest medical program. However, Chesed has a new director and also a retired doctor who was present and would like to work with us. A couple of other physicians were introduced to us as well. Genya Didkovsky, who used to be in charge of Chesed, is now the president of the Jewish community. Yan will begin to supply this community with simple over-the-counter medicines and see how it works out. One woman came to us with a request for elastic stockings to help herself and a friend who both have varicose veins. The young boy with diabetes needs a new blood sugar monitor and strips for the old monitor he has. He should be getting strips through Yan because I believe they are available in Dnipropetrovsk.

3. Saturday, November 10th. We attended services at the Golden Rose Synagogue and joined Chany Kaminezki for dinner afterwards. Rabbi Kaminezki is in New York for a few days. Yehudas and Mushkie had their teachers from the Mahon over.

Sunday, November 11th. We traveled to Rubizhne early – almost a five-hour trip – stayed overnight and came back to Dnipropetrovsk Monday afternoon. This was my first time there, as well as Yan’s. We are not working with any other nearby communities.
Rubizhne is a small city southeast of Dnipropetrovsk with 70,000 people in Lugansk oblast. They estimate the Jewish population at around 100 families or between 200 and 250 Jews. There has been a lot of assimilation and many families are mixed, but they try to include everyone in their activities. Chesed food for the pensioners comes from Lugansk.

Rubizhne had a sister city relationship with Flint, Michigan, but it has ended. The head of the delegation which visited was Jewish and she gave them money to purchase a refrigerator for Chesed. Now they have Louisville, Kentucky, as a sister city and have been told that the mayor is Jewish, but they have no contact with members of the Jewish community there. They were told that there are 30,000 Jews in Louisville.

Rubizhne was created by the Soviet government in 1915, so it never had a large Jewish presence. There is no synagogue. A large paint factory was built in the 20’s and 30’s and it provided paint for all of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, during the 1990’s, when the Soviet Union broke up, the paint factory slowly closed down. According to Genya, they didn’t know how to market their paint anywhere else. Now, as a result, there is 90% unemployment in the city. We were told that Jewish Ph.D.’s in chemistry came to Rubizhne to work in the research part of the paint factory, and thus the city had Jewish intelligentsia early in its development.

There is also a cardboard factory and a military factory which they think makes explosives (it’s a secret), but they are not major employers. The place where we stayed overnight was the guesthouse built for the people who came to oversee the paint factory. Apparently the only real hotel in town closed down for lack of business. As a favor to us, they turned on the heat in the evening (it was below zero overnight). Consequently, the whole neighborhood had heat that night, so I’m sure they are looking forward to our return. Yan said that this was our major act of charity for Rubizhne for the day. We were told that some parts of town had rolling blackouts in the evening, but we seemed to have electricity wherever we went.

Our coordinator for Adopt a Bubbe is Evgeny (Genya) Chorny, who is also the head of Chesed. Genya was born in Zhitomir and was educated at the Leningrad Mining Institute. His first job was in Siberia and then he came to Rubizhne where he has lived for 33 years. He headed a group of geologists at the paint factory, who were very involved in the construction of new buildings. He also graduated from a construction institute. Genya has been purchasing goods in Germany and bringing them back to Rubizhne to sell. His wife, Lyuba, is a gourmet cook. Lyuba was a nurse and also worked as an x-ray technician, but is now retired. They have a son, Alexander, who lives in Brest, Belarus, with Lyuba’s sister. Lyuba is not Jewish.

Yan met Genya when he came to Dnipropetrovsk for instruction from the Joint and began to hear about our program from coordinators from other cities. He asked to meet Yan, and the link developed. Genya took us to a few home visits and then we went back to his apartment for refreshments.

Chesed: The Joint has been in Rubizhne for three and a half years. Eighty to 90 people are fed by Chesed five days a week at a dining room which seats 34 people, so there are several seatings. These meals are only for people who live alone, are mobile, and have an income of 130 hrivinas ($25)/month or less per person. Twenty-four people receive a monthly food package, which includes frozen meat or fish, milk, sugar, flour, and rice. On the major Jewish holidays, there is a food package for everyone. Four people who are housebound receive hot meals at home. It was gratifying to see the Joint covering even small communities like this one with adequate food.

Chesed’s Medical Program: The Joint provides medical help for everyone, but it is limited. Everyone is entitled to 32 hrivinas ($6) every six months for medicine. The Joint has a list of 130 medicines and their own physician or Chesed’s volunteer physician can write a prescription to match the list. The medicine comes from Lugansk, so they have to wait for someone to go there, which can take a few days or a few weeks. Genya goes to Lugansk himself once a month and food is delivered from there twice a month. Of course, Lugansk’s Joint may be out of that medicine. In case of an emergency, funds can be spent in Rubizhne, but so far there have been no emergencies there. While a person is in the hospital, there is no limit to what is allowed by the Joint to be spent on care. Many people come every week for six or seven hrivinas worth of medicine until they use up their allowance of 32 hrivinas.

The Adopt a Bubbe medical program fills in for people who need medicine right away and for types of medicine which are not otherwise available. The Rubizhne physician we work with is Valery Seministra, who is very capable. Unfortunately, she was in Kiev at a seminar on the day we visited, so we did not get to talk with her. She did attend the Physicians’ Seminar we ran in May, and Genya said that she still talks about how helpful it was. Valery can also phone Yan in Dnipropetrovsk and he puts together a package for the community which is sent by bus. Genya waits for this particular bus at his end to pick up the package. They especially appreciate Arthrotec for arthritis and multi vitamins. There is a list of the Joint medicines and also a list of medicines available from Adopt a Bubbe on the wall of the local Rubizhne Chesed, so people can check and see what is available.

Home Visit with Lev Israilevich Obershtain, born in 1928 in Pavlograd. Lev gave us a copy of an award he was given for excellent labor during WWII. He was a mechanical engineer and worked at the paint factory for 50 years. He was evacuated to Khirgizia during the war, where he studied and worked. He takes lots of medicine. He has had two strokes and walks with a cane. He also has hypertension. His hobby is stamp collecting and he showed us some of his books of stamps, including some from the U.S. He was married, but divorced after five years. They have a daughter who lives in Saratov, Russia, and rarely visits. Lev’s apartment was piled with old newspapers, books and clothing. It was very difficult to even walk through to see him. It looks as though he has thrown nothing away for the last 50 years. Genya said that Lev was a difficult person and would probably complain about the felt slippers he was given from Adopt a Bubbe – they would most likely be too small or too something and would have to be exchanged. He was apparently on his best behavior for us, and the pictures show him smiling.

