The Weight of History

I’m in Boston tomorrow preparing a group of dedicated and impressive philanthropists through CJP (the Boston Jewish Federation) to go with me to Hungary in August.

One of the key factors here is history, and the weight of history.

For nearly a thousand years, Jews in Hungary have faced rising and falling fortunes. They’ve seen shifting political powers and threats to Jewish life.

Towards the end of the 19th century, Jewish life in Hungary was thriving; pre-war Budapest had a Jewish population of 23% and there were more than 125 synagogues operating. But everything was threatened in the years between the Wars, with repressive anti-Jewish legislation, rampant anti-Semitism and brutal pogroms.

By the end of WWII, 50% of Budapest’s pre-war Jewish population had been massacred in Auschwitz and the labor camps. For those that survived, the rise of communism in Hungary in 1949 weakened any remaining Jewish affiliations, further unraveling the chain linking Jews to their tradition.

We’re still facing the after-effects of the 2008 economic crisis and its toll on Jewish community life in Hungary. Middle-class and struggling Jewish families have been plunged into serious financial distress. Many call it the rise of the “new poor.”

With European open borders (“Schengen rules”) there’s been a massive emigration of young Hungarians to western Europe … one of my colleagues told me the other day that many Hungarians think that their country is getting poorer and older.

So … there are new needs, new strains on resources, and in the midst of all this, a revitalizing Jewish community. How this will all shape out is going to be the subject of our discussions this week in Boston, and in August on the ground.

Ethiopian Pediatric Cardiologists come to Israel

Lovely video on working together and sharing knowledge ...

Lifelines

These are transportation lines for Hesed Odessa. They mark out the lines from the city center to reach every Jew in need in the oblast (region). No matter where you live, you won't be left alone.

Even if you’re the only Jew left where you live, you won't be alone.

These lines ensure that even in the worst winter, you can get food, medicine and a connection to the community.

They are lifelines.

Cuba May 2013

If you've been with JDC to Cuba on a mission, you'll probably find the below article fascinating ...

Amid Fealty to Socialism, a Nod to Capitalism

By VICTORIA BURNETT

New York Times, Thursday May 2, 2013, page A6

HAVANA — In many ways, it was a typical May Day: Hundreds of thousands of Cuban workers — doctors, sailors, dancers, bank clerks — marched Wednesday toward this city’s vast Revolution Plaza, waving flags, holding aloft banners that proclaimed fidelity to socialism and tooting plastic horns.

But dotted among the throngs of state employees bused in before dawn to observe International Workers’ Day, there was a novel, and increasingly favored, breed: entrepreneurs whose private businesses the government is counting on to absorb thousands of the state workers it considers redundant and hopes to shed.

Their presence — albeit limited — at one of the most important fixtures in the Castro-era calendar reflects the shifting economic mix in a country where, for decades, private enterprise was anathema and the state officially provided everything anyone could need, from a job to the sugar people put in their coffee.

But the state’s ability to do that has declined significantly over the years, with salaries and subsidies like food rations unable to cover even basic needs.

“This is a way of showing solidarity with the workers and of showing that we, too, are workers,” said Orlando Alain Rodríguez, a former sommelier at a state-run hotel who opened a restaurant on a busy intersection in downtown Havana nine months ago.

“I have 19 employees with me, people who otherwise might not have jobs,” said Mr. Rodríguez, clad, along with his staff, in a yellow T-shirt that bore the name of his restaurant, Waoo Snack Bar.

The government seemed keen to send that message, too. Carmen Rosa López, second secretary of the Cuban Workers’ Union, expressed hope before the march that entrepreneurs would come. “For us, they are all workers who contribute to the development of the country,” she said, according to a state-run news agency.

That said, entrepreneurs were a tiny minority in the river of public servants and employees of state-owned companies that flowed, waving placards calling for “prosperous and sustainable socialism” to the plaza, where President Raúl Castro stood beneath a huge statue of José Martí, the revolutionary and poet.

A sea of red-clad Venezuelans and Cubans held banners dedicated to Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan leader and beneficent ally of Cuba who recently died, while a truck mounted with television screens projected pictures of the smiling former leader to the crowd.

