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Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2002. Page 10
Building Roots That Help Local Charities Grow
By Steven C. Johnson
Special to The Moscow Times

Not far from the Ukrainian town where he grew up, Eli Livshitz met a pair of pensioners who somehow managed to live on nothing.
Sitting in their dingy one-room apartment in eastern Ukraine, the couple rattled off the myriad expenses they had to meet each month: $10 for rent, $5 for heating, some $2 for electricity, another $2 or $3 for the basic foodstuffs that comprise their diet -- bread, cucumbers, potatoes.
Their combined pension: $16.
"I asked them, 'But how do you survive?'" he recalled. "They simply said, 'We don't know.'"
Livshitz's organization, the Global Jewish Assistance and Relief Network, is trying to help millions like them in Russia and Ukraine by providing food, clothing and medical care while trying to help local institutions become self-sufficient.
The New York-based charity was founded in 1992 by an American rabbi with Ukrainian roots to help the poor in the former Soviet Union.
As one of a handful of global charities that delivers surplus food from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, GJARN has since delivered 5.4 million kilograms of food to more than 2 million people.
The organization also works to revitalize Jewish communities that had been suffocated by decades of communism, but humanitarian assistance is delivered to all in need, irrespective of religion or ethnicity.
The grateful letters GJARN receives from aid recipients betray just how desperate many are."Your food package broke the ice of despair that was on my heart, and your warmth and kindness reached our distant, Godforsaken village where we old collective farmers while away the last days of our lives," wrote one pensioner.
"We're talking about hard-working, educated people -- teachers, farmers, engineers -- who worked their entire lives and now have next to nothing," said Livshitz, who left Ukraine a decade ago to study at a rabbinical college in New Jersey before coming to Moscow to become GJARN's country director for Russia.
Aid programs enable scores to survive without resorting to selling family heirlooms or vegetables or army medals on muddy street corners, as the couple Livshitz met in Ukraine did to make ends meet.
The charity reaches needy people in some of Russia's poorest regions, including the destitute Far East and Far North, where GJARN recently distributed 2,000 tons of USDA apples.
But even in and around Moscow, many people are barely scraping by.
"Life in most places doesn't resemble what goes on within the Garden Ring. Just half an hour outside of Moscow, you'll find a different world," said Korey Hartwich, deputy director at the Moscow office. "We've done a lot, but there's still a tremendous need."
At the Etel-Bikur Holim's daily soup kitchen in Moscow, sacks full of lentils, buckwheat, peas, condensed milk and other goods distributed by GJARN are piled up in the kitchen and help feed some 150 pensioners from the city's Jewish community who turn up daily for lunch.
Here, the clientele is a heady mix that includes former Soviet military officers, journalists and actors -- all of whom receive pensions of less than $50 per month.
"These people are like family to me, and I treat them the way I would treat my parents," said 60-year-old kitchen director Leonid Eichis.
Most are proud and make the best of their lot. Before lunch, a spry 83-year-old former athlete leads a mixed group in stretches and leg-lifts.
The walls are lined with photos of the veterans in their younger days, and many still sport their colorful Soviet medals on their chests.
Vera Lipovetskaya, a one-time fixture of Moscow's Jewish theater circuit before Stalin shut it down, still carries at 80 an air of the sophistication and glamour that made her a star more than half a century ago.
Wearing a smart blue dress and bright red lipstick, she eagerly pulls out a stash of magazine articles about her acting days to show anyone who betrays an interest."We come here as much for the socialization as the food," concedes Iosef Eselson, a former Olympic coach for the Soviet shooting team. "On weekends, when the kitchen doesn't work, we get depressed. The women say they've no need to put on their lipstick."
Getting food to everyone who needs it can be a tall order; Eichis estimates his kitchen reaches about 1,000 of the nearly 30,000 Jewish pensioners who have expressed interest.
But getting local charities to tackle the task is also part of GJARN's mission. Livshitz said the group has helped set up soup kitchens in St. Petersburg and Samara, but only once did the local communities agree to undertake the day-to-day operation.
"We said we'd sponsor the kitchens and donate the food, but they had to keep it going," he said.
GJARN's other mission is renewing Jewish communities, which Livshitz says are undergoing a mini-renaissance.
And while he doesn't gloss over the residue of the anti-Semitism that has long existed in Russian society, Livshitz says the organization has run into very few problems among the broader community.
"Based on my experience, I've every reason to believe our activities help in weakening whatever anti-Semitism is out there, " he said.

For more information or to contribute visit www.globaljewish.org (English) or www.gjarn.org(Russian).