Lev’s pension is 130 hrivinas ($25) per month. His rent is 35 hrivinas ($7)/month, which includes utilities. Chesed helps him with food. He used to go to the dining room, but he can’t since his last stroke. He gets medicine, slippers and a food package from Adopt a Bubbe. He mentioned a couple of his medicines, but the names were not familiar.

Home Visit with Esther Moiseevna Nechas, born in 1910, and will soon be 91 years old. She came to Rubizhne to live in 1930. She was a lab assistant at the paint factory. Esther never married and she has no living relatives. She was born in Staro Konstantinov in Western Ukraine. Her parents and all of her relatives were killed there in the Holocaust. She has never been back. Esther was evacuated to Kemerova, Siberia, as a chemist. Esther said that there were many more Jews in Rubizhne before WWII, but the Jewish Ph.D.’s were collected and executed. Esther went on vacation to visit her parents just before the war started, but before she reached her home town, she was told to come back to Rubizhne to work. The entire paint factory was evacuated. Esther doesn’t remember any synagogue. She doesn’t remember any problem because she is Jewish. Genya said that she has a golden character. She never had any problem with antisemitism during the war.

Esther has food delivered to her home once a day by Chesed. She is not really able to prepare food on her own. She takes all kinds of medicine for high blood pressure and stomach problems. She was using a walker provided by Chesed. She had fallen and has a congenital hip displacement. She doesn’t go outside, and hasn’t been out for a very long time.

Esther’s pension is 140 hrivinas ($26)/month. Her rent is discounted 50% because of her war service, so her rent and utilities are 45 hrivinas ($9)/ month. She mostly purchases her own medicine and occasionally receives a small amount from Chesed. Her Patronnage worker from Chesed is supposed to pick up her prescription so she can get 32 hrivinas worth from Chesed, but this doesn’t seem to work out. Esther was given a comforter/blanket by Adopt a Bubbe.

No one seems to know about the Holocaust site in Rubizhne. She never went back to her home town because she wrote a letter to her old address and found someone else living there. She has lived all her life in one place and worked for 25 years in the paint factory lab.

Home Visit with Ceilia Lvovna Efros, born in 1922, and is almost 80 years old. Ceilia was full of praise for all that we do. “There is always something on the table for a holiday.” Life is extremely difficult. Genya always makes sure that they have apples, sugar, grapes, and pomegranates. She was given long woolen stockings for the winter. Ceilia has high blood pressure. She said that particularly during the holidays, help is important. Genya said that she is the most knowledgeable Jew in Rubizhne. She reads Yiddish. Because she has been sick, she spent her money on medicine. Chesed helped her with rent and utilities.

Ceilia was born in Dukrovna, Belarus, a small shtetl. She went to medical school in Smolensk, but was evacuated with her grandmother. Her parents, three brothers and a sister were all killed in the Holocaust. Because of the war, she never finished medical school. She graduated from the university in Samarkand and from the Language Institute in Moscow with a major in German, because it is close to Yiddish. She taught German and Russian. When Ceilia retired, she decided to live in Rubizhne with her son, but her son, who is also a pensioner, moved to a Moscow suburb, Lukarana, so he could educate his children. Her granddaughter graduated from university and works as a TV anchor person. Her grandson is in his second year of graduate school. The live very poorly. Ceilia’s husband died a long time ago. He returned from the war with shell fragments in his brain, and he died during surgery.

Ceilia’s pension is 130 hrivinas ($25)/month. Rent and utilities are 25 hrivinas ($5)/month. She has been sick for about half a year, so she needs to spend more now on medicine. She has a heart problem. She receives hot meals from Chesed. She used to go to the dining room, but is no longer able to do this. She hopes she will feel better. Elena Feodorovna Bass brings her her meals. She feels that socializing is as important as medicine. They have a literary salon and a war veterans’ group. They usually get together around the holidays.

There was a community seder for Pesach. They rented a banquet hall and 120 – 130 people attended. There was a representative from Israel, a lubavitch rabbi. Two boys were sent by the rabbi for Yom Kippur. Ceilia remembers her grandmother, who was very devout. Her parents always kept Shabbat. Stalin stamped all of this out. Her grandmother, who was hasidic, was very wealthy. She took her granddaughter, Ceilia, to synagogue when tzedakah was collected.

f. Home Visit with Maya Borisovna Kravcheno, born in 1936 in Odessa. Maya is a neighbor of Ceilia’s and she came upstairs to Ceilia’s apartment for our visit. Her own apartment was extremely spare – almost no furniture or belongings. Genya told us that Maya is very poor and also not well mentally. Maya told us that Rabbi Nakhman of Bratislav lived in Odessa. She returned from evacuation to Uman, Ukraine, where there is a grave of a famous tzadik. She saw devout Jews who visited the grave. The synagogue was ruined and became a warehouse. Two of her neighbors were arrested because they tried to practice Judaism.

Maya studied music in school and worked in a kindergarten. In 1962, she came to Rubizhne because she was sent by her college. Her father died in 1949 in Uman from hunger. Her mother moved with her to Rubizhne, and she died in 1984. Maya worked for 37 years in the kindergarten. It was sponsored by the paint factory and was the best equipped kindergarten in the city. When children left this kindergarten, they already knew how to read and write. Maya became a pensioner in 1991. She was amazed that the Jewish community became organized in 1998 (the Joint came near the end of 1997).

Maya’s pension is 117 hrivinas ($22)/month. She economizes on electricity. Maya was given an umbrella and shampoo by Adopt a Bubbe. She often refuses any help because she says that she does not need anything.

