Ukraine crisis a setback for Jewish philanthropy

For many years Rami Waisman, the director of a major jewelry chain, was earning enough to give back handsomely to the Jewish communal institutions in his eastern Ukraine hometown, Dnepropetrovsk.

But these days Waisman is struggling and can no longer financially support such institutions as the local synagogue, mikvah and Jewish day school where his son attends kindergarten. Ukraine’s military conflict against Russian-backed rebels has wreaked havoc on the Ukraine currency, halving the value of its hryvnia against the dollar since 2013.

For Ukrainian Jewry — Europe’s second largest community after France, with approximately 350,000 members — the crisis has resulted in a major setback for homegrown philanthropy and a return to reliance on foreign assistance from Western Jews.

“The customers, who have largely stopped buying anyway, pay in hryvnias, whereas we buy silver in dollars and euros,” Waisman said, noting that it’s meant a 50 percent drop in revenue for his company. “I still try to give when I can, but it’s not like before.”

From total dependence on aid from the West just after the fall of communism, Ukrainian Jewish communities had become far more self-reliant beginning about 10 years ago due to the rise of the middle class in Ukraine and a Jewish cultural revival whose growing popularity had a snowball effect, including on donations.

Yaakov Dov Bleich, a chief rabbi of Ukraine, noted that local donors raised about 50% of the $4.5 million budget for his Jewish community in the capital city of Kiev. Leaders of other Ukrainian Jewish communities, including Chabad, reported a similar breakdown. But Bleich said the war “wiped out this local donor base, making Ukrainian Jewry once more dependent on charity raised abroad.”

— JTA