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Dramatic stories of survival, endurance and escape reign as Ukrainian Jews mark 1 year of war
(JTA) — Most of the passengers on the flight from Chisinua, Moldova, to Tel Aviv earlier this month were subdued.
Some had just witnessed scene after scene of hardship on a tour of war-torn Ukraine organized by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. Others, about 90 in all, were Ukrainians in the process of moving permanently to Israel, talking in hushed tones about being on a plane for the first time, their uncertain future and the loved ones they left behind.
Alexei Shkurat was not subdued.
Bespectacled and bearded, he was standing in his seat, making wisecracks that caused the elderly woman in the seat next to him to guffaw despite herself.
“I like joking and communicating. It’s my life, why waste it being nervous?” Shkurat told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in English.
“And anyway, I’m happy, happy, happy I will soon see my sons again,” he added.
Switching to Russian, Shkurat’s brow furrowed and his voice lowered when he recounted how, on Feb. 28, 2022, he had risked his life to transport his sons, 14 and 12, to the border with Poland with their mother and grandmother. From there they would move to Israel.
Shkurat could not go with them. The borders were closed for military-aged men, so Shkurat was forced to drive back to his hometown of Odessa. What happened next, as he recounts it, was harrowing: As he passed an empty field near Lviv, he encountered two Ukrainian soldiers, their AK-74 rifles trained on him. Shkurat raised his hands and was told to step out of his vehicle. He knew that if he made one false move, he would be shot.
The soldiers searched the car and interrogated him, asking him why he was traveling alone after curfew and even asking if he was a Russian spy. Shkurat later learned that 40 Russian paratroopers had recently landed in the area and had stolen ambulances and police cars. He answered the soldiers in Russian, which only raised their suspicions. Ukrainian is the dominant language in western Ukraine, but as a Jew from Odessa, Shkurat’s native tongue is Russian.
“I was terrified. I know that they were only doing their job, but the situation was so scary. Everything I ever knew in life had changed,” he said.
Catch up on all of JTA’s coverage of the Ukraine War here.
By a considerable stroke of luck, Shkurat, a street artist, was able to prove his identity by showing the soldiers his Instagram page, filled with posts of his art in locations all over Odessa.
But according to Shkurat, the story was far from over. The next chapter of his life was far more hair-raising, he said. Pressed on the details, Shkurat grinned and switched back to English.
“I can’t tell you a thing,” he said. “I want to sell the story to Netflix.”
Whatever cinematic experience Shkurat might have had, his fellow passengers surely had made-for-the-movies stories of their own. They had made it through nearly a year of war before deciding to move to Israel, making them the latest of 5,000 new immigrants from Ukraine facilitated by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, working in collaboration with Israeli government entities such as Nativ and the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration. Approximately 15,000 Ukrainians in total have immigrated, or made aliyah, in the last year.
Ukrainian Jewish refugees who fled the war in their country wait on a bus upon arrival at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, on an airlift of medically needy passengers made possible by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, Dec. 22, 2022. (Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images)
According to the group’s vice president, Gidi Schmerling, if there is any upside to the war from Israel’s perspective, it’s that many middle-class Ukrainians — doctors, engineers and high-tech employees — who wouldn’t have otherwise made aliyah are now choosing to do so.
But IFCJ’s mandate also includes the Jews who stayed behind. Since Russian tanks first rumbled across the border a year ago, the group has raised more than $30 million dollars — primarily from evangelical Christians from North America and Korea — for the main Jewish organizations in Ukraine including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC, and Chabad. (Both groups do extensive fundraising of their own.) This week, the anniversary of Russia’s invasion, it announced another $4 million in planned spending.
In Odessa, more than 7,000 people currently receive aid from IFJC via local Jewish groups. The Jewish community, once 50,000 strong, now stands at 20,000, according to the city’s chief rabbi, Avraham Wolff. Seven thousand food packages are distributed every month in Chabad centers. Many of the beneficiaries are older — among them some 187 Holocaust survivors — but not all. Several hundred are people who were displaced from surrounding cities, such as Mykolaiv, which was hit much harder by Russian shells, and some are the so-called new poor, those for whom the war has plunged into poverty from loss of income and rising inflation.