January 29, 2002
Ground breaking apple aid brings vitamins to kids
By Anatoly Medetsky
(Photo by Vyacheslav Voyakin)

Children in the Russian Far East on Tuesday began receiving Washington apples under a humanitarian program that officials said is the first to provide such expensive and perishable produce.
"For the first time in the history of world's humanitarian practice we are dealing with perishable products - apples," said Ivan Rezepov of the Global Jewish Assistance and Relief Network charity which handles the program.
U.S. Department of Agriculture has provided the 2,000 metric tons of apples worth $1.2 million exclusively for children, the charity said. The rest of the aid package - 5,000 metric tons of traditional peas and flour - will also cover disadvantaged adults.
The aid is part of the U.S. Food for Progress program which has included Russia since 1998, said James Shoemaker, U.S. consul general in Russia's Pacific port of Vladivostok.
"I am very glad that the U.S. government has proved in practice its readiness to provide aid to Russia," he said. "In the period that the program has existed in Russia thousands of residents of its Far East have received addressed aid.
"Apple handouts began on Tuesday at an asylum for children who fled negligent parents. Other beneficiaries will include schools, hospitals, orphanages and kindergartens where quality apples are especially welcome because shortfalls in state funding made fruit unaffordable for such institutions.
"The situation with vitamins is very bad. Beriberi is everywhere," said Ivan Toryanik, executive director of the state-run social support fund of Primorye, the region around Vladivostok.
"This aid is something we really need," said Galina Dubovik, director of Vladivostok's children's hospital. "We have 12.50 rubles ($0.40) for a daily ration (per child). How can one feed a child with this money?"
The apple project will cover 400,000 children, meaning each of them will receive 5 kilograms, or some 30 of Gala, Red Delicious and Golden Delicious apples, the Jewish charity said.

8-Feb-2002 News > World News
Cultivating new friends in Russia
Sam Greene

Most of them have never met a Jew in their lives, but hundreds of thousands of children in Russia's Far East are quickly forming their own stereotypes: Jews are the people who bring them apples.
The Global Jewish Assistance and Relief Network, in partnership with the US Department of Agriculture, began a pilot programme last month to deliver around 13 million apples to children in a region where fresh fruit is scarce.
"For a lot of them, it is a rarity," said Korey Hartwich, spokesman for the New York-based charity's Moscow office. "This is an important high-nutrient supplement for these children."
The Network will distribute the 2,000 tons of apples - surplus produce from the US states of Virginia and Washington - to 400,000 children, from Vladivostok in the south to Chukotka in the north. For the children, who will be reached through schools, hospitals and welfare services, that's an apple a day for a month.
"Not that we have anything against doctors," Mr Hartwich joked.
The idea was an outgrowth of the Network's broader partnership with the US government's Food for Progress programme, through which the charity has distributed more than 14 million pounds of food aid - mostly canned and dried goods - to needy Russians, Ukrainians and Moldovans since 1993.
For years, officials in the Russian far east had insisted on the need for fresh fruit. After a year-and-a-half of discussions with the US Department of Agriculture and various donors, the Network was able to acquire high-tech refrigerated containers to keep the apples fresh on the long sea voyage across the Pacific. Once these apples are distributed, Mr Hartwich said, efforts would be made to expand the programme.
The Network, founded in 1992 by Lubavitch émigrés from the former Soviet Union, initially worked with Jewish communities around Russia, the Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus to provide humanitarian support for needy Jews.
But as it quickly expanded, partly through ties with Chabad rabbis and activists, its founders realised they could provide much broader services, and applied to become an official distributor in the Food for Progress programme.
In many cities and towns where aid is distributed, the Network maintains a policy of employing local Jewish groups as its representatives, which helps to improve relations between Jews and the broader community.
And while the US food aid is distributed to the needy regardless of ethnicity of religion, the Network has not abandoned its original mission of helping Jews in need.
As the first apples were arriving in the Far East, an initial 20 residents moved into a model retirement centre built by the Network in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, which will eventually be able to accommodate 100 elderly people.