5. Dnipropetrovsk

a. There is a new Holocaust monument at the edge of Gagarin Woods overlooking the site where 10,000 Jews were murdered on October 12th and 13th, 1941. The monument was sponsored by the Jewish community of Dnipropetrovsk. It is a large flat stone, about five feet high and three feet wide, engraved on one side with the facts of the killings and a quote in Hebrew. On the back is a list of the many Jewish organizations which contributed towards it. It is set on a mound of earth. This year there was a march to this site on the anniversary of the deaths, which was exactly one month before our arrival. Tanya Sidelkovskaya told us that her mother and grandmother were spared because an aunt had asked them to come to stay with her the day before the Germans ordered the roundup. They also know of others who were hidden by non-Jewish families and escaped. Jews were collected in a large department store on prospect Karl Marx and marched quite a distance to this remote spot. It is now being infringed upon by Dnipropetrovsk University, which has built a sport track over what used to be the ravine. Tanya said that Arkady Schmist had tried for years to prevent the university from building on that site, but to no avail.

b. We visited the girls’ and boys’ homes in Dnipropetrovsk. These are homes for school-age children who are mostly from broken families – there are very few real orphans. Most are from Dnipropetrovsk, but several are from other parts of Ukraine and we even met one girl from Russia. The boys all attend the Yeshiva, and most of the girls attend the Mahon, with a few going to the Jewish Day School. The mother of one of the girls is in the hospital in the terminal stages of cancer and her daughter is taken to visit her every day. There must be many sad stories among these children. Emily Corbato took individual photos of the girls, which they loved, and she later played the piano for them, which they also thoroughly enjoyed. The boys were much more subdued when we visited and had to be coaxed to stop and talk.

c. We also dropped in on a voice recital in the central library on prospect Karl Marx, where a member of the Beit Baruch choir was singing. Yan said that they were very lucky to have him in the choir and he often does solos.

Tuesday, November 13th: Trip to Kharkov and Poltava
Kharkov: Drove about three and a half hours to Kharkov, which is north and a little east of Dnipropetrovsk. We toured the synagogue, which is still under major reconstruction. The sanctuary is nowhere near ready for use, but the downstairs level has been almost entirely finished with rooms for the girls’ Yeshiva, the kitchen and dining area. Although the downstairs is below ground, there are still windows and exits at this level. Services still take place in the entrance hall on the main level. They are building a mikvah on the lower level, too. The boys’ Yeshiva still meets on the side wings attached to the synagogue.
1) Miriam Moskowitz, the rabbi’s wife took us through the synagogue until she had to leave to pick up her husband at the airport. He was flying in from New York. She had lunch set up for us in the new dining area, which is still being finished off, but the major tile work has been completed.

2) The kitchen at the synagogue prepares 1,000 meals per day. The Joint helps to fund this. They have metal canisters for carrying hot meals to apartments, and they also prepare food for the Jewish Day Schools – both the elementary and high school. Once the dining hall is finished, they will probably feed more people at the synagogue, too.

3) We met briefly with a man, David Kaganowski, who is very knowledgeable about the Jews for Jesus movement in Kharkov, as well as other cities. He gave Anna several typewritten sheets in Russian. We had hoped to meet with him later, but time ran out.

4) We met with our Adopt a Bubbe coordinator, Polina Rutchenkova, at the synagogue. Due to a mix up, she had not yet been given funds to begin her work, so we discussed what she would do and Yan left her with $100 to get started. Polina was very concerned about the medical part of our work, but we assured her that she was not supposed to make medical decisions. The Jewish community is still working on setting up a clinic and pharmacy at the synagogue, so that part of the work will have to wait until this is settled. It is being coordinated through Rabbi Leizer Avtzon in Brooklyn and Andrei Krug in Philadelphia. They would like to model this clinic after the Dnipropetrovsk medical clinic at the synagogue JCC building, which Dr. Cherkasskaya runs with APSJ’s medicine. We need to call both Rabbi Avtzon and Andrei Krug and see if we can get the process started.

5) We met with Rabbi Moise Moskowitz for about an hour at his home. He was kind enough to see us right after he returned from his New York flight. We discussed the medical clinic and agreed that it really needs to begin. I left $500 with him from Action for Post-Soviet Jewry.

Poltava: We drove about three hours from Kharkov to Poltava, where we stayed overnight. It was quite dark by this time, so there wasn’t much to see. We were stopped at one point because an old woman had just been run over in the middle of the road. It took quite a while for an ambulance to come, but they said she was still alive.
1) There are 350,000 people in Poltava, and about 2,000 Jews, of whom 400 – 500 are halachic Jews. There is a lot of intermarriage and assimilation. Before WWII, Poltava was 65% Jewish. We were shown several former synagogues and homes of former rabbis, but this community has no building of its own for communal activities. Many formerly Jewish buildings are now used by the government. A large home which belonged to a physician, Dr. Glazer, is now a bank and has stained glass windows. Unemployment is still quite high. State-run industries have closed down. There are many private businesses, but not enough to employ large numbers of people.

2) We drove to Faina Teplinskaya’s home in the old section of Poltava, which used to be very Jewish. She lives with her son, Lyonya. Her aunt, Ida, used to live with them, but she has emigrated to New York to join her family. Before Ida left, she introduced Faina to many of her old acquaintances, which was a big help for the Adopt a Bubbe program.

3) Faina began the Jewish community in Poltava from scratch. She found some people in Kharkov who would come to Poltava to make Shabbat in her home. This was in 1992-1993. She also organized a Jewish cultural society. However, the people in the cultural society made her give that up because they felt that Jewish culture and religion did not mix! Later on, Faina turned to helping Jews to emigrate. Many who emigrated, left some belongings behind and she began to find needy people to give these things to – blankets, clothing, etc. In 1997, she received a grant from Magen Avot in Kiev to continue helping people. Then in 1998, the Joint came to Poltava. At one time, Faina was head of Chesed in Poltava. She is critical of how the Joint operates now. They have a new regulation that only those with pensions of 130 hrivinas ($25) or less can receive help. War veterans tend to have higher pensions, but still need help and the Joint refuses to deal with them.

As a result, the Joint is taking on more and more non-Jewish clients – non-Jews who were married to Jews and are now widowed. She pointed out one such person on the street as we were walking. This woman is not Jewish, but receives help and has a non-Jewish boyfriend. She has no connection at all to the Jewish community. Faina believes that the Joint is looking for new clients just to justify their existence. The head of the Jewish community in Poltava is Anatoly Moiseevich Muchnik. His mother was not Jewish. Before he became active in the Jewish community, he was a practicing Christian. His children are Christian and his daughter was recently married in a church. Faina says that Anatoly encourages people to join an evangelical Christian group.

4) Faina serves 42 pensioners in our Adopt a Bubbe program. New people still come into the program and a few still emigrate. She showed us a picture of one man who went to Germany with his 30-year-old daughter. Another left for Israel. In the beginning, Faina worked only with the most elderly and the loneliest, but now she has people with children and couples. One mother and son receive cash – usually 30–35 hrivinas ($6–$7). They don’t trust Faina to shop for them. Faina went through the latest photo album she had prepared for us, and talked about the clients pictured in it.