Ala Yakov Livne, an 86-year-old widow, is one of many who lined up recently to receive a box with oil, flour and other basic necessities. For Livne, the part that stings most about the last year is the sense of betrayal.
“[The Russians] were our neighbors. Many of them were our friends,” she said.
“Times have changed but some things never change,” Livne went on. “Back then, we were under occupation under the Nazis, back then, they tried to kill us, and now again, we are under occupation and they are trying to destroy us.”
Yelena Kuklova survived the Holocaust by being hidden by non-Jewish neighbors. “We started our lives in war and we’re finishing them in war,” she said. (Deborah Danan)
It was a refrain that would be repeated several times over the ensuing days. In a trembling voice, 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Yelena Kuklova, who as a child was hidden by her non-Jewish neighbors in a suitcase in a closet, echoed the sentiment.
“They killed us then because we were Jews. They are killing us today because we are Ukrainian,” she said, a slow cascade of tears spilling over her cheekbones. “We started our lives in war and we’re finishing them in war.”
And so it was in battle-scarred Mykolaiv, 140 kilometers northeast of Odessa. “What the Germans never managed to do, the Russians did,” said Eli Ben Mendel Hopstein, standing in front of his building, pockmarked from the shrapnel of a Russian missile.
Inside his home, Hopstein rifled through decades-old photos of himself in the navy. “I know danger,” he said, “and I don’t feel it now.” He describes himself as a proud Jew. “First, I am a Jew, then I am Ukrainian, and I never once hid this from anyone.”
Mykolaiv, pro-Russia before the war and now a vanguard of the south, has become a source of pride for its residents because of Russia’s failure to occupy it. Even before the war, Mykolaiv was a desperately poor city. But now, following eight months of daily explosions, destruction is everywhere and the city’s critical infrastructure has been badly damaged.
Damaged buildings are a common sight in Mykolaiv, which Russian troops pummeled during the first year of the war. So are people lining up for potable water. (Deborah Danan)
Like Odessa, the city has no electricity for up to 22 hours a day. For more than half a year, large swaths of the city had no water at all. Today, residents can turn on the tap and get a murky brown liquid known as technical water, but it is far from potable. For drinking and cooking, they are forced to collect safe water in plastic gallon bottles at water stations all over the city, many of which were installed by the Israeli nonprofit IsraAID.
Scenes of people placing buckets outside their houses in the hope of catching rainwater became ubiquitous in Mykolaiv. For its Jewish contingent, Chabad provides truckloads of bottled water. Hopstein credits the IFCJ and Chabad for keeping him alive.
“If it wasn’t for their help, I would have nothing,” he said.
Across the road from Hopstein, 82-year-old Galina Petrovna Mironenko, who is not Jewish, is not so lucky. A Russian S300 missile that appeared to be targeting a nearby university missed its mark and struck Mironenko’s home, decimating her every earthly possession. Mironenko said the only help she gets is a weekly loaf of bread from the government. Standing in her charred kitchen, her red and blue checkered headscarf offering the only color, Mironenko’s expression is almost childlike — a jarring contrast to the words she utters.
Galina Petrovna Mironenko stands in the wreckage of her home in Mykolaiv, destroyed by a Russian missile. Her Jewish neighbor credits aid from Jewish organizations for keeping him alive. (Deborah Danan)
“I have died three times in my life,” she said. “Once when my father died, again when my son died and a third time after the 20 minutes it took for my house to burn.”
Back in Odessa, the sun has set and the city is cloaked in darkness, a cue that soon it will be time to head indoors for the nightly curfew. But first, a visit to the Orlikovsky family who are packing their suitcases ahead of their emigration the next day. On the couch in the tiny living room sit four generations of Jews: Alina; her daughter, Marina; her grandson Andrey; and Andrey’s wife and daughter Viktoria and Sofiya.
