It Takes A Partnership: Boston and Dnepropetrovsk

There’s an elderly Jewish woman named Anna Shevelev living in the lap of luxury, in the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk. Anna is not heir to a fortune; she never owned more than the clothes on her back. In fact, her own financial assets amount to zero. By all accounts, Anna might well be another statistic of Ukraine’s elderly, below-poverty level demographic.

When Anna was discovered in the backwater town of Ingulets, she was living in a damp, dark cellar, with an axe under her pillow. The 85 year-old survivor of the holocaust and then of communism lived in hunger, but also in fear for her life. “She was waiting to die,” says Zelig Brez, the director of Dnepropetrovsk’s Jewish Community Board who places the city’s Jewish population at about 40,000.

Today, Anna enjoys five-star accommodations at Beit Baruch, a luxurious, high-end assisted living facility—an out-of-reach fantasy even for the average middle-class American. Built originally with funds provided by Rabbi Eliezer Avtzon of GJARN, the facility’s services are the product of an unusual partnership between the CJP of Boston and the Jewish community of Dnepropetrovsk under the leadership of Chabad’s Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki.

Named for the father of Dnepropetrovsk’s Jewish Community President Gennady Bogolubov, Beit Baruch, probably the only facility of its kind worldwide, is but one in a plethora of programs that have transformed Dnepropetrovsk from a city of substandard medical, social and educational services, to one that is making its denizens feel grateful, even privileged. With funds allocated from the Overseas Committee of CJP through the Jewish Community Relations Council’s Committee for Post-Soviet Jewry, several of Boston’s highly regarded medical experts come to Dnepropetrovsk to train local medical teams in their respective fields and to raise the quality of care for the city’s elderly, its women and children.

“They come for months at a time, teaching our staff, examining patients and improving our level of services,” says Mr. Brez, of individuals like Prof. Lewis Lipsitz, Vice President for Academic Medicine at Hebrew Senior Life, and Chief of the Division of Gerontology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Lipsitz recently introduced hip-fracture care that was non-existent in the city.

Alternatively, the CJP and the JCRC invite Dnepropetrovsk’s medical staff to train at some of Boston’s top medical centers. Under the mentorship of Prof. Benjamin Sachs, Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the Corky Ribakoff Women’s Clinic in Dnepropetrovsk addresses specific health concerns including the high rates of infertility, cervical cancer, infections, and repeated abortions. Prof. David Link, Chief of Pediatrics at Cambridge Health Alliance and Mt. Auburn Hospital, trained local staff at the children’s clinic which has provided vaccines from four pharmaceutical companies and has launched a program to immunize 10,000 children over the next years.

While these efforts were intended to correct a horrible situation for the city’s elderly, its women and children, 85 percent of whom are living in poverty, Mr. Brez points to another, more profound transformation that followed. When economic opportunity finally became a possibility in the post communist era, many sought to accumulate wealth for the purpose of improving their own lifestyles. “There was no tradition to give back,” he observes, “and without an example, people did not know how to build a community and how to create a healthy infrastructure for the benefit of the collective.”

Locals were thus intrigued by the investment of time and resources on the part of individuals affiliated with Boston’s partnership program. When some among the city’s budding businessmen saw a successful entrepreneur like Bob Gordon, owner of New England’s chain of Store-24, “spending his time coming to our city, sending containers of food for us—and not as a one time gesture, but time and again, he became an inspiration to them. In him and the others,” explains Brez.

The consistent dedication and investment toward bettering the lives of Dnepropetrovsk’s citizens established vital role models that are responsible for the kind of philanthropy Dnepropetrovsk is generating today from its own home-grown base of supporters. “Today we have a local board of directors that oversees budgetary allocations for our programs and services,” says Brez, “and our own donors who are investing in our Jewish community.” With training by the CJPs professionals in strategic planning, public relations, marketing and fundraising, they learned how to establish a community infrastructure, and now, says Brez, “they are training us in the establishment of endowment funds and other ideas that are new to our community.”

Perhaps the beauty of this partnership is that all the parties seem to feel they are the true beneficiaries. Barry Shrage, President of the CJP, who describes this partnership as “transformational,” says that it has been a source of tremendous benefit to Boston’s Jewish community which has grown as a result as well. “It has helped provide an opportunity for members of our own community to become involved.” Nancy Kaufman, executive director of the JCRC, says of the relationship, “We get more out of it than they do. We feel privileged to be part of this brilliant model.” She points out that all of JCRC’s investment in Dnepropetrovsk is leveraged money, with an amazing return on a modest annual investment, and tosses out a guesstimate of a minimum ten-fold return, if not twice or three times as much. But for everyone involved, the relationship has spawned something far more meaningful.

