Cornell Hillel Students Team Up with Dnepropetrovsk Hillel to Revitalize Community

Short-Term Service Program in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine
June 15-24, 2008
Post-Trip Reflections by Sasha Baych

JDC is seeking to connect young Jews to the global Jewish community through 10-day volunteer programs. With each project, Jewish young adults are offered the opportunity to engage in meaningful service, connect with peers abroad, and learn about the pressing needs of Jewish communities outside of North America. Participants return home as advocates for the community they visited, ready to mobilize their friends, families, and communities to help.

From June 15-24, 2008, 19 students from Cornell University Hillel traveled to Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, where they joined their peers from Dnepropetrovsk to repair apartments of elderly Jews in need and to refurbish Jewish community facilities. Below, rising Senior Sasha Baych reflects on her experience:

This summer, I embarked on a journey to the country where I was born, but with which I share no current connections. I was born in Chernovtzi, Ukraine, a small town bordered by Poland and Romania. My family immigrated to the United States two days before my fourth birthday. This past June—17 years after my family departed—I had the opportunity to return to Ukraine, to its second largest city of Dnepropetrovsk, to spend eight amazing days as a participant on a Short-Term Service Program sponsored by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in partnership with Hillel at Cornell University. Together with a group of 19 Cornell students, I volunteered in the community and learned about the problems facing Jews living in Dnepropetrovsk and the help that JDC is providing to meet community needs.

Our group was met by an amazingly energetic, welcoming, and warm group of Ukrainian students from Hillel of Dnepropetrovsk. Throughout the trip, I realized how blessed I was to have learned Russian and kept it up—even if poorly. The quickness with which I met and made friends with my Dnepropetrovsk Hillel peers felt unreal. We shared a strong sense of what it means to be Jewish. The zest with which they associated themselves as Jews struck me, especially because I could only imagine how difficult it might be to be Jewish in Ukraine. I was impressed and delighted that my Dnepropetrovsk Hillel peers wore yarmulkes and Stars of David freely.

During the eight days I spent in Dnepropetrovsk, I gained a firsthand understanding of the impressive work of JDC in Ukraine. Seeing the JDC-supported Hesed welfare centers and volunteering in homes of elderly and youth at-risk allowed me to step into the world of these individuals. We visited Dvoira, an elderly widow who, at 80 years of age, serves as the caretaker for her 40-year-old daughter. As a result of an abusive marriage and damaging brain surgery, Dvoira’s daughter had been left handicapped and unable to care for herself. In response, Hesed provides Dvoira with groceries and medications that her pension of less than $100 a month could not support.

One of the lasting impressions I have of Ukraine’s Jewish community members is their collective enthusiasm for religion, culture, and identity. There is such strength within these people who suffered so much prejudice and yet remain proud of being Jewish. These individuals are not ignorant to the obstacles they face, yet they continue, as one community member put it, "to dream impossible and insane dreams." These dreams are of a community that thrives of its own accord, propels its own revival, and maintains the histories of the past. Only time will show how these communities will find their paths to development and self-sustainability, however, I believe they will continue to grow and remain an inspiration to us all.

I am sincerely thankful for my experiences and I am dedicated to raising awareness on campus—and throughout my life—of the powerful work of JDC and of the incredible strength of the Ukrainian Jewish community.

August 2008