5) The Joint feeds about 160 pensioners. About 50–60 come to a dining room in the basement of a music school. The rest receive packages of food at home. Most Adopt a Bubbe clients receive a monthly food package. It usually contains flour, rice, another grain, tea, vegetable oil, and preserves. The Joint packages come from Kharkov. Chesed also provides eyeglasses and hearing aids, but some clients complain about the hearing aids not working.

6) Most Adopt a Bubbe clients ask for food – particularly meat, because the Joint does not supply this.

7) Pensions can be quite low – the lowest is 72 hrivinas ($14)/month. Faina has several clients who receive this low pension.

8) Home visit with Rahil Ionovna Yampolskaya, born in 1911. She was born in Rostov na Donu, but has lived in Poltava since she was two years old. Her father was a cantor at the Poltava Choral Synagogue, and traveled where he was needed. They also lived in Kiev for a while. She is one of six children – two boys and four girls. There is a picture of her brother on the wall – he was a conductor of a philharmonic orchestra. Another sister, Serafima, became an opera singer in Moscow. Rahil and her twin sister were the youngest. There is a handsome picture of her father in a top hat. Rahil said that her father was persecuted after the Revolution. Rahil used to live with another sister who died seven or eight years ago. Another brother was a comedian in theater.

Rahil knew that she wouldn’t be accepted to a university, so she never even applied. Before WWII, she worked in a typesetting factory. As a result, her pension is minimal – 72 hrivinas ($14)/month. Her sister tried very hard to get into university and finally managed to get an education and became an accountant.

Rahil’s cheeks were bruised and she said that she had fallen yesterday in her apartment. She said that she has very poor balance. Her medical complaints are sclerosis (hardening of the arteries), high blood pressure, and a liver ailment. She said that she doesn’t have any appetite anymore. The Joint delivers hot meals to her – double meals are delivered every other day. She finally agreed to receive food from the Joint a year ago. She considers most of the food too rich and too much is fried, but she has no choice because she can’t cook or shop anymore. Faina brought some food products which she had requested – cocoa, hard candy, butter, cheese and frozen fish. Faina said that Rahil was one of her very first clients in 1992, before the Joint was in Poltava. Rahil lives alone on the top floor of an apartment building. She had a twin sister who lives in Kiev, but the sister died about a year ago. Rahil has a Patronnage worker from the Joint, who helps her obtain medicine. A local doctor writes out a prescription without seeing her, because he knows her very well, and the Patronnage worker goes to pick up both the prescription and the medicine.

Home visit with Betya Gershovna Taver, born April 2, 1933 in Kremenchug, and her husband, Grigory Yakovlevich, born in 1932 in Poltava. She was evacuated during the war to Uzbekistan with her mother. They live very far out from the city center. Betya was a custodian in a construction institute – watched the coatroom, etc., so her pension is very small – 72 hrivinas ($14)/month. Grigory worked as a porter in a market, unloading trucks, so his pension is also minimal – 72 hrivinas. They receive food from Adopt a Bubbe every month and Betya said that it is a very big help. On this visit they received frozen fish, juice, vegetable oil and cheese. Faina said that this couple is the most destitute and are on everyone’s list.

Betya and Grigory were recently given a used refrigerator from Adopt a Bubbe. Betya has health problems – stomach ailments and dizziness. She is unable to travel by trolley due to the dizziness, so Grigory left for a meal with Joint and he would later bring back food for Betya. She receives a food parcel from Joint. They have a cat named Marquis, who hid from us for the whole visit.

9) Home visit with Ronya Abramovna Stolarova Veyman, born in 1913 in Poltava. Ronya was very ill and looked as though she would not live much longer. She was propped up in bed in her kitchen and could barely lift her hand. She is watched over by her granddaughter, Tanya Magda, who also looks after her great-grandson, Igor. The bedside table was filled with medicine. Ronya has heart problems and had a stroke three years ago. She has a hernia, but is too ill for surgery. Her husband, who is now deceased, was a barber and was also born in Poltava. Ronya was a staunch Communist party member for 50 years – she joined in 1940. She worked as the head of a crafts factory for 30 years. During the war, she was evacuated to Sverdlovsk in the Ural Mountains. She was nine years old when she moved into the house she still lives in. It is a single home, but has been divided between two families. Four people live here now – Ronya, her daughter who is divorced, the granddaughter and great-grandson. The daughter also has two sons, who we were told are now in prison. Ronya’s daughter married a Ukrainian and the great-grandson looks very Ukrainian.

Tour of Home for the Elderly in Dnipropetrovsk, an assisted living residence: Misha Goldenburg, who works with Rabbi Liezer Avtzon, from Brooklyn, NY, took us on a tour of two new projects which Rabbi Avtzon has financed. This project also had considerable local financing through the Dnipropetrovsk Jewish Federation, which Slavik Brez runs. We went through this almost finished home for pensioners, which is on the far side of the Dniepr River. They hope to have it opened by Chanukah, which is early next month. It is planned for 80 people. It is a very beautiful building, with many luxurious touches – a winter garden, which will have a fountain and palm trees, double-storied ceilings for the winter garden and the dining hall with tall glass outer walls, and toilet facilities imported from Spain. We were told the toilets alone cost $400 (we were later told that these were donated). The building has an elevator and is fully air conditioned. The third floor has a large room for entertainment or synagogue use. The kitchen area will be furnished with Italian commercial ovens and special built-in units for making vats of soup, a staple in the diet here. We saw these in the Kharkov Synagogue, which Rabbi Avtzon also helped to furnish. There are separate rooms planned for the refrigerators to keep meat, milk products and fish separate and kosher. They have a dumb waiter to bring produce delivered at the basement level up to the cooking level.

Misha said that next week they will be turning on the heating system to see how it works. They are installing railings along hallways and there will be special bars in the bathrooms for people to grab on to. Most of the rooms are doubles. There are eight single rooms. Every room has its own private bathroom with a toilet, sink and shower. The only thing we found odd was the step up required for the shower stall. It was about eight inches off the floor level. There are rooms in the basement for physical therapy and exercise, as well as rooms on the third level for this. The third level has a room with bathtubs for therapeutic baths. There are special areas for a nurse’s station and office space for a doctor. The outdoors is also planned with a garden and paths for walking. The building is on a generously sized lot and allows room for a future expansion. We all found the building too luxurious for the life style most people live in this city and were curious as to why. Misha said that many Americans had seen the building, but didn’t comment on this. We were told that no really sick people would be taken into the building, but it isn’t clear what will happen as residents become older and more frail.

