Chicago-Kyiv Kehillah Project

Chicago-Kyiv Kehillah Project was established December 1999 in cooperation with the United Jewish Communities.  This community allocates more than $27 million annually overseas, primarily through the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Joint Distribution Committee, both of which provide service to the Jewish communities in Ukraine.

The total expenditures of the JDC and the Jewish Agency for Israel in the Former Soviet Union are respectively: $51 million for JAFI – for Aliyah, formal and informal Jewish education, (including the summer and winter Jewish identity camps), and Israel oriented activities\programs; and $66 million for the JDC, of which approximately $20 million comes from Federations and the remainder from other sources including the German Government, primarily for feeding the elderly victims of the Holocaust.  JUF provides approximately $5 million in unrestricted support of these programs through its regular allocation. It also designates some $718,000 for meeting hunger needs and $180,000 for the Kyiv Kehillah programs.

Programmatic Highlights – Current Activities

• JUF/Jewish Agency for Israel Bar/Bat Mitzvah Program.  JAFI conducts various summer camps for Jewish youth, which are essentially Jewish immersion programs. JUF funds a special program to provide follow-up to children and their parents who attended such a camp by sponsoring a program which meets two times a week throughout the year for children and their adult relatives. Last year 70 children and 70 parents participated in this program.
• In cooperation with Jewish Healthcare International (JHI), Chicago Kyiv Kehillah Project has sent physicians to Kyiv to assess health care needs – specifically focusing on issues related to vision. Last year professional staff and ophthalmologists from Israel and from JHI traveled to Kyiv to begin implementation of the Kyiv Vision Project. Following the first trip, it was concluded that there were opportunities to intervene with equipment and training to improve the vision of many Ukrainian elderly. Equipment is now being purchased and will be sent to an identified partnered hospital in Kyiv (Hospital #2). Chicago area ophthalmologists are being recruited to participate in this project. It will require travel to Kyiv to train Ukrainian ophthalmologists how to use the new equipment.
• For the past two summers, the Kyiv Kehillah Project has brought two Ukrainian college students to Chicago to participate in the nine week Lewis Summer Internship program. They work at one of our local agencies and live with Chicago host families. At the same time two interns are brought to Chicago from our Partnership 2000 region to participate in this program. The four international interns and the 26 Chicago-based interns learn from each other and spend time discussing what it means to be a Jew in their home community.
• The Kyiv Kehillah Project supports pluralist Jewish education programs in Kyiv.
• JUF brings missions to Kyiv.
• Each year a group of Hillel students from Illinois campuses are selected to go to Kyiv to meet Kyiv Hillel counterparts and to visit poor elderly in Kyiv and in the periphery. In the past, students have lead Passover seders and have celebrated Jewish holidays with Ukrainian Jews.