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Among Ukraine’s Jews, a year of war has transformed the ordinary into the sacred
TRUSKAVETS, Ukraine (JTA) — Nearly 600 Jews stand shoulder-to-shoulder, eyes trained on the young man leading the service to close out Shabbat. The crowd sings a soulful havdalah tune that lifts up its final words: “hamavdil ben kodesh l’chol” — ”the One who divides between sacred and ordinary.”
It looks like a Shabbat gathering anywhere else in the world, but I’m in the western Ukrainian city of Truskavets, where — from every part of their conflict-scarred country — these Jewish community volunteers have come together for a four-day retreat, energized by the chance to learn from each other and take a deep breath.
I’m back in Ukraine for the first time since the crisis began to learn from these men and women making miracles happen. I came to document and share stories from this gathering. Remarkably, it’s the largest-ever in the former Soviet Union arranged by my organization, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC, which has worked to aid needy Jews and build Jewish life in the region for decades.
With its wine and sweet-smelling spices, havdalah eases the transition from the holy purity of Shabbat to the workaday mundanity of the week. Surrounded by hundreds of Ukrainian Jews, I felt uplifted, as I always do when I travel to this region and see its defiant, vibrant Jewish life.
The usual rules don’t apply. Here, the ordinary becomes sacred.
On this, my 14th trip to the former Soviet Union in 10 years, I’ve come to know it as a place where that switch is truly flipped. Rebuking a painful history, from the Holocaust to Soviet oppression, everyday actions become lifesaving and essential. That’s never been more true than this past year, as Jewish communities here worked overtime to meet the enormous humanitarian needs of this crisis.
Simple flashlights become beacons enabling home care workers to reach the bedridden elderly Jews they serve. Bus trips between cities are transformed into escape hatches for those fleeing rocket attacks. A box of nonperishables is manna from heaven for those faced with empty grocery shelves, and each call from a volunteer is a life raft for the loneliest seniors and most vulnerable at-risk families.
Over the last year, more than 3,000 volunteers engaged in projects affecting 36,000 people. This work is part of our expansive response to this crisis — supported by the Jewish Federations of North America, the Claims Conference, International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, individuals, families, corporations and foundations. It includes providing uninterrupted assistance to 43,000 Jews in Ukraine and the delivery of 800 tons of humanitarian aid. Among those we help are the elderly and families, internally displaced people, and the new poor who have lost their livelihoods in the devastation.
A song leader leads participants in havdalah at JDC’s volunteer Shabbaton in Truskavets, Ukraine, February 2023. (Arik Shraga)
Not blind to the challenges they face, Jews and Jewish communities here are resilient and resolute in the knowledge that there’s something more important at play. It’s a clarity of purpose that means, against all odds, they’ve grown even stronger.
“My fears were boiling me alive,” said Tatiana Chumachenko, a 34-year-old Odessa mother of two. She started volunteering this summer and now runs weekly cooking classes and art therapy sessions for elderly Jews. “So I made the decision to widen my world — to take on more responsibility, to take care of more people. And volunteering literally saved me.”
Thousands of Ukraine’s Jews just like Tatiana have chosen determination, not despair. They’ve driven through besieged cities delivering medicine and firewood, power generators and portable heaters. They know their Jewish values demand action and compassion, and so they’ve stepped up.
Daria Yefimenko, the head of our network of 25 volunteer centers across Ukraine, is that resolute determination personified. The air raid siren went off the other day as I was interviewing her — a shocking noise, made more frightening by its maddening vagueness: What’s happening? Where? Am I in danger, or is this just background noise?
I learned later that just a few hours before I arrived in Ukraine, a missile had struck Drohobych, only 10 kilometers from the Shabbaton.
Yefimenko seemed unshaken. She and her team — her “family of superhero volunteers” — live here, of course. They must cope with brutal shelling and unpredictable electricity cuts. They have daily fears for their loved ones, and rising anxiety about what the future holds. They help their neighbors even as they share their pain and struggles.
