President's Message: January 2004

By Brett A. "Mad Dog" Borah
President, Jewish Federation of Silicon Valley

In November, eight of your fellow leaders of our Federation and I participated in a mission to Kiev, Ukraine on our way to Jerusalem for the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities. We spent four days visiting the Jewish community in and around Kiev. Our Federation sends 20 percent of its overseas dollars annually to assist the Jewish community in the former Soviet Union so we felt it important to visit and see how and where our dollars are being spent.

Rather than report to you about our visit by day or by facility, I think it makes more sense to report by generation. We visited with three generations of Jews. We started by visiting the elderly. These are men and women in their 70s, 80s and even 90s. They remember their Judaism from their parents and from before the revolution.

After the revolution, of course, religion was banned in the Soviet Union. They have not practiced their religion in over 50 years. Today, through the work of the Joint Distribution Committee (which receives funding from our Federation), they are re-learning and practicing Judaism. These elderly people receive home visits, social opportunities, food boxes, hot meals (both at the Chesed [like a J.C.C.] food kitchen and through meals-on-wheels), medical care and hot baths, none of which would otherwise be available to them.

We visited young and middle-aged adults who were not brought up Jewish. We heard again and again that the only thing they learned from their parents about being Jewish is that they eat a special cracker for a week in the springtime. They don’t know why… they just do. They are attending classes in Torah, Hebrew, Jewish literature and even cooking at the Chesed.

We visited schools, orphanages, foster homes and after-school programs also funded by our dollars through the J.D.C. We spent time with college-age Hillel students. Some of them reported learning that they were Jewish only after turning 16 years old. Today, they hold Shabbat services, celebrate the holidays, read Hebrew and are teaching their parents about their Judaism. Pre-school and primary school students are learning Jewish tradition and ethics, Israeli songs and dances, Hebrew, the prayer services and the Jewish holidays.

The older generation will be gone in a few short years. The middle generation is building a Jewish community in Ukraine. The younger generation is our hope for a future Jewish community and continuity… a regeneration of Judaism in the Ukraine. From our short visit, it appears that they have a long and difficult road ahead, but it is obvious that they are determined to be successful. Our dollars are clearly having a tremendous impact on the quality of life of our Jewish brothers and sisters in Ukraine.