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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.”
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Azerbaijan State Oil Deal With Israeli Gas Field Signals Growing Role in Trump’s ‘New Middle East’ Vision
Workers on the Israeli Tamar gas-processing rig some 25 kilometers off the Israeli southern coast of Ashkelon. Noble Energy and Delek are the main partners in the gas field, estimated to contain 10 trillion cubic feet of gas. June 23, 2014. Photo: Moshe Shai / Flash90.
A deal struck this week between Israel and Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR, has underscored a geopolitical reality often overlooked: Azerbaijan’s emerging role as a strategic player in the evolving Middle East.
While the Abraham Accords reshaped regional alliances under the first administration of US President Donald Trump, a second Trump term will usher in what some analysts call a “New Middle East” — one that prioritizes regional security cooperation to counter Iran while favoring diplomacy over conflict, all while recalibrating America’s presence in the region.
At the heart of this shifting landscape is Azerbaijan, a country that shares hundreds of border miles with Iran while maintaining deep ties with both Israel and Turkey, straddling multiple power blocs in ways that could prove crucial to Trump’s ambitions.
According to Ze’ev Khanin, a professor of Eurasian geopolitics at Bar-Ilan University and a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Azerbaijan is a key part of strategic alliances that he calls “unclosed triangles,” with Baku comprising the missing link.
“We are living in the world of so-called unclosed triangles, which is unlike what we had in the 19th century and 20th centuries — when the enemy of my enemy is my friend and the friend of my friend is also my friend,” he told The Algemeiner.
One prominent example is the unclosed triangle of Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Israel. Despite strained ties between Turkey and Israel, Azerbaijan continues to use Turkey as a transit point for energy exports to Israel. “The Turks didn’t stop the stream of Azerbaijani energy through Turkey to Israel,” Khanin said, adding that Ankara was eager to position itself as a transit hub for energy exports to Europe.
Azerbaijan’s ties with Israel have long been significant, though often under the radar, and Baku has been Israel’s most vital ally in the Caucasus and Central Asia for more than three decades, with a partnership that spans across energy security, defense, and intelligence. As of 2019, more than 60 percent of Israel’s gasoline was sourced from Azerbaijan. Baku has also purchased advanced Israeli defense systems, including the “Barak MX” missile system as well as surveillance satellites.
The recent SOCAR deal investing in Israel’s offshore gas fields has further deepened these relations. Aaron Frenkel, an Israeli businessman, agreed to sell 48 percent of his holdings in the Tamar gas field to SOCAR, making the oil company a significant stakeholder in the Tamar gas field, which is a major natural gas source for Israel and has turned the country into a gas exporter in the region.
This move not only cements Baku’s economic influence in the region but also places it at the crossroads of a growing pro-Western bloc seeking to counter Iran’s regional ambitions. Trump’s vision for the region, as articulated in past speeches and his meetings this week with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, involves shifting security responsibilities to local allies, forming what some have dubbed a “Middle East NATO.” In this framework, normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia is a linchpin, but Azerbaijan’s strategic positioning could offer another key pillar, Khanin said.
“Everybody understands that Iran is not going anywhere,” Khanin said.
Both Jerusalem and Washington recognize that, Khanin said, and see the need to form a strong pro-Western bloc of countries that, despite differing political ideologies, can cooperate because of overlapping security interests.
As Trump seeks to end what he calls “unnecessary wars,” he is looking to prioritize diplomatic solutions over direct military engagement, as evidenced by his comments this week seeking another deal with Iran. Trump also aims to end the war in Gaza, secure the release of Israeli hostages, and “to limit, if not eliminate, Hamas,” Khanin said.
Trump’s comments about a “US takeover of Gaza” notwithstanding, his broader goal is to “outsource the responsibility for Middle Eastern security” to a regional coalition with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other key US allies under American leadership, Khanin added.
For Israel, the SOCAR agreement is more than an economic deal — it is a sign that Azerbaijan’s role in the region is expanding in ways that align with broader strategic goals, Khanin said. As the contours of the “New Middle East” take shape, Baku may find itself in a position of influence it has never held before.
The post Azerbaijan State Oil Deal With Israeli Gas Field Signals Growing Role in Trump’s ‘New Middle East’ Vision first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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The Spreading Oil Slick of Obsessive Israel Hatred
Pro-Hamas activists gather in Washington Square Park for a rally following a protest march held in response to an NYPD sweep of an anti-Israel encampment at New York University in Manhattan, May 3, 2024. Photo: Matthew Rodier/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Like an oil slick from a disabled tanker, hatred of Israel is spreading to some expected — and unexpected — places.