Groups of actors and artists lent the march a carnival atmosphere, and even at 7 a.m. instructions blaring from loudspeakers were all but drowned out by drummers leading a crush of workers raising their hands and swaying their hips to a conga. Students from the National Schools of Art walked on stilts; one peeped out from a huge, papier-mâché figure of an independence fighter. Farther back, a female sailor in a crisp white uniform jiggled from one foot to another in a barely suppressed salsa move.

Since late 2010 when the government began issuing new licenses for Cubans to work for themselves and employ one another, more than a quarter of a million entrepreneurs and their employees have joined the private sector, taking the total to about 400,000.

Economy Minister Adel Yzquierdo told the National Assembly in December that, including independent farmers who lease land from the government, the number of nonstate workers was 1.1 million, double the figure in 2010. Mr. Yzquierdo said the government had, over the past two years, cut more than 350,000 people from the bloated public sector, which still employs well over four million Cubans out of a population of about 11.2 million.

The government has also turned over about 2,000 small state-owned businesses to their employees, according to news reports, part of a much-anticipated but closely guarded plan to create business cooperatives.

Many Cuban entrepreneurs and economists say the growth of the private sector has been excruciatingly slow. There is still no wholesale market from which businesses can buy the goods they need, and the government still limits the types of businesses open to entrepreneurs to fewer than 200, a situation that some hope will improve with the expansion of cooperatives.

However small, though, the private sector is changing the work culture on an island where state employees earn meager salaries and are known for surly service, inefficiency, absenteeism and pilfering.

Sergio Alba Marín, who for years managed the restaurants of a state-owned hotel and now owns a popular fast-food restaurant, said he was very strict with his employees and would not employ workers trained by the state.

“They have too many vices — stealing, for one,” said Mr. Alba, who was marching with his 25 employees and two large banners emblazoned with the name of his restaurant, La Pachanga. “You can’t change that mentality.”

“Even if you could, I don’t have time,” he added. “I have a business to run.”

Such dismissals aside, the private and state sectors compete on some levels and cooperate on others.

The state, which once had a tiny, $4 ceiling on any contract with a private-sector worker, now buys products — from vegetables to billboards — from entrepreneurs. Margaly Rodríguez, a caterer, said she had been hired several times by Palco, a state holding company, to cook for events; she, in turn, rents glassware and crockery from a state-owned restaurant.

It can be a curious symbiosis: thousands of privately owned cafes, taxis, restaurants, photocopy shops and stalls selling hardware, clothing, shoes and DVDs all compete with state-owned enterprises. But many people work in both sectors, filching goods from their state employer to supply their private business.

There are signs that state-owned companies are responding to competition, adding modern touches at dreary supermarkets (a neon sign, conveyor belts and shelves stocked with candy at checkout) and redecorating restaurants.

“We’re in this very interesting phase in which the public and private sector collaborate and compete at the same time,” said Richard E. Feinberg, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who is doing a study of Cuba’s private sector.

New economic freedoms and the taxes paid by private-sector workers are also beginning to alter the relationship between individuals and the state, analysts say.

“The willingness of people to express an alternative point of view has definitely expanded,” Dr. Feinberg said. “But it’ll take a while before they begin to develop a class consciousness and a political articulation of their interests.”

The very fact that some of Cuba’s new entrepreneurs chose to demonstrate their solidarity at Wednesday’s highly orchestrated march is evidence that the state still has enormous power.

And, of course, many workers — both state and nonstate — stayed home. Several people who work in the private sector said that, after years when they felt pressured by their state employer to march, they would no longer go.

Others simply could not leave their businesses. One woman, a 59-year-old former nurse who said her name was Virgen and sold tiny cups of sweet coffee to people en route to the march, said she had marched every year except this one.

“If I go to the parade, who’s going to sell this?” she asked.

Odessa Leadership

One of the most inspiring things about a mission briefing is the encounter with local leadership, and figuring out together new ways of cooperation and partnership.

Anatoly Kesselman, Hesed Odessa Director, evaluates challenges and successes

Ellina Korneva, Director Beit Grand JCC and Pavel Vugelman, Hillel Director,

 Viktor Zonis, Head of Odessa Reform Community; Shlomo Azarov, JAFI Shaliach

  Pavel Kozlenko, Director Odessa Holocuast Museum;

 Kira Verkhovskaya, Director Migdal JCC

We're grateful for all those who have done so much for the Partnership and the Jewish community of Odessa.

