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A Jewish social service agency helped resettle young Ukrainians. Now the beneficiaries are giving back.

(New York Jewish Week) – On a sweltering July afternoon, 15 Ukrainian young adults gathered in a meeting room at the Jewish Community House in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. They toss a small ball to each other as an ice breaker — a way to indicate who should introduce themselves next. 

As the ball flies around the room, each volunteer shares the Ukrainian city or town they are from, how they found the program and what their volunteering assignment is. 

All of the participants left a country riven by war, were resettled in Brooklyn by the Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst and are now giving back as part of the second cohort of a volunteer program entirely made up of Ukrainian refugees run by Repair the World Service Corps. 

The relationship between the two organizations is reciprocal: The Ukrainian young adults are learning from Repair the World how to best give their time and labor to nonprofits and social services like the JCH of Bensonhurst, a community center and social services agency that has been helping to resettle them for the last year. 

“This was a seamless integration of having an already-present population of young adults who are really interested in giving back to the community that’s helping them in their resettlement efforts by volunteering in different aspects in that community center,” said Michaela Slutsky, the Northeast regional director at Repair the World, who conceived the partnership six months ago. The national Jewish nonprofit mobilizes young Jewish adults for volunteering and community service.

Most of the participants so far are not Jewish — in fact, for those who lived outside Odessa or Kyiv, this is likely the first time they have interacted with Jewish institutions. But for volunteer Margaryta Monastyrska, a 21-year-old from Kyiv who is Jewish, it has been gratifying to see her peers learn about Jewish values.

“Nobody even asked me if I was Jewish or not,” Monastyrska told the New York Jewish Week through a translator. “They just helped me because they knew the situation in Ukraine. They helped me find a place to work and to find a community.” 

“It’s really important that [the other Ukrainians] I volunteer with understand that they are not at any organization, but a Jewish organization,” she added. “I want them to understand that Jews are not some close community which helps only other Jews, that the Jewish people help everyone from any part of the world.”

For the first session of the summer, the group introduced themselves and talked about the Jewish concept of tzedakah over pizza at the Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst, July 6, 2023. (Julia Gergely)

Yehor, 19, who also participated in the first cohort of Repair the World’s Ukrainian Services Corps from March to May, said the best part of the program has been “eating pizza,” which they have at the end of every learning session. On a more serious note, he also said he enjoyed “having conversations about volunteering.”

A refugee from Kherson, Yehor came to New York in November with his parents and little brother. After a few months, he and his family — who are not Jewish — got connected with the JCH through their refugee resettlement program. Yehor went to the teen services department to ask about applying to colleges, boosting his resume, English classes and a part-time job. He was directed to the newly formed Ukrainian service corps. 

It was teenagers like Yehor who helped inspire the partnership between Repair the World and the JCH. Since February 2022, when Russia launched its invasion in Ukraine, there has been an increasing number of Ukrainian young adults arriving at the JCH looking for jobs and career guidance. They also needed something to do and somewhere to meet other refugees who had been through the same experiences. 

Repair the World provides a stipend to members for 10 to 12 weeks. Participants are matched with a volunteering project in the community they live in and meet weekly to learn about community service and Jewish values.

Slutsky has a lifelong connection with the JCH: Her great-grandparents volunteered there when they left the Soviet Union some 50 years ago, and the family has been deeply involved ever since. Slutsky herself had worked as the program director of the teen services department at the JCH for many years. Although the JCH and Repair the World have worked together to organize standalone projects and volunteer days, this is their first long-term partnership. 

For the Ukrainian cohort, the Repair the World curriculum has been translated entirely into Ukrainian, and changes have been made to teach about Jewish values for those who may have never interacted with Jews before.

“There’s no way that our Repair staff would be capable of launching this cohort without working with JCH as a true partner,” Slutsky said. “JCH was a perfect fit because they get services here, they find community here, they find friends here. They feel integrated. The goal is when Repair walks away from running the cohort one day, these young adults will still have a place here in this community.”