Tour of American Jewish Medical Center in Dnipropetrovsk: The center has two buildings – one for the medical center itself and a second building which will serve as a guest house, dining hall and exercise center. The first floor of the medical center will also have a winter garden with a two-storied ceiling which will serve as a reception area and waiting room. The family practice area is also on the first floor. The second floor will be devoted to ophthalmology and dentistry. The third floor is smaller and will contain office space for Rabbi Avtzon and Misha Goldenburg, who is in charge of Rabbi Avtzon’s projects in Dnipropetrovsk. There is space for mammogram and x-ray equipment. I don’t know of another center which does mammograms in this city. The ophthalmology area will also do cataract surgery, which is not very available here either. This center is still a long way from completion. It will be fully air conditioned. They are working on the wiring for a computer network, too, and hope to be in touch with the U.S. for medical information via the Internet. We were there late in the day – around 6:00 P.M. – and workmen were still there. Both the home for the elderly and this medical center are badly needed, and should be very successful as soon as they are open.

We had dinner at the home of Anna and Simeon (Sana) Kaplunsky. They were very gracious hosts. Yan and Tanya Sidelkovsky were also invited. They showed us pictures of themselves when they were very young, their two daughters and two grandchildren. Simeon is a diabetic and needs a new glucometer and strips. He has been using Accu-Chek Easy made by Boehringer Mannheim, but it is eight years old and gives readings very different from what the doctor measures. He also has been taking a medicine called Glipizide made by Geneva Pharmaceutical Co., and asked if we could obtain more of this for him. It was a gift from Valda Schreiber.

Thursday, November 15th: Zhovti Vody and Krivoy Rog
a. We joined the Warm House in Zhovti Vody for lunch at Lydia and Misha Grinburg’s home. This is a group we have met with several times and two of the women are our main embroiderers. They wouldn’t bring out their latest embroidery until we had finished eating.

1) Avgusta Mikhailovna Malosheva has been studying English, so she practiced talking with us – a rare opportunity for her. She wants very much to correspond with someone in English so she left her address with us:

ul. Shevshenko 1, kv. 16

Zhovti Vody 52201

Dnipropetrovsk oblast, Ukraine

2) Clavdia, Josepha’s mother was there. She is 90 years old and still embroiders. She appears frail, but her mind is quite clear. She said that someone in her family had lived to 105, either her mother or an aunt. Josepha’s daughter in Dnipropetrovsk is still having problems. Her 22 year-old granddaughter just had surgery for a “women’s problem.” The daughter has recovered from burns due to hot chocolate and, fortunately, they do not show on her face.

3) The embroidery is lovely. They showed us several pieces which are in process, but need finishing. They would have given them to us, but we told them to finish them first. They can come back with another traveler. They asked about gold trim, and we suggested that they vary the trim. It doesn’t always have to be gold, which some people find overbearing. We left them with embroidery thread and some suggested patterns for them to play with. Josepha said that the thread is very expensive. She goes to Dnipropetrovsk to buy it, and usually pays 50 hrivinas ($9) for several shades. That is a lot of money for them, but Adopt a Bubbe helps with the purchase of materials. Otherwise, it would be impossible for them to do the work. Lydia also had several kippot and green satin bags for Tefillin. Most of the work is done in the winter time. In good weather, they are busy with their gardens.

We drove to Krivoy Rog, which is east of Zhovti Vody, along a very primitive road which wound through many miles of Krivoy Rog, a long narrow city which formed by connecting the space between coal mines. Our first stop was the Chesed building, a former nursery school, where all the activities take place. They now have a chabad rabbi and will be starting services in this building, too. We met our Adopt a Bubbe coordinator there – Sofa Davidovna, and also saw Inna Shifrina and Yuri Shifrin, who are active in Chesed. Sofa is wonderful with her clients – she knows them well and frequently carries heavy loads of food up many flights of stairs. She has a list of 40 clients. Over and over again, we found pensioners who lived on high floors and became housebound because they cannot handle the flights of stairs.
1) Home visit with Chasya Leah Lebovna Dukova, born in 1919 in Alexandria, and Chaya Sarra Abramovna, born in 1918, also in Alexandria. These two women are sisters-in-law and live in the same apartment on the fifth floor of a non-elevator building. I had seen them a couple of years ago, when they hosted a Warm House. They asked about my daughter, Ruth, who had accompanied me on that trip (How is she? Is she married? Why didn’t she come on this trip?). Chasya Leah said, “She served in the war and no one wants us anymore. Without the Jewish community, we wouldn’t be alive at all.” She hasn’t left her apartment for three years now. The Germans dismantled her original home to use it for kindling. She is a diabetic. Her pension is 62 hrivinas ($12)/month, one of the lowest I have heard of.

Chaya Sarra is the healthier of the two. She showed us pictures of her mother and a young sister who were forced to dig their own graves and murdered in the Holocaust. This was in Ingulets, near Mine #5, and there is a monument which marks this spot. Both asked why they receive no compensation from Germany. Chaya Sarra’s pension of 80 hrivinas ($15)/month, is also a low amount. She has a photo of herself with all her metals, so she certainly was active during WWII, but receives a very low pension. Most veterans receive well over 100 hrivinas ($20)/month. She showed me the robe she was wearing, which was a gift from Chesed. They receive double hot meals from Chesed twice a week. They fill in with food which Sofa brings them. The packages today each had oranges, hard candy and juice. Two weeks ago, Sofa delivered frozen chicken, cheese, vegetable oil, butter, potatoes and onions.

One pension pays for utilities, food and medicine. As veterans, they have a 50% discount on rent and pay either 25 or 30 hrivinas ($5 or $6)/month for their apartment. A doctor came to the apartment to take a blood sugar sample for Chasya Leah. They need a phone so they can get the results, but this seems to be on order. Their apartment has no heat. They both said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” over and over again for the help we provide. They are very grateful and asked us not to forget them. They also wish Sofa good health, so she can continue to help them, too.

