Message from the Chair

Each year, CJP asks the JCRC via its Committee for Post Soviet Jewry (CPSJ), chaired by Beth Moskowitz, to determine annual funding priorities and to oversee all projects and initiatives that are part of the Dnepropetrovsk Kehillah Project.  The CPSJ allocates funds each year to both local Boston organizations working on DKP projects and to the Dnepropetrovsk Jewish Community directly. JCRC works closely with Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki, the chief rabbi of Dnepropetrovsk, the Dnepropetrovsk Jewish Philanthropic Fund (the "CJP of Dnepropetrovsk" which the JCRC and Boston lay leaders helped Rabbi Kaminezki create to encourage philanthropy in Dnep), the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and others to ensure that priorities identified are beneficial to the Jewish community of Dnepropetrovsk and connected to their needs on the ground.

Message from Beth Moskowitz, Chair of the Committee on Post Soviet Jewry

What is it like to be a part of modern day miracle? For the past 18 years, many of us here in the Greater Boston area have been privileged to play a small role in the rekindling of Jewish life in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. This is a part of the world where Judaism had once thrived, but for most of the 20^th century the practice of Judaism became practically nonexistent.

There was an entire generation of Jews who not only did not practice Judaism, but most did not even know they were Jewish.

In 1992 the National Conference for Soviet Jewry established partnerships for Jewish Communities in the United States and the Former Soviet Union (FSU). Boston was matched with Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, a place we could not even pronounce and knew nothing about. Dnep (as we have come to call it) had been a closed city with a rich Jewish past and little hope for a Jewish future. A young Chabad Rabbi, Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki, and his wife Chani were sent to Dnep from Brooklyn to rebuild Jewish life and aid those that wanted to make aliyah.

Twenty years later, thanks to the Rabbi and his community, and with the help of CJP, JCRC and our own Boston Jewish Community, Dnepropetrovsk can boast of a vibrant Jewish Community. Today there are close to 400 children in a Jewish Day School, a Housing for the Elderly modeled after our own Senior Hebrew Life and Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly, a Special Needs Resource Center, a very successful Micro Loan Program for women, a Big Brother Big Sister Program, Havayah-A winter camp run by Boston, Haifa and Dnepropetrovsk  teens to share and strengthen Jewish Identity to the children at the Day school, a three week English Language Camp run by Boston college students and  master teachers and professors from multiple Boston Universities. We are also very proud of the work the Boston Medical Community has done through the years in Dnepropetrovsk. Boston Doctors helped to establish the Corky Ribakoff Women’s Clinic and the Dnepropetrovsk Pediatric Clinic. Boston’s philanthropists and doctors provided the first children’s vaccinations to the community, ultrasound machines, mammography machines and medical expertise. We are now in the process of helping the community open a geriatric medical clinic. This past May we are brought Boston Medical Specialists to lecture at the Dnepropetrovsk Medical Academy for a Post Graduate Course in geriatric medicine. We are hoping to bring more specialist over soon.

Boston has provided so much more than money. In partnership with CJP, Jewish Vocational Services, Jewish Big Brother and Sister, Action for Post Soviet Jewry, Senior Hebrew Life, Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly, Jewish Family and Children’s Services, Hebrew College, Boston’s leading Hospitals and Boston’s leading Universities we have brought incredible expertise to Dnepropetrovsk. With our dedicated professionals and lay leaders we have helped to lay the infrastructure and foundation for creating a caring and effective Jewish Community. We have developed lifelong friendships and relationships with our brothers and sisters in Ukraine and a deeper commitment to K’lal Yisrael. It has all been done through love, dedication and partnership. And through it all we have nurtured our own Jewish Souls. 

Yes, we are part of a modern day miracle and you can be too! Please join us for a community wide mission to our sister city Dnepropetrovsk, Spring 2012.

B’shalom,
Beth Moskowitz
Chair, Committee for Post-Soviet Jewry