Yehor’s first volunteering assignment was working in the JCH’s social services center, where he helped refugees like himself and others in need find jobs, attend career workshops and English classes, and get help resettling. This summer, he is working as a counselor at the Jewish Community House’s day camp, which enrolls 700 children. 

Around 100 of the campers are Ukrainian refugees, and to have counselors who speak their native language, as well as understand their fears and anxieties about being in a new place, has been “a really big deal, it really helps the kids adjust,” said Gelena Blishteyn, the chief operating officer at the JCH. “We have a child who spent a long time in a shelter and is afraid of enclosed spaces. To have somebody there who speaks Ukrainian and knows exactly what this child has been through and can adjust the programming is really important.” 

Some of the Ukrainian volunteers work in the JCH’s after-school program, where they are able to help out with the influx of Ukrainian-speaking children, while others work in senior centers and deliver meals to the elderly. Others work in the same social services department that initially helped them.

During the spring, the first cohort of volunteers planned a weekend excursion to the East Village to attend a Ukrainian Festival. (Courtesy Michaela Slutsky/Repair the World)

For the past 30 years, the JCH has been resettling Jews from the former Soviet Union and fostering a community of Russian-speaking Jews in Brooklyn. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they have resettled more than 7,000 refugees who have arrived in Brooklyn. And though the JCH works with anyone in New York — including the large Chinese population of Bensonhurst — many of their staff speak Russian or Ukrainian, as many of them are immigrants or first-generation Americans themselves. 

For now, the Ukrainian volunteers are bonding with each other and getting to know their new city. At the same time, they are being exposed to community service through a Jewish lens. In a session attended by the New York Jewish Week, they spent time talking about tzedakah and tikkun olam — charitable giving and social action. Yehor said learning about Judaism has been one of his favorite parts of the experience so far. 

“The main thing they try to accomplish is just get to know one another, form bonds and to create a community,” Blishteyn said. “Many of them come here completely alone. They don’t know anyone. So the most important part of this project, beyond professional success and financial aid, is to really get to form a community.”

Indeed, half of the first session service corps members applied to be a part of the second session. Yehor met his best friend in New York, Artem, a refugee from Kyiv, through the program — the two said they now see each other five or six times a week. Like other young New Yorkers, they hang out in Prospect Park, travel to Manhattan to see the sights and go to the beach together. Artem met his girlfriend, Diana, through the cohort as well — though they are only 19, they live together in an apartment in Flatbush because their families decided to travel back to Ukraine.

“When I arrived in New York, I had no friends in New York, so they helped me to find new friends, gave me the opportunity to make some money and let me try something new,” Yehor said. “I really love my job.”

—
The post A Jewish social service agency helped resettle young Ukrainians. Now the beneficiaries are giving back. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Doorstep Postings: After months of resignation speculation, there will be no more stallin’ for Justin Trudeau

This is a special edition of Doorstep Postings, the periodic political commentary column written by Josh Lieblein for The CJN.

Armando Iannucci, best known as the creator of HBO’s political sitcom Veep, also directed a 2017 movie titled The Death of Stalin, which depicts the chaos that ensues when one of history’s greatest monsters abruptly departs a political system that has been built to cater to his slightest whim.

For decades, his underlings have cowered in terror of misinterpreting a joke or a directive, learned to expect regular humiliations or sudden demotions, and pretended at friendships and alliances with those they can and will destroy given the first opportunity.

Now they have to observe the old order and make new rules up as they go along at the same time—all the while trying to choose a successor despite no clear succession plan. 

The film shows the tyrannical Stalin demanding a recording of a classical piece that he heard on the radio. Since no recording was made, the pianist Maria Yudina is forced to repeat the performance. Within the record cover, she includes a letter denouncing the dictator which he finds and reads. Before he can order her death for this petty act of rebellion, he laughs so hard that he strokes out on the spot. Stalin’s inner circle rushes to the leader’s deathbed, feigning grief and trying to out do one another in tributes while sharpening their knives.