2) Home visit with Boris Israilevich Kogan, born in 1936 in Krivoy Rog. Boris lives on the 4th floor of a walk-up apartment. He has many ailments and rarely goes out, especially this time of year. If he wants fresh air, he steps out on his balcony. His right eye has no vision and his left eye has very limited vision. He has cataracts, but can’t have surgery because he has a serious heart problem. He had encephalitis as a child and has been an invalid ever since. His right hand trembles badly and he also has a double hernia. Because of his poor eyesight, Boris is unable to read. He badly wants his TV replaced. It has been broken for five years. Sofa said that if we can help with funds, she will keep her eyes open for a used set which someone emigrating leaves behind. We told her, of course – she should set the priorities for her clients. She can get it at a good price. Boris was delighted to hear this. He has nothing to occupy his mind, even though his apartment is full of books.

Boris’s pension is 117 hrivinas ($22)/month. It has only been this high for a couple of months, because he recently went to the government to renegotiate it. At the beginning of the year, it was 68 hrivinas ($13)/month. The Jewish community helps him a lot. He was so starved that his legs used to be swollen, so he went to Chesed and asked for help. Chesed delivers double meals for him on Mondays and Wednesdays. While we were there, a Chesed worker named Rita arrived with milk and bread. She also had her young daughter with her. Chesed also provides a Patronnage worker on Tuesdays and Fridays who cooks and cleans. Sofa keeps an eye on him, too, and makes certain he has food.

Boris’ neighbors harass him a lot. He said that he complained to the police, but they do nothing. They called him back after his complaint and said that they had talked to his son, but he doesn’t have a son. He has never been married.

3) Sofa told us about a scam which the government runs. All savings accounts in banks have been frozen. People older than 80 years can access their savings and receive 48 hrivinas ($9) out once a year. Her stepmother had a savings account with $3,700 in it. She was only able to take out $150 before she died. Sofa said that Krivoy Rog has 50 millionaires and they all have Swiss bank accounts. They know there is no point in keeping their money in Ukraine. They were told that when the Soviet Union fell apart, all the savings accounts went to Moscow. They did have high inflation in the early 1990’s, but that is not how they lost their money.

Friday, November 16th: Dniprodzerzhinsk and Novomoskovsk
a. We drove in the snow this morning to the new Dniprodzerzhinsk Jewish Day School, which opened this past September, just two months ago. It has been Dima Tarnapolsky’s dream to have a Jewish Day School for several years, and it is finally a reality. There are 84 students. Some classes are very small, and others are average in size. Dima’s daughter is in the high school here, and we met her in the hallway. There is a glatt kosher kitchen in the basement, where students are fed three times a day. Dima said that most of the children at the school are very poor and most children really need the meals. We looked through the kitchen and dining area and received gifts of fresh baked challah and rolls filled with poppy seeds or mak.

The principal of the school is Nadia (I don’t remember the last name), and she proudly walked us through several classrooms. Dima hopes to open a nursery school soon on these same premises. It is a large school building. Dima told us that the parents and grandparents also come to the school, so they are able to reach out to several generations. He mentioned a big celebration for Rosh Hashanah in a rented hall, which the mayor of Dniprodzerzhinsk attended. Dima was given an award by the mayor there, so it looks as though relations with the city are good. Dima presented us with a book from chabad which is a daily calendar. These are going to be given out to the children. We left him with the English language school materials which Maxine Lyons had given, and English dictionaries which came from Valda Shreiber, who had visited the school in September.

The building was really cold today – no heat, except for the kitchen which was warmed by the ovens. Children wore their coats and heavy sweaters, and it seemed to keep functioning anyway. Our apartment has had no heat either, and Yan mentioned that the Dnipropetrovsk Hotel has neither heat nor hot water. When we came back later in the day, the apartment radiators were somewhat warm – a good sign. Dima told us that he would look into an independent heating system for the school, but I’m sure that won’t be a simple task. There were a few small space heaters in use, but the rooms are large and have high ceilings.

Our Adopt a Bubbe coordinator, Maria Borisovna Zavelina, was there as well, and I was able to hand her a few simple things for her clients – coffee, artificial sweetener, and some Shabbat and Chanukah candles. We had no time for home visits.

Dima also told us that they now have the synagogue which used to be a teachers’ home, and a chabad rabbi, Rabbi Lev Stambler, the younger brother of Meyer Stambler whom we know from Dnipropetrovsk. It is exciting to see a Jewish community come to life after so many years of deprivation. It shows in the faces of people like Dima and Nadia as well. When Boris and Genya Doktor were in charge of this community, there seemed to be no possibility of a Jewish school or obtaining the only synagogue in the city.

Novomoskovsk Home Visits:
1) Home visit with Alla Lvovna Moszharovskaya, born June 22, 1941 (the first day of WWII) in Novomoskovsk. Her father went into the army and Alla’s mother took her to the Ural Mountains.

Alla was lying on a rug on the floor of her apartment, covered by a blanket. Her daughter Sveta Vovchenko, born in 1966, was there to care for her. Sveta explained that Alla has a psychiatric problem and she sometimes loses her ability to speak, which was true during our visit. Alla is married, but the husband seems to live somewhere else in Novomoskovsk. He comes to take care of Alla when Sveta has to work. Sveta is a Patronnage worker for Chesed and has six clients. Two of her clients take a lot time because they are very frail. She has been working for Chesed for five to seven years. Alla has been ill for some time, and in the last two years she became much worse. She is very thin and has lost a lot of weight. She is all skin and bones. Sveta said that she is unable to have shots because there is no flesh on her. She doesn’t like to eat, but even when she does eat, she doesn’t gain any weight. She has been on medication, but nothing she takes seems to work. She has a special foam mattress from Chesed, but she was lying on the hard floor without it. Sveta says that this is what she prefers.

The apartment walls were covered with Christian pictures – icons and pictures of saints. This is the husband and daughter’s influence. Her mother is staunchly Jewish and is annoyed by the Christian presence. This is what Sveta said, but Igor Darievsky, our Adopt a Bubbe coordinator, said that Alla was born Jewish, but is essentially Christian. Sveta’s brother is very Jewish. He emigrated to Israel two years ago, married there and has two children. People we met later at the Progressive Congregation knew Sveta and were annoyed that the Joint had hired a Christian to be a Patronnage worker.