Andrey recalls Feb. 24, 2022. “I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears. I heard a terrible blast and grabbed my daughter and told my wife, ‘Let’s get out!’ I thought my house was going to collapse like a doll’s house.”
Participants of the Hanukkah celebration in Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, received a hot meal — part of the sustained aid that Jewish communities have distributed throughout the war there, Dec. 18, 2022. (Vyacheslav Madiyevskyi / Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
But it would take nearly a year to finally make the move, because of Viktoria’s late mother who was sick and because, in Andrey’s words, “you get used to the bombs.”
“We live without power, we live without heating, very often there is no hot water. We are living like insects,” Alina said. “My children told me, mama, we need to go.”
When the family finished speaking, the electricity came back and the lights turned on. Sofiya, 5 years old, laughed into her mother’s chest.
The first anniversary of the war marks two weeks since Alexei Shkurat and the other 89 new arrivals were greeted on the tarmac of Ben Gurion Airport by Israel’s new immigration minister, Ofir Sofer. Shkurat is on the lookout for a permanent home in a place where he can sell his art.
“I am getting to know the country and looking for new friends,” he said. “I want to do a lot of beautiful and bright projects. I want to draw a lot,” he said.
He deeply misses Odessa, which he called an amazing city, but being reunited with his sons has soothed the pain.
“Meeting with my children was the best event of the last year,” he said.
—
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How can I live freely as a Jew in a world where strangers rip my mezuzah off my doorframe?
Twice, the mezuzah on my front door was ripped off.
The first time, I was shocked. The second time, I made a decision that still pains me. I did not put it back up.
This was before the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
That is the part I keep coming back to. The fear did not begin after the Hamas attacks. It was already there, intruding with the quiet calculation of whether a small Jewish symbol on my home made me less safe.
A mezuzah is not a political statement. It makes no argument about a government or a war. It is a sacred object, a marker of memory, a tiny declaration that says: Jews live here. I thought about that mezuzah again recently when the Anti-Defamation League released its annual audit showing that antisemitic physical assaults in the United States reached record highs in 2025. That increase reflects something many Jews already feel in daily life: the slow erosion of ease, the daily calculation of whether to speak up or stay quiet — things I have felt since the first time my mezuzah was violently torn off my doorframe.
Since then, the realm in which I feel safe as a visibly Jewish person has been shrinking from all directions.
After the Oct. 7 attack, the bulletin boards in my apartment building began filling with calls to boycott Israel. Campaign flyers for a Jewish political candidate who came to speak there were defaced with Hitler mustaches. I learned to scan the walls before I scanned my mail.
This was not happening on a campus quad or in some distant place. It was happening where I live.
Then, among my mother’s things, I found a Star of David necklace from the 1930s — marcasite set against black onyx, delicate and old. A boyfriend had given it to her when they were both 14.
I put it on in Florida, where I spend much of my time caring for my mother. I loved wearing it. It felt like more than jewelry. It felt like inheritance, memory, and a small way of carrying my family with me.
But when my mother knew I was going back to New York, she told me to take it off.
My mother is 102. She is not easily frightened. She has lived long enough to know when the temperature in the room has changed. She was not making a political argument. She was trying to protect her daughter.
I still wear that Star of David. But I admit I am selective. In New York, there are moments when I leave it visible and moments when I tuck it under my shirt. That calculation itself tells me something about the world I am moving through.
Recently, in a private Facebook group for women essayists, I shared a personal piece I had written for the United Kingdom-based Jewish Chronicle about how Oct. 7 changed life for my mother and me. It was not a political manifesto. It was a reflection on fear, Jewish identity, aging and visibility.
And still, I was attacked by other writers.“What about Gaza?” I was asked. The message was clear: even my personal Jewish pain had to pass a political test before it could be acknowledged.
That is the narrowing.