In January, the annual business meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA), by a lopsided vote of 428-88, condemned Israel for “scholasticide”: what it called the intentional targeting by Israel of Palestinian schools, libraries, and archives, as Israel fights a defensive war against Hamas.
The vote was overruled by the AHA Council, citing the issue as being outside the organization’s core mission. That, in turn, brought howls of protest from such organizations as Historians for Palestine and the National Students for Justice in Palestine, with the former charging the AHA with denying “Palestinian existence.”
The AHA resolution did not mention Hamas and its use of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) schools as weapons depots or — as we have now learned — places where Israeli hostages were held and as classroom laboratories of hatred.
And, of course, nothing was noted in the AHA resolution about Hamas’s use of Palestinian civilians as human shields as a principal tactic of war across Gaza.
The AHA vote was reminiscent of votes in recent years at the annual meetings of the Middle East Studies Association — a group that has frequently taken similar positions highly critical of Israel.
Now enters a new player in the “demonize Israel” game in academia and in professional associations: the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE). A periodical of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture founded in 1947, its mission statement notes “it is a platform for architectural educators, scholars, designers, writers, and organizers committed to the ongoing transformation of architectural education and the culture of architectural research toward an inclusive, just, and sustainable future.”
The hijacking of this publication occurred in a call for papers for an issue focusing on “Palestine.” In its outreach to readers and association members, the language leans on the side of the academic, but the message is clear: “In the face of the ongoing genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, this issue …. will build on existing knowledge, research, and publications to learn from and with practices of resistance to the Zionist, militarist, carceral, and capitalist regime of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid.”
And to make sure it has not left out any of the hackneyed anti-Israel verbiage of the street and campus demonstrations of the past year, the call for papers invites “contributions that document the architectural and special tools that participate in or are complicit in imperial formations of settler-colonial apartheid and genocide. Contributions could evidence how bombing, demolition, destruction, ruination, and scorched earth constitute military strategies planned and implemented for decades to fragment, debilitate, and destroy Palestinian built, social, economic, cultural, and natural environments.”
The call for papers also quotes the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, whose anti-Israel rants are a go-to repository of hate often used by Israel’s incessant global critics. She calls Israel’s Palestinian policy one of “erasure.” And, in the spirit of the American Historical Association’s charge of “scholasticide” the JAE states that “contributors might map, represent, theorize, and historicize genocide, ecocide, spaciocide, terracide, and urbicide.”
The request for papers closes with a revolutionary-style exhortation to potential contributors: “We invite authors to engage with such formations of anti-colonial struggle within and beyond Palestinian geographies, reflecting on how Palestine has inspired pathologies of hope, constellations of coresistance, and infrastructures of resistance the world over.”
There is no mention in the call for papers of Hamas, of the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre against Israelis, or even of a two-state solution.
Well, one gets the point. This special issue will be loaded with paroxysms of doctrinaire anti-Israel bile. But that should come as no surprise. One of the “Theme Editors” was actually born in Haifa and is a graduate of the famed Bezalel School. Think of the hypocrisy: for all of Israel’s alleged policies of “genocide,” this Palestinian professor, now teaching in New York, was the beneficiary of what was most likely an outstanding education at Israel’s premier institution of art and design.
Academics everywhere continue to pile on Israel in a variety of ways, making Jewish students fearful, as they became caught in a vise between anti-Israel students (including many who protest), their professors, violence on the quad, and intellectual bullying in the classroom.
The Trump administration’s executive order addressing campus antisemitism sends an early and strong message to those who believe that chaos and violence will become accepted practice at American universities.
Now, though, the problem is moving from the campus to professional associations. The call for papers and the forthcoming issue of the JAE is one of hatred-creep dressed up in an academic wrapper. The language, the charges of genocide, and “settler-colonialist” occupation (interesting note: the three pages issuing the call for papers contain only two actual mentions of “Israel”; the other references to it are couched in anti-Israel terminology) could have been written in Gaza or Ramallah.
Architecture is a time-honored profession. Every day, we marvel at new buildings and old, and transformed cities and neighborhoods, and the artistic and mathematical creativity that produces such edifices. The turn by some in the field to politicize and demonize Israel is an ugly detour that sullies both the Journal of Architectural Education and those who will surely be submitting a series of heavily biased papers to it.
