At Pesach, challenged Ukraine Jews bank on JDC

As Ukraine continues to unravel, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) will try to help that country’s Jews celebrate as normal of a Passover holiday as possible in chaotic times.

Separatists have seized territory across eastern Ukraine, including the city of Donetsk. Suffering defeats, the Ukrainian government has restricted its contested borders and closed banks. Food is becoming scarce. As a tenuous cease-fire holds, aid organizations are working to provide relief to civilians caught in the crossfire. Among them, JDC is currently assisting more than 4,600 Jews who are either displaced by the conflict or stranded in separatist-controlled regions. 

Despite the upheaval, JDC-run Hesed social welfare centers and JDC-supported Jewish community centers on both sides of the cease-fire line will hold a variety of Passover events — including seders, matzah baking, and cooking workshops —for thousands of Jews. JDC volunteers and staffers will deliver nearly 48,000 free packages of matzah to Ukrainian Jews in need.

At JDC briefing last week in New York City — featuring Masha Shumatskaya, a Jewish activist who fled Donetsk last summer, and Oksana Galkevich, JDC’s Ukraine director of external affairs who spoke by videoconference from her post in Jerusalem — provided a stark overview of the history of the conflict.  

“What’s happened in Ukraine over the past 15 months was very unexpected,” Galkevich said. “What began as a protest became a war, and then an economic collapse.” 

Born in Kharkov, Galkevich has spent the past 15 years helping to revitalize Jewish life in Ukraine and providing assistance to those in need. “An absolutely safe place does not exist,” she said.

Beyond the destructive shelling of towns and cities, the biggest factor aggravating the crisis is the poor state of the Ukrainian economy. “Food prices have risen 100 to 200 percent,” said Galkevich. Elderly people stuck in separatist-controlled regions are no longer being paid their pensions. “People are suddenly poor,” she said.