Igor had a food package for Alla with oranges, bananas, chicken and butter. We left two small packets of shampoo, lotion, soap and bullion for both Alla and Sveta. They used to have a two-bedroom apartment, but they sold it and moved to a one-bedroom apartment and gave some money to their son so he would have some funds to start a new life in Israel. Alla’s pension is 117 hrivinas ($22)/month. They live on this, plus Sveta’s salary. Their apartment rent and utilities cost 70 hrivinas ($13)/month. Chesed delivers double hot meals three times a week, plus provides detergent and medicine. Alla has been a Chesed client for four years.

2) Home visit with Raisa Lazarevna Gorkaya, born October 24, 1926, in Novomoskovsk. Raisa is blind due to cataracts. The vision in one eye was lost about one and a half years ago and in the second eye went about two and a half months ago. A doctor came to her apartment to check her vision and said that she would need 15 tests before she could have surgery. She also has high blood pressure and diabetes since 1984. Raisa takes medication for her heart and had some Adalat tablets from our supply, which she must have received through Igor Darievsky. She has drops for her eyes.

Raisa was married, but divorced in 1977. They had one daughter, who lives in Verkovseva, a small town near Dniprodzerzhinsk. Raisa has hired a woman, Nina, to help her out, someone whom Igor Darievsky has known all his life. Nina comes in and out several times a day. She was there when we arrived and was just leaving, but would be back to fix Raisa a meal and help her get to bed. Raisa also has a Patronnage worker who comes twice a week for about one and a half hours. Today she came and made soup and washed the floor.

Raisa used to work in a metal pipe plant for almost 44 years. She took a course and became a quality controller. She said that she always worked very hard and did whatever was asked of her. She never experienced antisemitism. Raisa’s pension is 126 hrivinas ($24)/month. Igor said that this year the Ukrainian parliament had decided that 348 hrivinas ($66)/month is the poverty line. Raisa has a 50% discount on rent and utilities and pays about 45 hrivinas ($9)/month, including the telephone. Raisa has someone who goes to the bank for her whom she had to pay 47 hrivinas ($9) for power of attorney. She worked for an additional half a year after her retirement to try to save some money, but the funds disappeared. Chesed delivers double meals to Raisa three times a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Raisa had a brother and two sisters. One sister is still living in Senelnikovo, near Pavlograd, but she is paralyzed. Raisa’s daughter has three children, but they don’t talk at all. The daughter used to be an assistant in a shop, but she is unemployed now. Raisa said that she knows all the Jews in Novomoskovsk and they know her. Some still call and come to visit. She used to eat in the Chesed dining room which held 140 people and knew everyone.

Raisa told us about the wonderful church women who come to visit her and talk about Christ. They begin by saying that Jews and Christians have the same G-d. Raisa is very lonely and really enjoys the visits. They read and sing with her. When Anna mentioned this proselytizing to the Progressive Congregation, they were very familiar with the many evangelicals who come through Novomoskovsk, especially in the summer.

Novomoskovsk Progressive Congregation:
We joined the Novomoskovsk Progressive Congregation at the Chess Club where they meet every Friday around 5:00 P.M. They have probably been meeting for less than a year now. Twenty-five people were seated around a long table with Yuri Medvedovsky standing at the head to lead the service. Yuri said that sometimes when the weather is better, there are twice as many people there. Today it was snowing and raining. As we saw with the Pavlograd Progressive Congregation, they play an audiotape for the music of the prayers. This group didn’t seem to know much of the music and there was no sharing of the reading. Judy Patkin was asked to light the Shabbat candles. There was a tzedakah box on the table.

The group was a mixture of older and middle-aged people with a few grandchildren in tow. The young women Judy Patkin had met last May were not present. The service itself was very short and afterwards an oneg was served with bread, challah, gefuhlte fish, candy, cake, cookies, wine, vodka and juice. Yuri said that an oneg was served whenever they had a generous sponsor. We left Yuri with an audiocassette player, Shabbat candles, Chanukah candles, chocolate Chanukah gelt, a dozen dreydels, some Jewish stickers, a plastic sheet for tracing Hebrew letters, several audiocassettes and a book of sheet music. Yan liked one of the cassettes so much that he asked to borrow it to copy. He also promised to copy some of his own cassettes for the group.

There is a Sunday School for 30 children. Irina Boguslavskaya teaches Hebrew. Larisa Yurkova came to speak to us about the Women’s Club which meets twice a month. She is thinking of going to Israel. Her daughter is married to a tax police colonel and has no desire to emigrate, but her grandson is very interested in being Jewish. Larisa learns Hebrew at the Sochnut/Jewish Agency classes.

One Vitaly Laufer approached us for help for his son, Gennady Vitalievich Laufer, who has been handicapped since childhood. He is psychotic and occasionally has epileptic seizures. Vitaly wanted medicine for his son – a sedative. We tried to refer him to Igor Darievsky to get the help from a physician. Another man told us that his young son had TB and was there something we could do. The requests were impossible for us to handle by ourselves..

Saturday, November 17th:
Shabbat at Choral Synagogue and dinner with Kaminezki family
We had a lengthy discussion at the dinner table about Progressive/Reform Judaism and its drawbacks in Dnipropetrovsk. Dinner guests were two Israeli men who work with children’s residential homes in Israel and were visiting these homes in Ukraine. Rabbi Kaminezki said that they would be a great help to the girls’ and boys’ homes here. Also at the table was Edward, a businessman originally from Odessa and living in the U.S. Edward dealt with wholesale oil, exporting sunflower oil from Ukraine and importing palm oil to Ukraine. He has been in business for about three years and seems to be doing well. Chany’s younger brother, Beryl, was also there. He will be getting married on December 13th to Shayna Bayla Lukshon in Brooklyn. Beryl has a factory which manufactures tefillin – both the parchment document inside and the boxes. He has about 25 employees and plans to move to Dnipropetrovsk after the wedding.

Of course Rabbi Kaminezki defended his decision to have one strand of Judaism in Dnipropetrovsk and what the benefits are to this. He allows all kinds of practice and no one is turned away, but he wants an “authentic” branch of Judaism, and not reform which allows intermarriage and accepts homosexuality. He feels that Reform Judaism has been a disaster in America with rampant assimilation. Edward agreed wholeheartedly. I disagreed, but said that Rabbi Kaminezki gets his way in Dnipropetrovsk and I don’t. Everyone laughed at this. We already knew that Volodarsky, who tried to register a progressive congregation, had gotten the government to look into the Dnipropetrovsk Jewish Federation for hiding vast sums of money from Boston. Volodarsky recently left for Israel. Both seemed to accuse one another of violence and mafia activity. Regardless, we had a friendly discussion, but we don’t see eye to eye on this – no surprise.