When Stalin comes back to life for a brief moment and points wordlessly at an unclear target, the apparatchiks obsess over the meaning. Was he denouncing one of them or giving them his blessing?

As of this writing, Justin Trudeau has not suffered the same fate as Stalin and will continue to oversee the Liberals as leader until a replacement is chosen. Yudina did not—as far as we know—have designs on succeeding Stalin the way Chrystia Freeland is rumoured to. But excluding those differences, what we are about to see is a similar disasterpiece of Liberal Kremlinology as hilarious and dark as anything Iannucci could conceive of.  

The comedy will derive from how hard the contenders will strive to be Canada’s next Liberal leader, the next prime minister, and—assuming current trends hold—the answer to a trivia question of who Pierre Poilievre demolished on his way to institute decades of Conservative rule.

For the next to-be-determined number of months, those we pay to report and interpret the inner workings of Ottawa will have to rank Donald Trump’s promised demolition of our economy below the latest thing Mark Carney or Melanie Joly said or did. The CRA will be free-styling how they’re collecting capital gains taxes this year since the proposed changes have been prorogued along with the rest of the government business, but never mind that: how far is Dominic LeBlanc distancing himself from the legacy of the Great Leader, and is it wise for him to do so?

The Death of Stalin is a fairly accurate rendering of history, as these go, but it overlooks a major event that actually precipitated the crisis generated by Stalin’s passing. The U.S.S.R. was in the middle of the deeply antisemitic Doctor’s Plot, a purge of physicians that left the leader without proper medical care. Stop me if this rings another current events bell: Soviet leaders had convinced themselves that physicians, acting under the auspices of Zionism, were conspiring to subvert the State and murder its officials. Despite the fact that few if any doctors were ever found to be “conspiring” to do anything, the Plot would have led to the deportation of all Jews living in the U.S.S.R. had Stalin not bought the farm (or taken collective ownership of the agricultural commune, as it were.) 

Some might call the implication that the whole affair was an attempt by the ruling class to consolidate power and act against its enemies mere bourgeois-nationalist subversion. Just like the implication that certain groups would sign up as Liberal “supporters” and elect a leader sympathetic to their interests. Remember that all you have to do is be living in Canada and be over the age of 14 to select the next Liberal chief. But as we’ll hear many times over the course of this race: implying that certain groups are trying to act against the country’s leaders is just another form of promoting hatred. Even if they say that’s explicitly what they’re doing!

Not to worry though: if The Death of Stalin is anything to go by, the contenders will eventually pick one camp to be the common enemy and unite against them. In the film, this is the loathsome sex criminal Lavrentiy Beria, who is brutally executed without trial by eventual winner Nikita Khruschev and buried in history.  Beria’s mistake was to threaten all the other contenders instead of trying to work with any of them—when they all turn on him, he’s reduced to begging for his life to no avail. So, if you are one of those radical students of history who believes this race is a way to bend the Liberal Party to your whims, be warned:  “Wade gently through the river because there are snakes and crocodiles.”

Josh Lieblein can be reached at joshualieblein@gmail.com for your response to Doorstep Postings.

The post Doorstep Postings: After months of resignation speculation, there will be no more stallin’ for Justin Trudeau appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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‘The View’ Co-Host Sunny Hostin Compares Jan. 6 US Capitol Riot to the Holocaust

“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin. Photo: Screenshot

Sunny Hostin, co-host of the long-running ABC talk show “The View,” on Monday compared the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol to the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II, prompting widespread backlash for making the comparison.

While discussing the significance of the Jan. 6 anniversary, Hostin argued that Americans need to “find moral clarity,” asserting that they should “never forget” the breach of the US Capitol and claiming that the riot should be remembered as a keystone moment in world history, akin to chattel slavery and the Holocaust.