The Sounds of Odessa (Part Two)

Young performers practicing at JCC Migdal Odessa .... just terrific

The Sounds of Odessa (Part One)

Watching amazingly talented performers at JCC Migdal Odessa ...

Potemkin Buildings

Yesterday our Baltimore-Odessa Partnership mission visited Yelena, a 16-year old girl in Odessa. 

Yelena lives with a cousin, Rosa, their aunt, Svetlana, and with Svetlana’s mother and baby son.

They live together in two rooms of a communal apartment, along with five other families. It’s a beautiful building on a main road in Odessa, over a hundred years old. And like so much of Odessa, it’s a Potemkin façade. It looks beautiful and striking on the outside … but on the inside it’s crumbling. The fixtures and steps are falling apart. It probably was a beautiful building before the Revolution. 

But not anymore.

The apartment is on the top floor and it smells awful and needs repairs. Everything’s falling apart. The family can't pay for gas heating, so they use an electric heater to warm up in winter. 

Or they just bundle up with more layers.

Yelena never met her father; her mother left for Kiev to look for a job, and no one has seen her since. 

Rosa is 18. Her mother died and her father is in hospital for long-term psychiatric care. 

Svetlana is 36 but she looks tired, and a lot older. She married for the second time in 2012 and in the summer that same year gave birth to her only son, Igor. A few months later her husband was diagnosed with cancer and died. 

Inna, the girls’ grandmother, is retired. She had a stroke and she's not mobile anymore. She mostly sits on the couch or in bed and cries.

Svetlana is tough. She’s trying to study at University (Law and Finance) with a correspondence course. It’ll take her six years to get her degree but she's sticking with it.  She works several hours a day cleaning offices. She's also a certified bartender and waitress.

The total family income is a little over $450, with Inna’s pension and a small government allowance for baby care and what money Svetlana can bring in.

It’s not enough to feed and clothe a family, especially one with medical bills and little resources.

Yelena starts crying when she talks about Hesed and the help she gets from the Jewish community. Then Inna starts crying too. “Hesed has saved our lives,” she says. “The government won't help people in need. But the Jewish community helps us.” Svetlana is crying now, too, and points to the fridge, which came from Hesed, and says, “I told someone at work about Hesed and they didn’t believe me. They thought I was making it up. How could it be that they just help you, like that? Who could these people be?”

Yelena tries to cheer everyone up, saying that everything is fine, we have a fridge, we have somewhere to live, and we’re not hungry anymore. Meanwhile, Igor is scooting around the dirty apartment, happily playing with us and gripping our hands. He’s got a terrific smile. Yelena is taking care of him today; she’s very responsible.

There are 400 children-at-risk and their families being helped on a daily basis by JDC through Hesed Odessa. Svetlana and her family receive a food card with a monthly allowance for use in the supermarket, vitamin supplements, school supplies and warm clothing for the winter, and diapers, stroller and clothes for Igor.

And they also have Ira, a Hesed case worker, who checks in on them on a regular basis, and helps Svetlana come to activities for youth in the community at minimal or no-cost. She helps them negotiate the city bureaucracy. And most importantly, she shows them that they’re not alone.

As we leave, Svetlana says, “When I become a lawyer I’ll give back as a volunteer. I’ll give free legal advice in Hesed for the clients, for those that need it. Spasiba Bolshoya – thank you so much.”

A Very Warm Home

Our Associated (Baltimore Jewish Federation) Partnership Mission to Odessa had an amazing visit to a JDC Warm Home.

JDC's Warm Home program helps the elderly combat loneliness and isolation. For those unable to get to the center itself, the Hesed organizes regular – generally weekly – meetings and snacks in small groups in the home of a host, selected from within the community.  The meetings let the elderly connect and have regular social interaction. It’s an incredible program that battles feelings of seclusion and loneliness.

There are five Warm Homes in Odessa. The one we went to meets in the home of Shura, a volunteer and retired Russian literature teacher. There are nine highly-educated women in their 70s and 80s, all of them smiling, talkative, lively and welcoming.

Before retiring, these women had jobs such as economists, railway engineers, teachers, professors and construction engineers.

The house is over a hundred years old, but well-maintained. Shura’s family has been living in it for several generations – her husband and his father were born there! His father was captured in the house and sent to Gulag (prison camp) during Stalin’s Purges in 1936. Like so much of Odessa, the weight of history is all around us.

