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Fielkow said there are three areas that Maccabi USA is working on now. First is the current Ramah experience. Second, he wants to see a series of visits to communities around the country to talk about what Maccabi USA is, and promote assistance to Ukraine during those visits, and third, after the war ends, to have missions for members of the Maccabi USA family to visit Ukraine and help in the rebuilding.

“We really want to help the Jewish community of Ukraine, and especially members of the Maccabi Ukraine family, which are scattered all over the region,” he said.

Six months ago, Fielkow called Amy Skopp Cooper, national director of the Ramah system, to see if they would be interested in a partnership. Ramah immediately agreed to make spaces available tuition-free, and Fielkow set out to raise the money to bring the teens to the country. “We were able to accommodate seven youth” with a full-month session the sports specialty camp, which is housed at Ramah of Northern California. The Academy was established five years ago, and until this summer had been housed in Connecticut.

Part of the New Orleans fundraising was done at the community’s Chanukah celebrations, with a Nola Together for Ukraine event preceding Chanukah at the Riverwalk, and in conjunction with the Uptown Jewish Community Center’s Southern Fried Chanukah. Three organizations, including Maccabi USA, received funds from the events. “I’m really proud of our local New Orleans community, both Jewish and non-Jewish, for stepping up and supporting the Ukrainian people,” Fielkow said.

In a Maccabi USA statement, Alex Rubin, Ramah Sports Academy’s assistant director, said “we are hopeful that a few weeks on the shores of the Pacific Ocean will be enjoyable for these campers who have survived circumstances unimaginable to many of our campers.”

Some of the teens are still living in Ukraine, “a couple living in the real danger areas,” Fielkow said. Others are elsewhere in the region, having fled their homes due to the fighting.

The delegation is led by 18-year-old Ilya Miroshnichenko, a Kharkov native and Makkabi Ukraine veteran who has been living in Slovakia for the past year.

Others have Makkabi experience, including Alexey Kulik, 13-year-old son of the chairman of Makkabi in Nikolaev. Leonid Bereslavich, 15, competed in the World Maccabiah last year in Israel.

Delegations from Ukraine will also go to the JCC Maccabi Games, a separate entity from the World Maccabiah, which will be held in Israel in July and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in August. At the 2017 JCC Maccabi Games in Birmingham, there was a delegation from Vinnitsya, Birmingham’s sister city in Ukraine.

There were several hurdles to overcome due to the war. Visas had to be secured in Slovakia, and they flew out of Vienna. On July 5, Fielkow was in San Francisco to greet the teens. “They were exceptionally excited,” he said. “It’s going to be a nice four weeks for them, to get away and have fun as kids.”

Expressing support for Ukraine through poetry

By Richard Friedman

It was an evening of poetry, purpose, passion and pain — and the unremitting power of a single voice.

Most of all, it brought those in attendance into a deeper understanding of the brutal tragedy that has befallen the people of Ukraine.

Declaring “Everyone in this room is now a poet,” Jewish poet Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach — who, with her family, left Ukraine for the U.S. in 1993, at age six — pierced the hearts of her listeners and probed their minds; discomforting them at times, while affirming one more way they could align themselves with her besieged country of birth.

The program, held on May 18 at the Levite Jewish Community Center, was co-sponsored by a cross-section of Birmingham’s Jewish agencies. Brooke Bowles, LJCC executive director, reflected afterward: “I’m grateful that a cross-section of Jewish agencies came together to sponsor this evening. It is an honor to host such events at the LJCC.”

Dasbach began by talking about the Nazis murdering Ukrainian Jews and Jews elsewhere in the former Soviet territories, during the Holocaust, mowing them down with bullets. Unlike regions under Nazi occupation in Western Europe, in the vast territory of the east, extermination was done by shooting squads.

Nazis were aided by local collaborators who were most often the non-Jewish residents of those areas. Among those killed were members of Dasbach’s family, including her great-grandfather who fought as a partisan in Kyiv.

Through original poems she read aloud, Dasbach connected these horrors to the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the brutality of Russian forces as they have systematically murdered innocent Ukrainians. “To connect what’s happening in Ukraine with the ‘Holocaust by Bullets,’ we don’t have to travel very far,” she said.

She spoke in particular of the massacre of Jews at Babyn Yar, a ravine in Ukraine where, in September 1941, the Nazis and their collaborators gunned down 33,771 Jews in two days, leaving them there as human rubble and unmarked debris.