And they keep on going.
Alex Weisler joins the massive group havdalah at JDC’s volunteer Shabbaton in Truskavets, Ukraine, Feb. 18, 2023. (Arik Shraga)
There are so many stories in this part of the world — World War II stories, Soviet stories, stories of rebuilding and reimagining Jewish life after the Soviet Union fell. I’m curious about the one we’ll tell when this is all over.
Will we remember how Jews supported each other in the darkest days? We should.
Before the massive Shabbaton havdalah, I led a smaller version at the hotel down the road where we have housed hundreds of internally displaced people since the earliest days of the Ukraine crisis.
Six elderly Jews from the Zaporizhzhia region joined me for their first havdalah ever. Among the group was 76-year-old Alla Hodak, who fled from a place with significant devastation.
Alex Weisler leads a group of internally displaced Ukrainian Jewish community members in their first-ever havdalah ceremony, Feb. 18, 2023. (Arik Shraga)
Here, observing Jewish rituals in a third-floor alcove, she had begun to form a makeshift community—not quite home, but not alone either. “You made sure we were never abandoned to fate,” she told me.
In that moment of stark intimacy, our small group blessed the wine, smelled the cinnamon, and felt the warmth of the braided candle. It bound us together and reminded us that drawing a distinction between then and now can be holy, too.
As we take stock of a year of grief and grit, we must guarantee that the next one is a kinder one. We must recognize our own hands as sacred tools and each member of our global Jewish family as holier still.
There’s nothing ordinary about that. Each person and each day has become an opportunity to do good for those who need us most and build their future together. That’s the only way forward.
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Why is AIPAC targeting Trump’s ICE funding?
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, often a reliable ally of pro-Israel Republicans, is now echoing Democratic outrage over one of President Donald Trump’s most polarizing policies: immigration enforcement. It comes amid backlash sparked by the fatal shooting this month of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.
AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, began airing an attack ad over the weekend against former Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski, who is running in a Feb. 5 primary for the House seat vacated by New Jersey Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill. The ad highlights his 2019 vote for a bipartisan border funding bill, which included an increase in funds for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. “We can’t trust Tom Malinowski” to stand up to President Donald Trump, the voiceover says in the 30-second video.
AIPAC has become increasingly controversial among mainstream Democrats for backing pro-Israel Republicans who questioned the 2020 election results. That opposition deepened during the Gaza war as Democratic voters became more polarized over U.S. policy on Israel. Congressional candidates, including some Jewish Democrats, have promised not to take contributions from AIPAC. The group has also drawn attacks from white nationalists and some leaders of the MAGA movement for their lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.
The new ad is especially notable given that AIPAC has spent years cultivating ties to Trump-aligned Republicans, many of whom strongly support aggressive immigration enforcement. By attacking a Democrat over ICE funding while sidestepping Trump himself, the group is threading a narrow needle — aligning rhetorically with Democratic outrage while maintaining its broader bipartisan posture.
In the 2024 election cycle, the group spent $28 million in high-stakes Democratic primaries. That included more than $14 million, which contributed to the defeat of Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a strident critic of Israel. Malinowski, who served two terms in Congress from 2019 to 2023, holds a mainstream Democratic stance on Israel. During his first term, he traveled to Israel on a trip sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, AIPAC’s educational affiliate.
Israel has not been a key issue in the crowded special election in the northern New Jersey district, which includes a sizable Jewish electorate. The Jewish Democratic Council of America held a virtual candidate forum last week with eight candidates on issues important to Jewish voters.
A spokesperson for the United Democracy Project did not immediately respond to questions about why the group is targeting Malinowski, particularly on such a deeply contentious political issue. AIPAC spent at least $350,000 on the ad.