Recalling the genesis of this partnership back in 1991, when, after the dismantling of communism, the National Conference of Soviet Jewry decided that they wanted to continue their activism in this region, Kaufman describes their search for a “sister” city. The volunteers returned from a visit to Ukraine, and while many never even heard of Dnepropetrovsk, and no one even knew how to pronounce the name of this city that, unlike Moscow, Leningrad or Kiev, was completely closed to the west, “they reported back about having found a passionate team in Rabbi Shmuel and Chani Kaminezki who had come as Chabad Shluchim to this city with special ties to Rabbi Schneerson,” she says.

Yekaterinoslav, as the city was known before the communist revolution, was home to the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, whose father Rabbi Levi Yitzchok Schneerson, was its chief Rabbi in the early part of the 20th century. This historic footnote is the reason, believes Rabbi Kaminezki, for the miracles of Dnepropetrovsk’s successes, and for this inspired partnership that is now held up as a model for other communities to learn from.

As a Chabad representative determined to restore traditional Judaism to Dnepropetrovsk, Kaminezki may have seemed an unlikely partner for Boston’s JCRC whose orientation is decidedly liberal. “At first there were questions,” recalls Bob Gordon, “as to how much our Jewish organization in Boston wanted to be involved with Chabad.” But after the individuals involved got to know the values of the Kaminezkis, he admits, “they soon overcame the few objections they had.”

But Barry Shrage says that he sees this partnership as a rather natural one to the Jewish community. “The surprise is,” he told Lubavitch International, “that so few other communities are doing this in any intensive way.” The chance to partner with a former soviet city, he says, for the purpose of rebuilding Jewish life after the fall of communism, “was a historic moment, and we wanted to be a part of it, we wanted our children to see it, and to tell our grandchildren that we were there.” Sixteen years later, the intensity has not waned. The CJP, says Shrage, has made this partnership “the core of our work overseas,” and is still excited about its role in the rebirth of this city.

Kaufman recalls sitting together with the Kaminezkis to learn what their dreams are for the city, when the JCRC realized that they shared many of the same objectives, and that “there was plenty of room for us to fit their model.” Like Barry Shrage, Bob Gordon and Zelig Brez, she attributes the stunning changes in Dnepropetrovsk to Rabbi and Mrs. Kaminezki’s leadership appeal. Their knack for embracing the city’s entire population is striking, she says. “Rabbi Kaminezki runs a food pantry that is open to everyone.” He encouraged the JCRC to work with him for the benefit of the broader Dnepropetrovsk community, and indeed, she says, “we made a point of working through the municipal hospital rather than building our own.” Most recently, she notes, the JCRC arranged, through sponsorship by the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, for Dnepropetrovsk to get its first ever mammography machine to benefit all of the women in the city.

Those who left Dnepropetrovsk 15 years ago may not recognize their former city, which is now abuzz with signs of growth everywhere. Boston’s introduction of a micro-enterprise program is offering individuals loans and training in business; where once there were no eateries, the city now has its own kosher sushi restaurant. “This city appeared moribund when we first visited here in 1992,” recalls Bob Gordon. In terms of Jewish activity, most Jews preferred not to identify as Jews , and, he says “there was nothing going on her when the Rabbi arrived. Just remnants, and an old synagogue. There hadn’t been any new construction here in 30 years.”

Nine years ago, Rabbi Kaminezki took several visitors to see a run-down coat factory in the city. “We’ll make this into a shul,” he told them. Kaufman remembers wondering what the Rabbi was thinking. “Two years later he built a spectacularly beautiful shul that is filled with 350 people, children, women and men of all ages, every Shabbat.”

Zelig Brez, a native of Dnepropetrovsk who has made many changes in his personal life as a result of Rabbi Kaminezki’s spiritual inspiration, and is now responsible for the Jewish community’s annual multi-million dollar budget, says that Kaminezki inspires by his ahavat yisrael. “There are no divisions here. No one is rejected. Oligarch or pauper, educated or ignorant, religious or secular”—everyone, he says, feels relevant. That’s why, notwithstanding the rapid strides Dnepropetrovsk has made, it remains a city, says Brez, absent “the intrigues, conflicts and confrontations” that often come with the territory.

No one is more enamored of the changes in Dnepropetrovsk, than Rabbi Kaminezki himself, who saw the metamorphosis as it occurred. “Our Boston friends are G-d sent partners in this amazing transformation,” he says. Then adds thoughtfully, “I hope that our Shlichus here is doing the Rebbe proud.”