And these lovely women come every week to the Warm Home, in addition to the medical, food and homecare support they receive from Hesed.

They celebrate Jewish holidays and celebrations together, they learn together, they chat and argue and enjoy life together. “This is my family,” says Irina, who worked for many years as an editor in the Odessa Film Studios.

We chat with the group for a while. Everyone agrees that there’s a difference between Odessans and Ukrainians. Tonya, a former economist, says that she's been all over the former Soviet Union, and every time she opens her mouth people identify her as an Odessan because of her accent; Odessa was born an open city, it’s a melting pot. We joke that like in New York, even if you're not Jewish you're a little bit Jewish, so it’s the same in Odessa … even if you're not Jewish, there's something in the air here (and the history) that makes you a little bit Jewish.

There’s some agreement that Obama deserved to get elected because he’s handsome. But others don’t agree with his politics. There's a lot of laughter and high-spirited arguments. We tell a few political jokes. Tonya’s seems to be the one that draws the most laughs. It goes something like this:

“Putin talks to God and asks, when will my people stop drinking vodka? God says, not while you’re in power.

Obama talks to God and asks, when will Europe love America again? God says, not while you're in power.

Netanyahu talks to God and asks, when will there be peace in the Middle East? And God says, not while I'm in power!”

It’s an amazing visit. The Warm Home is inspiring because it shows how a life-saving medical and welfare program can provide dignity and community.

Rima, a retired construction engineer, says it best: “without Hesed we wouldn’t be alive; but without the Warm Home we wouldn’t be enjoying life.” 

Difficult steps

Today I met with Lena, a 78-year old client of our Hesed (welfare) system. She never married and has no children.

She is entirely dependent on JDC for everything – for her food, for her medicine, for her home care … even for her entire contact with the outside world. 

And meeting her was one of the most memorable and important encounters I’ve had in a long time.

Lena was born in Nikolaev, about two hours away from Odessa, in 1935.

She remembers the smell of gefilte fish and the taste of apple strudel on Shabbat as a little girl.

She remembers the arguments in her family, as the Nazis invaded, about whether to stay or to flee.

Her parents chose to be evacuated, and spent several years in Central Asia with her uncle, a former Enemy of the People, who was in internal exile. Everyone else in her family – all the other uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents – decided that the Germans would live up to their civilized tradition, and would almost certainly be no worse than the Soviets.

They stayed and were killed.

Every single member of her family except for Lena, her uncle and her parents, were killed by the Nazis.

Years later, Lena went back to Nikolaev and asked about her Grandfather, with whom she had a close relationship. All the neighbors remembered him, she said.

They remembered him because on that day in September 1941 when the Nazis rounded up all the Jews to the central square, he couldn’t walk.

So they put him in a wagon. And then they marched them all off and no one saw the Jews of Nikolaev again.

Lena settled in Odessa. She couldn’t imagine returning to Nikolaev. She worked as an engineer for a research institute until she retired in 1989.

And since 1999 she's been helped by Hesed. She has heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, a hip fracture. And in an economy like Ukraine’s today, with no Medicaid or Medicare, if you have a broken hip and serious medical ailments – well, you won't be able to afford decent medical care anyway, and your better choice is to stay at home and die slowly with some dignity than go to a terrible, awful, dangerous hospital and die very fast in a corridor with no sheets and no one to look after you.

Lena’s pension is about $150 a month. After paying for utilities and medicines, she has almost nothing left for food, let alone anything else. That’s one of the reasons why life expectancy is so short in a place like Ukraine (high 50s for a man, low 60s for a woman) – you can't afford to live longer, with the medicines and decent food that would keep you alive. So we help with a home care worker, who visits twice a day. We help with a food card, and medical support, and home repairs, and a walker, and more.

But Lena can't use the food card herself. So her case worker takes her shopping list and the JDC Food Card, and does the shopping for her.

Lena hasn’t left her apartment for nine years. The steps are too difficult.

There is a tiny step in her one bedroom apartment … it leads to a small balcony. Lena hasn’t been on that balcony either for nine years. It would be too dangerous.

But she is alive, and she has dignity, and guests come to visit her every day.

“Thank God for Hesed,” she told us. “Thank God it exists for us. Spasiba Bolshoya – thank you so much.”