AIPAC ad is out https://t.co/f0cH6AIgja pic.twitter.com/udwL7nJgYf
— umichvoter (@umichvoter) January 17, 2026
Malinowski, 60, is a former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in President Barack Obama’s second term and previously served as a foreign policy speechwriter for President Bill Clinton. He first ran for Congress in 2018 in New Jersey’s 7th District, saying he was motivated by Trump’s election.
“I am myself an immigrant from Poland. My family was not Jewish, but experienced life under the Nazi occupation,” Malinowski said in an interview at the time. “That’s where my commitment to defending human rights comes from. That’s where my belief in the importance of protecting Israel comes from.” He is a close friend of former Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Malinowski was defeated in the 2022 election.
Malinowski is competing for the open seat against at least two leading contenders: Outgoing Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way and Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill.
AIPAC typically focuses on U.S.-Israel relations and national security issues. However, its political arm has focused on domestic issues in close contests.
In 2024, they attacked Reps. Jammal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri — two of the first House members to advocate for a ceasefire after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 — over their votes against signature Biden-era bills, like infrastructure and healthcare.
In a statement to the New Jersey Globe, Malinowski called the attack “laughably preposterous” and suggested it would boomerang against AIPAC. “I have many pro-Israel supporters in the district, including AIPAC members, who believe you can be passionately pro-Israel while being critical of Netanyahu,” Malinowski said. “To say that they’re appalled by this ad would be an understatement. In fact, I’m reading a collective sense that AIPAC has lost its mind.”
The post Why is AIPAC targeting Trump’s ICE funding? appeared first on The Forward.
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The Jewish women who kept Confederate graves from disappearing
In June 1866, just over a year after the Civil War ended, young Jewish men in Richmond, Virginia, removed their coats and set to work among the graves of their fallen comrades. Some were “frail of limb,” a newspaper noted. They wheeled gravel and turf, filled the graves, and tamped the earth down “in a very substantial manner.” It was the last sad tribute they could offer.
The work that day was organized by Jewish women in the city. Their aim was permanence: to enclose the soldiers’ graves, to mark them, and to ensure they would not disappear “before the relentless finger of time.”
The Hebrew Cemetery in Richmond was established in 1816, decades before the Civil War reshaped the nation and long before the city became the capital of the Confederacy. It was the second burial ground for the Beth Shalome Congregation, Virginia’s first synagogue. Tucked within its grounds is the Soldiers’ Section, where 30 Jewish Confederate soldiers are buried, in what is believed to be one of only two Jewish military cemeteries in the world outside Israel.
They came from across the South, including Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, and beyond. A bronze plaque at the entrance reads: “To the glory of God and in memory of the Hebrew Confederate soldiers resting in this hallowed spot.”
What matters here is not only who is buried — but who remembered them, and how.
The work the war left behind
In 1866, just a year after the war’s end, Jewish women in Richmond organized the Hebrew Ladies’ Memorial Association. That same year, the group issued an appeal “to the Israelites of the South” for aid to enable the society to care for the graves of Jewish Confederate soldiers from all over the South who lie buried in the cemeteries of Richmond.
It was a duty, an act of chesed shel emet, Hebrew for the truest form of kindness, performed for those who could not repay it.
Newspaper accounts from the period are striking for their clarity and urgency. These women understood that the work of memory is laborious — physical, ongoing, and vulnerable to neglect. Graves, they warned, could vanish unless someone acted.
So they took responsibility.
By the late 1860s and 1870s, the Association’s work had grown to include an annual memorial service. Reports describe flowers laid carefully on each grave, marble slabs placed at the head of each burial, names and regiments inscribed so those resting there would not slip into anonymity.
An 1868 account observed that “each grave has been marked in a manner that ensures that the names of the still tenants of this beautiful spot will be preserved from oblivion; and handed down to be further cherished by the generations yet to come.”
That language echoes a Jewish concept. Zachor. Remember.
Memory, they understood, does not preserve itself.
