Ten Years of Hesed: It's All in the Name

Reflections of Yisrael, first Director of the first Hesed in the former Soviet Union, Hesed Avraham V'Sonia in St. Petersburg, and initiator of tens of Hesed centers throughout the FSU.

Yisrael is an unlikely individual to have been appointed the first Director of the first Hesed in the FSU. "I was born in Morocco," he notes. "My experience until then was working with youth."

His potential was recognized though by Amos Avgar, then Area Director of St. Petersburg and Belarus, during Yisrael's sojourn in 1992 as an emissary working in Minsk with the Bnei Akiva youth movement in Belarus. Avgar asked Yisrael if he would be interested in taking the job.

"I knew how to plan a disco," Yisrael recalls thinking when asked to help set up what was to become the first of many Hesed centers, "not a volunteer welfare center for the elderly. But right away, something in my heart said it was important."

He took on the task in 1993. A Deputy Director of the new welfare center was also hired, Russian-born Leonid, and together he and Yisrael set out to make this experiment a success.

"I was naïve," Yisrael reflects. "However, naiveté helped. I was unaware of what a challenge it would be to establish a Jewish welfare assistance center based on the concept of voluntarism and community, where such concepts were unknown. I just knew we couldn't do it alone, so we quickly recruited volunteers.

"Each new volunteer was given the opportunity to be involved in everything from decorating the rented room in which they operated out of to helping formulate the service they were helping to provide. That first Passover, we had a community celebration, where we introduced and explained the holiday. We discussed the plagues, and distributed Haggadahs. Everything was so new."

Yisrael recalls another initial challenge: the search for a name. "The founder and director of Israel's Yad Sarah, who is today Mayor of Jerusalem, Rabbi Uri Lopoliansky visited St. Petersburg in 1993 to help us introduce the idea of loaning medical equipment. He suggested that we also use the name Yad Sarah. But yad, in Russian, means 'poison.' So it wouldn't work."

Lopoliansky then came up with an alternative suggestion. "He proposed we call it Hesed Avraham," Yisrael recalls. "It made so much such sense. Avraham, the first Jew. Hesed, Hebrew for kindness and compassion. Together, the words make reference to the story of Avraham's tent, with four openings, where all could easily come and feel welcome. That was our aim as well.

"Volunteers began to answer the phone 'Shalom, Hesed.' Everyone felt part of something different, something special. Something Jewish."

After one year, Yisrael stepped aside and Leonid took over the directorship of the Hesed, which he continues to lead to this day. Yisrael went on to help create tens more Hesed centers throughout the FSU. "I traveled to so many places between 1994 and 1998 that my colleagues jokingly referred to the effort as 'Commando Yisrael.' I prefer to call it Commando Hesed."

Every new Center throughout the FSU became known as a Hesed, with a secondary name selected by each community. "Some chose patriarchs and matriarchs. Others named their Hesed after an individual who had special significance to the community. In St. Petersburg for instance, the name V'Sonia was added in 1996, in recognition of the significant support of the Rochlin Foundation," Yisrael notes.

In 1993, Yisrael could not have foreseen that the Hesed in St. Petersburg would grow from a small group of 30 volunteers after five months, to 1,000 volunteers today, ten years later. He also did not know that the Hesed welfare center he helped create in St. Petersburg would be the first of 176 FSU-wide.

Today though, when he reflects on the achievements of the Hesed welfare network, its success makes sense. "Hesed is a place where Jews can volunteer. It is a place where Jewish communities can grow and help themselves. And most of all, it is a Jewish place that local Jewish communities are proud of.

"It was simply a great idea, at a time when everything around us was crumbling. There are many great ideas. Not many of them take off. Hesed did."