Daniel S. Mariaschin is the CEO of B’nai B’rith International. As the organization’s top executive officer, Mariaschin directs and supervises B’nai B’rith programs, activities, and staff around the world.
The post The Spreading Oil Slick of Obsessive Israel Hatred first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Says Israel Would Hand Over Gaza After Fighting, No US Troops Needed
US President Donald Trump speaks during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the East Room at the White House in Washington, US, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday Israel would hand over Gaza to the United States after fighting was over and the enclave’s population was already resettled elsewhere, which he said meant no US troops would be needed on the ground.
A day after worldwide condemnation of Trump‘s announcement that he aimed to take over and develop the Gaza Strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” Israel ordered its army to prepare to allow the “voluntary departure” of Gaza Palestinians.
Trump, who had previously declined to rule out deploying US troops to the small coastal territory, clarified his idea in comments on his Truth Social web platform.
“The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting,” he said. Palestinians “would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region.” He added: “No soldiers by the US would be needed!”
Earlier, amid a tide of support in Israel for what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Trump‘s “remarkable” proposal, Defense Minister Israel Katz said he had ordered the army to prepare a plan to allow Gaza residents who wished to leave to exit the enclave voluntarily.
“I welcome President Trump‘s bold plan. Gaza residents should be allowed the freedom to leave and emigrate, as is the norm around the world,” Katz said on X.
He said his plan would include exit options via land crossings, as well as special arrangements for departure by sea and air.
In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Netanyahu said there was nothing wrong with Trump’s idea and allowing for Palestinians in Gaza to leave if they wish.
“The actual idea of allowing for Gazans who want to leave to leave, I mean, what’s wrong with that? They can leave, they can come back. They can relocate and come back. But you have to rebuild Gaza,” the Israeli premier said. “This is the first good idea I’ve heard. It’s a remarkable idea, and I think that it should be really pursued, examined, pursued, and done, because I think it will create a different future for everyone.”
Trump‘s unexpected announcement on Wednesday, which sparked anger around the Middle East, came as Israel and Hamas were expected to begin talks in Doha on the second stage of a ceasefire deal for Gaza, intended to open the way for a full withdrawal of Israeli forces and an end to the war.
Regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia rebuffed the proposal outright and Jordan’s King Abdullah, who will meet Trump at the White House next week, said on Wednesday he rejected any attempts to annex land and displace Palestinians.
Egypt also weighed in, saying it would not be part of any proposal to displace Palestinians from neighboring Gaza, where residents reacted with fury to the suggestion.
What effect Trump‘s shock proposal may have on the ceasefire talks remains unclear. Only 13 of a group of 33 Israeli hostages due for release in the first phase have so far been returned, with three more due to come out on Saturday. Five Thai hostages have also been released.
Hamas official Basem Naim accused Israel‘s defense minister Katz of trying to cover up “for a state that has failed to achieve any of its objectives in the war on Gaza“, and said Palestinians are too attached to their land to ever leave.
Displacement of Palestinians has been one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East for decades. Forced or coerced displacement of a population under military occupation is a war crime, banned under the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
Details of how any such plan might work have been vague. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said different thinking was needed on Gaza‘s future but that any departures would have to be voluntary and states would have to be willing to take them.
“We don’t have details yet, but we can talk about principles,” Saar told a news conference with his Italian counterpart Antonio Tajani. “Everything must be based on the free will of [the] individual and, on the other hand, of a will of a state that is ready to absorb,” he said.
A number of far-right Israeli politicians have openly called for Palestinians to be moved from Gaza and there was strong support for Trump‘s push among both security hawks and the Jewish settler movement, which wants to reclaim land in Gaza used for Jewish settlements until 2005.
Giora Eiland, an Israeli former general who attracted wide attention in an earlier stage of the war with his “Generals’ Plan” for a forced displacement of people from northern Gaza, said Trump‘s plan was “logical” and aid should not be allowed to reach displaced people returning to northern Gaza.
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the war on Oct. 7, 2023, when they invaded southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, and kidnapped 251 hostages. Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Katz said countries that have opposed Israel‘s military operations in Gaza should take in the Palestinians.
“Countries like Spain, Ireland, Norway, and others, which have leveled accusations and false claims against Israel over its actions in Gaza, are legally obligated to allow any Gaza resident to enter their territories,” he said.
The post Trump Says Israel Would Hand Over Gaza After Fighting, No US Troops Needed first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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