by Lori Silberman Brauner
NJJN Staff Writer

August 27, 2009

When United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ faced the possibility of having to reduce its annual allocation to its sister community in Ukraine last year, it was able to turn to an unusual partner for assistance.

Members of the Cherkassy olim association in Israel, hardly well-off themselves, raised about $1,050 to help their landsmen back in the old country, which has been seriously affected by the global economic crisis.

The funds raised will supplement UJC MetroWest’s Cherkassy allocation of $69,500 for the 2009-10 fiscal year, with about $400 directed toward Cherkassy’s Sunday school and the remainder for its Hesed Dorot community center.

“To see that some people are giving back is a fantastic thing,” said Scott Maynard of Livingston, chair of MetroWest’s Cherkassy subcommittee. And while the funds raised by the Israeli Ukrainians are “modest,” he said, they are “giving back to the community that’s helped them.”

“We know that we get a lot of benefit for the money we spend there,” Maynard added.

The effort was led by Peter Texler, the former leader of the Cherkassy Jewish community and now head of its olim association in Israel. Some 2,500 individuals from 40 towns in Israel are registered in the association, he said.

Each year 600-800 immigrants attend a reunion held in Israel’s Ben Shemen forest. An e-mail listserv keeps members of the community in touch with each other.

Texler, an engineer in the former Soviet Union who now lives in the West Bank community of Ariel, made aliya in 1998 at the age of 53. He said there are 2,000 Jews in the city of Cherkassy and another 2,000 in the Cherkassy region.

Most of the immigrants, who came in the 1990s, are hardly “ashira,” or well-to-do, said Texler in an interview with NJJN in MetroWest’s Israel office in Jerusalem. Two hundred of them managed to raise over $1,000, he said, and he is still getting calls from people who want to donate.

Reflecting on his life before coming to Israel, Texler said, “I didn’t have a Jewish life in Cherkassy.”

His family was more religiously observant than most Jews of the former Soviet Union; there was little Jewish observance in Cherkassy. Texler, the community’s “rav hakehila,” or unofficial rabbi, led the city’s first seder, attended by 500-600 people.

UJC MetroWest, like most philanthropies, has been buffeted by the economic recession, but is committed to doing all it can for its many beneficiaries in Israel, at home, and in overseas communities like Cherkassy.

In addition, UJC MetroWest has been unable to send representatives to visit Cherkassy in the last two years; the devaluation of Ukrainian currency has made the cost of travel too prohibitive, Maynard said.

For his part, Texler is grateful for the federation’s ongoing support. “Ani tamid margish sh’anahnu tzrihim MetroWest” (“I always feel that we need MetroWest”), he said.

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Cherkassy facts

The province of Cherkassy is located southeast of Kiev, and its capital, the city of Cherkassy, is about 100 miles from Kiev.

According to an economic update issued in July by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which has employees monitoring the situation in Ukraine, the country’s gross domestic product declined by more than 20 percent at the beginning of 2009, and its currency, the grivna, has been devalued. The report noted that unemployment is rising, the volume of unpaid salaries and wages continues to grow, and costs are increasing for food, medicine, and utilities. Social services to pensioners are declining.

The MetroWest community, together with the JDC, supports activities in the community and at its Hesed Dorot Center, which houses a kindergarten, computer classes, and a Jewish newspaper and sponsors cultural activities. A summer family camp it runs on the shores of the Black Sea is staffed with counselors from the Ofakim-Merchavim region of Israel — MetroWest’s Partnership 2000 community — and from MetroWest itself.

Additionally, according to UJC MetroWest associate executive vice president Arthur Sandman, MetroWest has allocated $270,000 through the JDC for welfare relief in the former Soviet Union for both the 2008-09 and 2009-10 fiscal years.

For the 2008-09 fiscal year, MetroWest’s allocation for Cherkassy was $69,500; the gross amount is expected to be the same for 2009-10, according to Diane Klein, UJC MetroWest associate director of planning and allocations. She explained that the federation would determine specific program funding early in the winter.

— LORI SILBERMAN BRAUNER

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