We also talked about the new home for the elderly and asked why it was done so luxuriously. Rabbi Kaminezki said that he had nothing to do with the final decision on this. It was made by large donors – successful businessmen who didn’t want a facility less than what would be acceptable in their own homes. As for the Spanish fixtures in the bathrooms (including $400 toilets), these were donated and did not cost the project anything. Rabbi Kaminezki said that there were plans for a $500,000 home, a $700,000 home and a $1.3 million home. The last option was the one chosen. We also asked why they would not be accepting people with various illness (it’s not a nursing home, but assisted living). He said that this was a conscious decision, but they would probably be answering that question as the people within the home became more frail, perhaps with another building. They felt that they had to begin somewhere. Also, there were plans to convert some of the third floor therapy rooms to additional living quarters as the need arose. Rabbi Kaminezki said that it wasn’t so simple to find people to go into this home because they were reluctant to move from their own apartments. Their apartments would be held for those who do move, just in case they change their minds and want to move back.

We had lots more conversation on a variety of subjects and even heard the children play the piano after Shabbat. Yehudas and Mushkie plan to play a duet at Beryl’s wedding. Beryl called a cab for us and we departed for home.

Dinner with Volodya, our driver at his apartment, along with Yan and Tanya Sidelkovsky. We met his wife, Galina, and his 14-year-old daughter, Ksushia (Ksenia). Volodya raises pit bull dogs and has two adult dogs and I think four puppies. He is very keen on training them for fighting, which didn’t thrill any of us. He introduced us to his dogs who are very well trained and obedient. Volodya also has exotic tastes in food and had several Korean hors d’oeuvres – pickled young coral, white asparagus, and pickled bamboo. His wife made a delicious one-pot dish of mushrooms, potato and meat. She also served vereniki stuffed with cheese or meat.

Sunday, November 18th:
Chesed on prospect Karl Marx
The Joint supports nine dining rooms for pensioners, four of which are kosher, which serve meals to 2,400 people five days a week. Hot meals are delivered to 1,300 pensioners at home on 20 routes throughout Dnipropetrovsk, utilizing 10 cars and 40 volunteers. One hundred fifty-six Patronnage workers (home aides) serve 1,100 clients with five supervisors. Monthly food parcels go out to 4,000 pensioners who do not eat at the dining halls or receive hot meals at home. Sometimes, when they have more funds, they cover 4,500 individuals, which includes first degree handicapped individuals who do eat in the dining rooms. Twice a year, on Rosh Hashanah and Pesach, 7,700 pensioners receive food parcels, excluding those who work. This is their whole list for Dnipropetrovsk. Some people receive winter parcels, which contain blankets, warm clothing, and linens.

Twenty seven thousand people in the Dnipropetrovsk region are serviced by Chesed. This year, 300 more people were added to the list because they reached pension age, and thus they had an increase in the number of clients in spite of numerous deaths and continuing emigration to Israel.

We toured the Joint Chesed building, which is in a former nursery school off of Prospect Karl Marx. The building was very busy and every room held a different office function or activity. We saw a group of women pensioners watching a video, another group of veterans of WWII meeting. One veteran, Nina, came up to thank us for the anti-depressants we sent to Dnipropetrovsk which brought her back to a normal life. Nina had been a psychiatrist and was teary-eyed telling us how much the help meant.

The Tikva Club, which has activities for disabled children, was conducting a quiz contest between a small group of visually impaired seniors and a handful of disabled teenage boys. Three disabled girls acted as judges. They modeled their program after a popular TV show and all were having a good time. Their room is no longer on the second floor, but at one end of the building on the first floor, which makes better sense for children who are disabled. I asked how many were part of Tikva and was told they had a list of 100. They explained that they used to have mainly children with cerebral palsy, but now had branched out to include many other categories.

In the basement of the building was a shoemaker who was putting new soles and heels on a women’s pair of shoes. Shoemakers volunteer one day a week and rotate. Another room held laundry facilities with two people who did laundry and ironed for pensioners who could drop off their dirty laundry once a month. There were two mangle irons for sheets. Another basement room held beds for health regimens with electrical stimulation. A young girl was undergoing magnetic stimulation on her chest for bronchitis. Massage was also available and they had a setup for a full body sun lamp.

Many people we met there remembered our eye clinic fondly and thanked us for it, even though it is a good five years since we held the clinic and provided free exams and eyeglass for around 500 pensioners.

Beit Hana, the Women’s Teachers’ College
We spent a few hours at the end of the day at Beit Hana, but most of the students had already gone back to their dormitory. We were shown various classrooms, including the craft classroom which has many interesting pieces made of paper and fabric.

There were still girls in the computer room working on various projects. They print their own books and have a Web site. There was a special cartoon video which featured drawings by disabled children.

The room for disabled children was full of materials sent from Boston, but the children were not there. Beit Hana is very proud of this effort and many of their students do practice teaching with these children.

Beit Baruch Choir practice at Synagogue at noon
The pensioners’ chorus rehearsed for us in the Choral Synagogue. The women were wearing special white jackets and the men wore dark suits. Anna Kaplunskaya, the Jewish Day School vice-principal was part of the choir. They are very proud of their accomplishments and will probably be singing for the Jewish community for Chanukah. Their repertoire includes songs in Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian, including a rousing chorus of “Dnipropetrovsk.”

Meeting with Rabbi Kaminezki
Rabbi Kaminezki spent an hour talking with me about my trip and about the tension between Boston and himself over setting up a Progressive Congregation in Dnipropetrovsk. He made it very clear that there would be no other brand of Judaism in Dnipropetrovsk. He said that his decision may be wrong, but it was his decision to make. He knows that I disagree and would like to see pluralism in the city and more Jewish choices. However, I told him that no one from Boston would be initiating a congregation. They might assist a group which formed on its own, but would not start such a program on their own. I also mentioned that a small group of reform rabbis would probably be in Dnipropetrovsk next spring, and he assured me that they would be welcome. Rabbi Kaminezki would like to see the whole situation calm down, now that Volodarsky, who originally tried to register a progressive group, has emigrated to Israel.

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