New York Jews raise millions of dollars to help Ukraine

Rabbi Labish Becker, executive director of Agudath Israel of America, the umbrella organization for Orthodox Jewish groups, has raised more than $2 million to help Ukraine after the Russian invasion, reports New York Times.

He said the recognition of Jewish President Volodymyr Zelensky as a "Ukrainian national hero" was "a source of pride for the people" amid grim news about the war.

“We just sit and admire: “Wow, this is amazing. It's like what John F Kennedy said when he was in Berlin." We feel like this: “We are all Ukrainians,” he said.

About 300 Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union live in New York, and the largest group of them are immigrants from Ukraine. Many other Jewish Americans have ancestral ties to Ukraine or a spiritual connection to the country that is the birthplace of Hasidic Judaism.

These connections and Zelensky's leadership have evoked a sense of solidarity among some American Jews for Ukraine, a country from which many of their ancestors fled. Many of them became part of a powerful fundraising campaign quickly organized by Jewish groups in New York City that brought in millions of dollars in humanitarian aid.

New York City Council member Inna Vernikov is a Ukrainian-born Republican. She has been inundated with calls and emails from people in her Brooklyn area who want to help. Many, like her, were Jews with "complex feelings," she said.

“There are a lot of mixed feelings about Ukraine in the Jewish community because of the anti-Semitism in its history,” Vernikov said. “It was very painful on March 1, when Russia struck the territory of the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, where tens of thousands of Jews were killed during the Nazi occupation of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.”

“But now it doesn’t matter, because Russia is an aggressor, killing innocent men, women and children,” Vernikov continued. “We may have difficult feelings about what happened in the past, but right now we have to do the right thing.”

“Most Jews from the former Soviet Union oppose the Russian invasion, regardless of their national origin,” said Samuel Kliger, director of Russian and Eurasian affairs for the American Jewish Committee.

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Donations came in many forms: money sent through online platforms; prayers offered in synagogues and WhatsApp groups; and boxes of clothes and medical supplies delivered to community centers and even New York City police stations.

According to data compiled by Chabad, one of the largest Jewish organizations in the world, there were about 350 Jews in Ukraine before the start of the war. Its spokesman, Rabbi Motti Seligson, said Chabad had spent $000 million to help Ukraine since the war began, nearly all of which came from funds raised last week.

The money was used to provide relief through an extensive network of synagogues, yeshivas and Chabad community centers, he said.

“Most of this effort is coordinated from New York, fundraising is here, and people from all over the world are contributing,” he said.

Many organizations are collecting

Major Jewish organizations, including the World Union for Progressive Judaism, Agudat Yisrael of America, and the Orthodox Union, raised about $3 million in the week after the war began. Other appeals distributed through online platforms such as the Jewish website Chesed Fund have raised millions more.

These groups organized the flow of aid from New York to a network of local Jewish organizations in Poland, Moldova, Ukraine and other countries. The money was used to pay for things like food, clothing, diapers, medical supplies and buses to transport people fleeing the country, according to Jewish leaders.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, said the organization has raised "many hundreds of thousands of dollars" in donations so far, most of which has gone to help people fleeing Ukraine.

“Renting a bus that would have cost $700 a month ago now starts at $15,” he said. “Bus rides take many, many times longer than usual to get from point A to point B because they have to find passable roads and bridges that are not blown up.”

Orthodox Jewish leaders said many in their community were particularly concerned about the war over Ukraine's place in the history of Hasidic Judaism.

The Hasidic movement, an Orthodox branch of Judaism, was founded in western Ukraine in the XNUMXth century and today has tens of thousands of adherents in New York.

According to Rabbi Becker, Hasidic religious sites in Ukraine, such as the tomb of Rabbi Nachman in the city of Uman, attract tens of thousands of pilgrims every year, making the place iconic and holy.

“People who have no family ties to Ukraine at all visit these Hasidic places anyway,” he said.

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The Jews of New York no longer want to be "Russian"

Klieger of the American Jewish Committee estimates that 40% of Russian-speaking Jews in New York are from Ukraine, 35% from Russia, and the rest from other countries such as Belarus or Moldova.

According to him, Russian is the first language spoken in the community and the mother tongue of President Zelensky. In years past, many Russian-speaking Jewish New Yorkers didn't mind being called "Russian Jews," even if they were from Ukraine, according to Kliger.

But since Russia's conflict with Ukraine first began in 2014, there has been a shift in how many Jewish immigrants identify themselves.

“People started to feel like they had a special Ukrainian identity in addition to their Jewish identity, so they started saying they were Ukrainian Jews,” Kliger said. “They no longer want to be called Russian Jews. In the past, people didn't care."