“You had [former US Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice, I believe, on this very show, saying, ‘You know, we need to move on from Jan. 6.’ I say, no. You don’t move on, because Jan. 6 was an atrocity. It was one of the worst moments in American history,” Hostin said. “And, when you think about the worst moments in American history, like World War II, like the Holocaust, chattel slavery, we need to never forget, because [the] past becomes prologue if you forget and erase.”

On Jan. 6, 2021, a mob of rioters, convinced that the 2020 US presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, stormed the US Capitol building in an attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. The mob swarmed through the halls of the Capitol building, vandalizing and breaking into private offices. Trump was widely criticized for not doing more to condemn those who breached the Capitol and for fueling the false notion that he lost the election due to widespread fraud.

Hostin’s words set off a firestorm of criticism on social media, with many observers taking offense to her comparison of Jan. 6 to the systematic murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.

“It is disgusting to compare Jan. 6 to the Holocaust,” wrote Samuel Stern, rabbi of Temple Beth Sholom in Topeka, Kansas.

“This Holocaust minimization by [Hostin] is so mind-blowingly offensive it’s hard to believe these fools still have a platform,” wrote Chaskel Bennett, a 9/11 first responder and grandchild of Holocaust survivors.

“Look how stupid everything has become,” tweeted Omri Ceren, national security adviser to US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TEX).

“What an insult to every Jewish person on the planet, past and present. Breathtaking minimizing of one of the worst things to happen in human history,” wrote conservative CNN analyst Scott Jennings.

The post ‘The View’ Co-Host Sunny Hostin Compares Jan. 6 US Capitol Riot to the Holocaust first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Houthi Leader Warns Israelis: ‘Those Who Want to Sleep’ Comfortably Should Leave Country

Houthi policemen ride on the back of a patrol pick-up truck during the funeral of Houthi terrorists killed by recent US-led strikes, in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

A senior leader of the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist group in Yemen has warned Israelis that they should flee to Cyprus or “return to their original country” if they want to sleep comfortably at night.

“Those who want to sleep should go to sleep in Cyprus or return to their original country,” Hazam al-Assad, a member of the Houthis’ political bureau, posted on X/Twitter on Sunday in a Hebrew-language message directed at Israelis.

The post came one day after al-Assad vowed that the Houthis will continue to attack Israel in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.

“We won’t stop … You must watch the sky, you must not sleep, you must not enjoy life as long as the children of Gaza die from bombs, hunger and cold. We will not abandon Gaza,” he posted.

On Monday, al-Assad celebrated after the Houthis claimed they arrested spies trained and equipped by British and Saudi intelligence services, arguing it was a victory in the Yemeni rebel group’s “holy jihad” and the alleged spies were supporting Israel.

“With the support of God Almighty, the Yemeni security services achieve a new victory in the battle of the holy jihad and the promised victory and in the path of support and victory for our people in Gaza, arresting the British spy cell affiliated with MI6 and Saudi Arabia supporting the Israeli enemy entity,” he wrote.

The Algemeiner could not immediately confirm the veracity of the Houthis’ claim about busting a foreign spy operation.

The Houthis have ramped up their military action against Israel in recent weeks, repeatedly firing missiles from Yemen at Israel. While Israel has intercepted many of the missiles, some have penetrated Israeli air defenses.

Last month, a ballistic missile launched by the Iran-backed group struck a playground in Tel Aviv, injuring at least 16 people and causing damage to nearby homes — the second attack in as many days — after several interception attempts by Israel’s air defense systems failed.

The strike came shortly after the Houthis launched another missile toward the center of Israel, and this time the projectile was only partially intercepted. The warhead crashed into a school in the city of Ramat Gan, outside Tel Aviv, causing one building to collapse and severe damage to another. Children were due to arrive at the school hours after the missile hit.