This ugliness is coming from more than one direction now. It stems from old conspiracy theories on the right and newer moral certainties in some of the progressive spaces where I once felt most at home. Different language brings about the same result: Jews become less human, less particular, less entitled to fear.
That collapse is what frightens me most: the definitional collapse between Jew and Israeli; Israeli and Israel’s government; Jewish symbol and political provocation; mezuzah and target.
As Jews like me reckon with that collapse, we must reckon with how much we’ll go along with it.
Right now, too often, Jews are being asked to choose between our own safety and our compassion for others. We should be able to prioritize both. I am a Zionist. I believe in the right of the Jewish people to a homeland. I also believe Palestinians are human beings who deserve freedom, dignity, and protection from suffering.
These beliefs should not cancel each other out. They should make us more careful, more humane, more committed to truth.
Yet now we must choose between speaking about antisemitism and being accused of indifference to other hatreds. That is no way to live.
Since Oct. 7, I have found myself going to synagogue on Shabbat, something I never did before. I was a High Holiday Jew. Now I seek out rooms where I do not have to explain why this moment feels frightening. I have learned where I feel seen. I have learned who can hold my fear without turning it into an argument.
The mezuzah I did not put back up is small. It fits in the palm of my hand.
But what it represents is not small: memory, faith, survival, home, and the right to be visibly Jewish without fear.
When I did not put it back up, I told myself I was being practical. But now — after Oct. 7, the bulletin boards, my mother’s warning, and the explosive allegations I’ve seen travel through respected media without sufficient care or verification — I understand it differently.
I was not just protecting a doorframe. I was learning to shrink.
The post How can I live freely as a Jew in a world where strangers rip my mezuzah off my doorframe? appeared first on The Forward.
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Podcast: A lively conversation in Yiddish with actress Lea Koenig
ס׳איז לעצטנס אַרויס אַ פּאָדקאַסט מיט דער באַליבטער אַקטריסע אין ישׂראל, ליאַ קעניג, וועלכע איז הײַנט צום בעסטן באַקאַנט ווי די ייִדיש־רעדנדיקע באָבע פֿונעם פּערסאָנאַזש שלום שטיסל אין דער ישׂראלדיקער טעלעוויזיע־סעריע „שטיסל“.
אינעם שמועס באַטייליקן זיך אויך יניבֿ גאָלדבערג — דער מחבר פֿון אַ נײַער ביאָגראַפֿיע וועגן איר אויף ענגליש; דער איבערזעצער און דראַמאַטורג מיכל יאַשינסקי, און דער ייִדישער זינגער און קולטור־טוער חיים וואָלף. דעם פּאָדקאַסט האָט טראַנסמיטירט די באָסטאָנער ראַדיאָ־פּראָגראַם „דאָס ייִדישע קול“.
ליאַ קעניג גיט איבער אירע זכרונות במשך פֿון איר לאַנגער קאַריערע אין ייִדישן טעאַטער, ווי אויך אינעם העברעיִשן טעאַטער, טעלעוויזיע און קינאָ. כּדי צו הערן דעם פּאָדקאַסט, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
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AIPAC is funneling pro-Israel money to candidates and covering its tracks
AIPAC is not shy about raising money for congressional candidates, emerging as one of the largest political spenders in the country. But as the Israel-boosting organization’s brand becomes toxic in many Democratic primaries, it has adopted a new fundraising method that hides its involvement in steering funds to favored contenders.
In competitive races where Israel has become a wedge issue, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is pointing donors to online portals that it controls but that funnel money directly to candidates’ campaigns — erasing AIPAC’s fingerprints in public data.
That’s what’s happening in Michigan, where Rep. Haley Stevens is locked in a three-way race for an open Senate seat and facing heat from rival Abdul El-Sayed over her campaign’s financial support from AIPAC, charging the funds have bought her support for U.S. military aid to Israel.
The Detroit News dug in and estimated that AIPAC raised several million dollars for Stevens, as judged by receipts from individuals who recently donated to both AIPAC and Haley Stevens for Senate.