Importantly, these memorial services were not closed affairs. One report from 1868 noted that the crowd gathered in the cemetery “was not confined to any one denomination.” Jewish lives were honored in the public view, but still held apart from Richmond’s larger Confederate cemeteries, Hollywood and Oakwood, which were not consecrated for Jewish burial and could not accommodate Jewish ritual requirements, including separate sacred ground.
Tending the dead
The care itself remained constant, but the language surrounding it did not.
What is striking in early accounts of the Soldiers’ Section of the Hebrew Cemetery is not the absence of politics, but how its weight changes over time.
In the earliest years, memory and the war were still closely bound. The 1866 appeal issued by the Hebrew Ladies’ Memorial Association spoke openly of a “glorious cause” and framed the soldiers’ deaths within the language of Confederate sacrifice. Like other women’s memorial groups in the postwar South, these Jewish women used care for the dead to assert dignity and a claim to sacrifice in a defeated society.
Yet even then, the work itself was grounded in restraint. The focus was on names, tending, and preservation — on preventing the graves from vanishing. The labor was physical, repetitive, and unglamorous. Whatever meanings surrounded it, the work remained the same.
As decades passed, the emphasis shifted. By the 1930s, memorial services featured a cadet, Walter McDonald of the Catholic Benedictine College, sounding taps and the ceremonial laying of wreaths. Confederate organizations were invited to attend. In 1940 and 1941, the public was welcomed to observe the 74th and 75th annual memorials. After 1941, the Hebrew Ladies’ Memorial Association continued to participate alongside other organizations in Memorial Day observances, but it appears that by 1947 the local observance of “Hebrew Memorial Day” or “Jewish Confederate Memorial Day” faded as a distinct commemoration.
Across generations, the observance persisted, a refusal to abandon the dead to neglect. Memory grew larger than any one explanation. The women’s work became less about what the war had meant, and more about what the living still owed to their dead.
A refusal to forget
This is a complex story that shows how history so often complicates memory. It sits at the intersection of some of America’s most divisive episodes and a small minority faith community declaring its presence and its sacrifices over decades.
When the Civil War ended, Jews needed to be buried. What followed was a choice.
The Hebrew Ladies’ Memorial Association chose to take responsibility. To remember “many a loved brother, son, and husband.” To insist that whatever judgment history would render, oblivion was not acceptable for “Israelitish soldiers of the Confederate army.”
Today, the Soldiers’ Section in Richmond’s Hebrew Cemetery remains. Names are still remembered. The work begun in 1866 was not temporary.
The post The Jewish women who kept Confederate graves from disappearing appeared first on The Forward.
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Spanish PM Sanchez Says US Invasion of Greenland ‘Would Make Putin Happiest Man on Earth’
Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomes US President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff during a meeting in Moscow, Russia, Aug. 6, 2025. Photo: Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via REUTERS
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said a US invasion of Greenland “would make Putin the happiest man on earth” in a newspaper interview published on Sunday.
Sanchez said any military action by the US against Denmark’s vast Arctic island would damage NATO and legitimize the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
“If we focus on Greenland, I have to say that a US invasion of that territory would make Vladimir Putin the happiest man in the world. Why? Because it would legitimize his attempted invasion of Ukraine,” he said in an interview in La Vanguardia newspaper.
“If the United States were to use force, it would be the death knell for NATO. Putin would be doubly happy.”
President Donald Trump on Saturday appeared to change tack over Greenland by vowing to implement a wave of increasing tariffs on European allies until the United States is allowed to buy Greenland.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said additional 10 percent import tariffs would take effect on February 1 on goods from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Great Britain — all already subject to tariffs imposed by Trump.
Those tariffs would increase to 25 percent on June 1 and would continue until a deal was reached for the US to purchase Greenland, Trump wrote.
Trump has repeatedly insisted he will settle for nothing less than ownership of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. Leaders of both Denmark and Greenland have insisted the island is not for sale and does not want to be part of the United States.