Russian synagogue gets new Torah as Jews begin to support themselves
By Daniel Nehmad
SAMARA, Russia, Jan. 23 (JTA) - The only working synagogue here is hidden behind a cluster of ramshackle storage sheds in the backyard of a rotting czarist-era building.
The modest 94-year-old institution, located along a side street in the city´s old town, managed for 70 years to evade closure by Soviet authorities.
And on Sunday it tossed off any remaining shred of the secrecy that had been necessary for its survival.
The synagogue received Samara´s first new Torah scroll in over 100 years, showed off a new soup kitchen that will partially run on local donations, and opened both men´s and women´s mikvahs.
Several hundred local Jews were on hand for the events, along with the regional governor and Rabbi Berel Lazar, one of Russia´s two chief rabbis. They all gathered outside the apartment of resident Rabbi Shlomo Deutch and paraded to the synagogue along a path that took them across one of the central Russian city´s main commercial areas, Leningrad Street.
They carried the new Torah, with a brass band in tow playing traditional Jewish music.
Local television, radio and newspaper media were present to cover the parade, and scores of non-Jews watched with curiosity, a few even dancing to the music.
But more than anyone else, the ebullient mood seemed to surprise the Jews of this central Russian city of 1.2 million people.
"Many people came over to me and told me that they couldn´t believe this was happening," said Lazar, who marched in the parade. "They couldn´t believe that people could be so open about their religion."
Some of Samara´s Jews -- the community is estimated at between 10,000 to 20,000 -- were not quite ready to test the waters.
"Some are still afraid to come," said Stanislav Vagner, 20, who attended a post-march party at the synagogue with his non-Jewish wife.
By contrast, a Russian police officer watching the parade from the edge of the street, which was blocked off for the occasion, said he thought there was nothing strange about what he saw.
"Everyone has the freedom to do what he wants," he said. "I don´t mind" the parade "at all."
The governor of the region of Samara, Konstantin Titov, who also walked in the parade, later said, "Freedom is the only thing that will keep Jews here - freedom of choice and freedom to do as they please."
Indeed, few of the Jews in Samara these days will dispute the claim that they have the freedom to practice Judaism. But many Jews still believe they are not free of suspicion.
"It´s not that the Russians love us," said congregation member Zinovy Haiken, a retired engineer, after Sunday´s party. "It´s that they have to start making money to survive" and "they think Jews can help them do that."
Sunday´s festivities hinted at a remarkable change taking place in the Jewish community in Samara: Jews here are creating a religious and social community that is beginning to accept the notion of social responsibility and to support itself financially.
Local Russian Jewish philanthropy is still in its fledgling stages, but in Samara, the effects can be seen.
"When we opened our old soup kitchen three years ago, we didn´t have any money," said Deutch, a Lubavitch rabbi from Israel who is affiliated with the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, the largest Jewish group working in the country.
"Now, there is competition among givers to see who can give more."
Although the new soup kitchen and Torah scrolls have all come from foreign donors, the synagogue has managed to supply food for the soup kitchen - which will now be feeding 300 people daily - and a car and personnel to deliver food to homebound elderly Jews each day from money donated from local Jews.
The Global Jewish Assistance and Relief Network, which Deutch said donated $150,000 for the soup kitchen and equipment, said it would not have given the money if the synagogue wasn´t able to support the kitchen by itself.
"The ability of the local community to keep up the program was the main factor in deciding to give the money for a soup kitchen" to Samara, said Eli Livshitz, Global Jewish Assistance and Relief Network´s country director for Russia. "The community here is one of the most vibrant and energetic communities" in the Former Soviet Union.
Livshitz said that although many communities have applied for money to build soup kitchens, the only other network-supported kitchen in Russia was in St. Petersburg.
In addition to supplying its new soup kitchen with food, Samara´s synagogue also holds elaborate holiday concerts that are funded locally, and its Sunday school and a youth club are partly supported by locals.
Deutch says that a culture of philanthropy has been forming ever since Russia´s economic crisis in 1998. Since then, the economy has performed relatively well, and Samara´s small wealthy class, a significant part of which he says is Jewish, has prospered and begun to understand the importance of philanthropy.
"People today understand that we have to build up our community in Samara. If we don´t do it, nobody will," said Deutch.
One exemplar of this trend is Roman Bagel, 43, a native of Ukraine and the general director of Samara´s first Western-style mall.
Bagel said his grandparents taught him to observe Jewish traditions while he was growing up in the Ukrainian town of Shergorod.
He moved to Samara 25 years ago to study at a university, stayed because of he got a job here and began attending the synagogue after his mother died in 1998.
Gradually, Bagel said, he became more involved in the Jewish community Deutch had started leading in 1996, lured in by the chance to speak Yiddish, which he learned as a child, with Deutch.
Today, Bagel acts as the unofficial synagogue president, Deutch says, and works hard to try to solicit donations from other successful Jews in Samara.
In addition, he heads the $3 million project of restoring Samara´s enormous synagogue with donations primarily from local Jews.