AIPAC played its part by parking a fundraising page on its website steering funds directly to Stevens’ campaign, “Paid for and Authorized by Haley Stevens for Senate.” Stevens’ campaign made payments to a company called Democracy Engine that provides the AIPAC donor portals, the investigation found.
That’s not the only instance in which AIPAC appears to be steering donors to give directly to campaigns, instead of funding AIPAC’s own big-dollar spending groups.
AIPAC sent emails to donors last summer and fall directing them to use candidate-specific links to pages on a website called Pro-Israel Network.
“Use the link below to contribute to one, two or all three pro-Israel candidates,” Cari Toppel, an area director, wrote in a September email that directed readers to pages on the website where they could donate to Stevens, Fine or Angie Craig, who is running for Senate in Minnesota.
The portals run by AIPAC allow the organization to collect information about donors, including how much they contributed, and then share that information with the candidate — emphasizing AIPAC’s work on their behalf while shielding it from public view — which would not be possible if AIPAC supporters made donations through the candidate’s own website.
After the Forward contacted AIPAC about the website, its content disappeared, replaced by a placeholder page.
AIPAC has not responded to a request for comment for this story, but quickly condemned the Detroit News article. “The obsession with tracking how individual American citizens support candidates of their choice is outrageous,” AIPAC wrote on X.
Obscured donors
AIPAC’s new efforts to obscure its support for Democratic candidates, which have also included creating political action committees with names that obscure their origin, underscore the extent to which support from the organization has become a liability on the campaign trail.
Only 13% of Democratic voters hold a positive view of Israel.
In Michigan, AIPAC’s support for Stevens came up during a debate Thursday night, when the moderator asked “what that money means and what it buys.”
After Stevens largely avoided answering the question, her opponent El-Sayed interjected — it “buys $3.5 billion sent to a foreign military that could be used here.”
In March, Sen. Ruben Gallego, the Arizona moderate considered to be a rising Democratic star, said: “I wouldn’t take AIPAC money because you have to basically be endorsing what’s happening right now and it’s not good.”
The group remains a prolific spender seeking to influence Democratic primaries and block or slow down the party’s drift to the left on Israel. It has scored notable wins in Democratic primaries: in 2021, it helped elect Shontel Brown in Cleveland and in 2024 it helped defeat Cori Bush in St. Louis and Jamaal Bowman in Westchester County.
But in the 2026 election cycle, progressive candidates and groups are pushing aggressively to make an official endorsement — or a major advertising spree on a candidate’s behalf — political poison for candidates getting AIPAC support.
Track AIPAC, an organization that monitors contributions from the group, has drawn attention — and generated controversy — for graphics showing how much money candidates have received from pro-Israel donors, and many prominent Democrats have rushed to announce that they will not accept support from AIPAC.
Groups like Track AIPAC draw their information from public information campaigns and political action committees report to the Federal Election Commission, whose online databases make both candidates and donors who work with AIPAC targets for attack.
AIPAC has been adjusting course to keep its name out of the public eye.
The United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s main political spending arm that can take unlimited contributions, focuses its advertising on domestic issues voters are attuned to — immigration, for example — while avoiding any mention of Israel.
In a competitive primary for a House seat in suburban Chicago, AIPAC created a political action committee called “Elect Chicago Women,” timed so that it did not have to disclose donors until after the primary election date. That spending aimed to defeat Daniel Biss, the Jewish former mayor of Evanston who identifies as a progressive Zionist and seeks to put conditions on U.S. aid to Israel. Biss prevailed in the primary.
Speaking to the Detroit News, a campaign finance analyst called AIPAC’s tactic of anonymously steering money to campaigns a “loophole” in campaign finance disclosure rules — a label that AIPAC rejected.
In its response on X, it compared its use of Democracy Engine to the popular payment processor ActBlue, which most Democratic campaigns use to accept online donations:
“Is money raised for candidates through ActBlue a ‘loophole’ or is it only considered a loophole if pro-Israel Americans are involved?”
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