In response to the attack, the Israeli Air Force conducted retaliatory strikes targeting Houthi positions in Yemen, including strategic locations such as the port of Hodeidah and the capital city, Sana’a. US forces also conducted multiple airstrikes against Houthi positions with the aim of degrading the Houthis’ offensive capabilities and ensuring the security of vital maritime routes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned at the time that Israel would take forceful action against the Houthis as it had done with Hezbollah, another Iran-backed terrorist organization, in Lebanon.

“Just as we acted forcefully against the terrorist arms of Iran’s axis of evil, so we will act against the Houthis,” he said. “We will act with strength, determination and sophistication. I tell you that even if it takes time, the result will be the same.”

Days later, on Dec. 26, the Israeli Air Force conducted additional strikes on the western coast of and deep inside Yemen, including at Sana’a International Airport in the Houthi-controlled capital.

“These military targets were used by the Houthi terrorist regime to smuggle Iranian weapons into the region and for the entry of senior Iranian officials. This is a further example of the Houthis’ exploitation of civilian infrastructure for military purposes,” the Israeli military said.

Netanyahu again vowed “to cut off this terrorist arm of Iran’s axis of evil” and to “persist in this until we complete the task.”

Amid the constant attacks, Israel has instructed its diplomatic missions in Europe to push for countries to designate the Houthi as a terrorist organization.

“The Houthis pose a threat not only to Israel but to the region and the entire world,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said in a statement. “The direct threat to freedom of navigation in one of the busiest maritime routes globally is a challenge to the international community and the world order. The most basic and fundamental step is to designate them as a terrorist organization.”

Several countries — including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Israel — currently designate the Houthis as terrorists.

Sa’ar’s directive followed repeated attacks by the Houthis against Israel since October 2023, including the launch of over 200 missiles and 170 attack drones.

The Houthis have been waging an insurgency in Yemen for two decades in a bid to overthrow the Yemeni government. They have controlled a significant portion of the country’s land in the north and along the Red Sea since 2014, when they captured it in the midst of a civil war.

The Yemeni terrorist group began disrupting global trade in a major way with their attacks on shipping in the busy Red Sea corridor after the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, arguing their aggression was a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza.

The Houthi rebels — whose slogan is “death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory to Islam” — have said they will target all ships heading to Israeli ports, even if they do not pass through the Red Sea.

Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught, which launched the ongoing war in Gaza, Houthi terrorists in Yemen have also routinely launched missiles toward Israel.

The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released a report in July revealing how Iran has been “smuggling weapons and weapons components to the Houthis.” The report noted that the Houthis used Iranian-supplied ballistic and cruise missiles to conduct over 100 land attacks on Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and within Yemen, as well as dozens of attacks on merchant shipping.

While the Houthis have increasingly targeted Israeli soil in recent months, they have primarily attacked ships in the Red Sea, a key trade route, raising the cost of shipping and insurance. Shipping firms have been forced in many cases to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys around southern Africa to avoid passing near Yemen, having a major global economic impact.

In September, the Houthis’ so-called “defense minister,” Mohamed al-Atifi, said that the Yemeni rebels were prepared for a “long war” against Israel and its allies.

“The Yemeni Army holds the key to victory, and is prepared for a long war of attrition against the usurping Zionist regime, its sponsors, and allies,” he was quoted as saying by Iranian state-owned media

“Our struggle against the Nazi Zionist entity is deeply rooted in our beliefs. We are well aware of the fact that this campaign is a sacred and religious duty that requires tremendous sacrifices,” added Atifi, who has been sanctioned by the US government.

Beyond Israeli targets, the Houthis have threatened and in some cases actually attacked US and British ships, leading the two Western allies to launch retaliatory strikes multiple times against Houthi targets in Yemen.

The post Houthi Leader Warns Israelis: ‘Those Who Want to Sleep’ Comfortably Should Leave Country first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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