Volume CV, No. 31,366    November 9, 2001
Jews Offering Aid to Russia's Wild East
By S.A. Greene

As winter descends on the Russian province of Chukotka, stranded above the Arctic Circle up near Alaska, the residents know one thing is certain: the Jews are coming.
In the dark of polar nights, when the sun doesn't fully rise for weeks, the local mix of Russians and Eskimos live a hardscrabble life of poverty and isolation. But without fail, they hitch their reindeer to their sleighs and make their way to the local airstrip to greet the plane, as the Global Jewish Assistance and Relief Network makes yet another delivery of humanitarian aid.
It's not that there are really any Jews in Chukotka, although oil magnate Roman Abramovich recently got himself elected governor. But GJARN is there anyway, and as a result thousands of Chukotkans nonetheless know where to get food when times are hardest.
"We get letters all the time from people who say it's wonderful that we're helping them," said Eli Livshitz, GJARN' s country director for Russia. "But they're surprised at getting help from Jews."
Jewish charities are pretty much everywhere in Russia - or at least, everywhere where there are Jews. None of them make it to Chukotka, except GJARN, because GJARN, uniquely, has made it its mission to bring tzedakah to everyone.
And so in GJARN's fiscal year 2000, which ended last month, it delivered some 35,000 tons of flour, rice, peas, lentils, dried milk and cooking oil to 2.4 million Russians in nearly 90 cities, of whom only about 140,000 were Jewish, according to the charity's Russia spokesman, Korey Hartwich. And in Russia, where anti-Semitism is common in day-to-day life, that's a fact GJARN leaders are keen to broadcast.
"I'm certain that we are helping to create a more positive attitude towards Jews in Russia", Mr. Livshitz said.
GJARN, though, like other Jewish charities, started out aimed specifically at Jews. Founded in 1992 in New York by Rabbi Eliezer Avtzon, GJARN set out to provide material assistance to needy Jews in the former Soviet Union, primarily in Russia and Ukraine.
GJARN's early but relatively humble missions, however, were soon overwhelmed by massive humanitarian programs launched by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, as well as other, older organizations, including the United Jewish Appeal, the Jewish Agency for Israel and Chabad-Lubavitch.
But in 1993, GJARN switched gears, winning a contract from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to distribute food aid in Ukraine through Washington's Food for Progress program. Under that contract, GJARN undertook to distribute aid provided by the U.S. government to any and all needy in the country, including individuals directly and hospitals, schools, senior centers and soup kitchens.
It turned out to be GJARN' s calling.
"There is a moral requirement to bring Jewish charity to non-Jews as well," said Mr. Livshitz, who is a chasidic Jew. "And by helping non-Jews, we believe we're helping Jews as well"
GJARN representatives traversed Ukraine - and then Russia and Moldova as further contracts were won - meeting with local officials to determine the best way to get food to those who need it. Whenever possible, Mr. Livshitz and his colleagues brought along with them representatives of the local Jewish community and established those community leaders as their local agents.
The result, Mr. Lizshitz said, is that in many cases local officials and Jewish leaders were able to develop close, warm relationships, and at least some local residents began to look towards the Jewish community with goodwill rather than the suspicion more traditional to Russia. And that, in turn, has brought dividends. In Volgograd, for example, local Jewish leaders said it was the GJARN food aid that gave the final push for the city government to grant the community a school building.
Although GJARN eventually stopped its Food for Progress work in Ukraine and Moldova, its network in Russia blossomed, allowing it to become the largest distributor of US food aid in the country, surpassing even much larger organizations, such as the Red Cross. And GJARN looks set to keep that position, although the mount of aid channeled through Food for Progress is shrinking. In the fiscal year 2001 program, which just began, GJARN will deliver some 12,000 tons of food, out of a total 47,000.
"They are clearly a key part of the program", said Randall Hager, agricultural attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
GJARN, meanwhile, is planning to bid to restart Food for Progress work in Ukraine.
While Food for Progress has become by far GJARN's largest program, the charity hasn't forgotten about its initial mission. GJARN is supporting the construction of Jewish community centers in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Kharkov, Berdichev, Zhitomir, and Kherson, Ukraine. In addition, they provide support to local Jewish humanitarian projects and several of the Joint's Hesed senior centers.
But plans go well beyond that.
In the spring, GJARN will open the American Jewish Medical Center in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. Designed to be an American-style full-service clinic in a country where 40 percent of hospitals don't have running water, the center will provide modern services to Jewish and non-Jewish residents throughout the region, on a pay-if-you-can basis, Mr. Livshitz said. Eventually, the clinic will open affiliates in Kharkov, Kiev and Zaporozhye.
Also in Dnepropetrovsk, GJARN is constructing the $1.28 million Beit Baruch Assisted Living Center, which will be one of the only American-style retirement homes in the former Soviet Union. Unlike the hospital, though, Beit Baruch will be open only to the Jewish elderly. GJARN will seek donors to cover the $1,800 per year cost of caring for each patient.