One of her poems that she read — a section from her long poem “Learning Yiddish,” which appears in her first book, “The Many Names for Mother” — called out to her great-grandfather, Simcha, among those gunned down at Babyn Yar.

Simcha, the prize, the beloved, the listener, the boundary for one or all of us. His name is not carved into a plaque lit up by an eternal flame, nor did we find it in a book that lists all those who burned or fell away from bone.

The poet, her long dark hair adorning her sunflowered dress, was commanding, almost ethereal at times. She proved again that when one speaks or sings their own words — words they have birthed and labored over — those words come uniquely alive.

One of the most powerful poems she read was, “Watching Masha i Medved as Russia Invades Ukraine.” It was written in real-time on February 24, 2022, as Dasbach listened to CNN’s initial coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while her children watched the Russian cartoon, “Masha and the Bear.” She was living in Arkansas, and her mother, also living in the U.S., watching and listening to this same news, called from Maryland.

… My children are on the couch drinking their morning milk and stuffing their mouths full of warm croissants…

Mama tells me she finally reached her childhood friend. They spoke as shells fell and maybe Marina could see fires through her window.

My mother never thought this would happen. None of us did. The subway stations turned bomb shelters the way they were in the war her parents lived through and grandparents died fighting.

When asked how it felt to write that poem as the invasion was unfolding, she explained, “The act of writing poetry is spiritual. I feel overtaken by it. I am compelled to do it.”

It was during the reading of her poems that Dasbach gave those in the audience the chance to write their own.

Telling them about the initiative “Dear Ukraine”: A Global Community Poem, Dasbach invited her audience to use their phones to go to www. dearukrainepoem.com. On that site, they could share their thoughts about the ongoing atrocity in Ukraine and their responses would be translated. She urged everyone to send a message of solidarity, especially if they were moved to send it in poetic form. It was a quiet moment, one that offered a new and powerful way of reaching out to the besieged people of Ukraine.

One person wrote:

The caverns of my heart convulse, spasmed by souls of family I never knew. Not killed by bullets but murdered by gas. They call to me to listen, Dear Ukraine. To hear, to reach into their echo. They call to me, Dear Ukraine, to listen.

Heidenberg as guest speaker.

The Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans announced that its 110th annual meeting will take place on Sept. 7 at 7 p.m., at the Uptown Jewish Community Center.

The Temple Sinai Brotherhood in New Orleans will have Fried Chicken Bingo on Aug. 26, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Gates of Prayer Brotherhood in Metairie will hold its Opening Night fundraiser on Aug. 26, with Havdalah at 6:30 p.m., whiskey tasting at 6:45 p.m., dinner at 7 p.m. and the whiskey raffle drawing at 9 p.m. Reservations are $36.

The next Geaux to Shul event at the Unified Jewish Congregation of Baton Rouge will be on Aug. 16 at 6 p.m., featuring Micah Hart for Who Knows One? Live!, an in-person version of his game show about connections and community. A reception with cocktails will begin at 5:30 p.m.

The Sisterhood of the Unified Jewish Congregation of Baton Rouge will host a road trip to the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in New Orleans, on Aug. 20. The $25 reservation includes breakfast at UJCBR, travel arrangements, snacks and museum admission. Lunch will be done individually in New Orleans, with the bus heading back at 2:30 p.m.

Jewish Family Service of Greater New Orleans will convene its next Girl Power support group from Sept. 13 to Nov. 1. The eight sessions will be on Wednesdays from 4 to 6 p.m. and are for girls ages 9 to 12. Through activities and group discussions, they will improve self-esteem, build confidence, develop social skills, and learn coping skills for stress management. Registration for the eight sessions is $40.

Anna Zorilla, CEO of the LASPCA, will speak about the wide range of services offered by the organization, Aug. 17 at noon at the Uptown Jewish Community Center in New Orleans. The agency serves thousands of animals annually, from vaccine drives and mass spay programs, to animal control services and humane law cruelty investigations. Bring a lunch, dessert and coffee will be provided. The program is free and open to the community.

Mississippi

B’nai Israel in Columbus, Miss., will have its Welcome Back event on Aug. 27 at 10:30 a.m.

In June, Beth Israel in Gulfport announced that it is switching its service schedule from Shabbat evening to Shabbat mornings at 9:30 a.m. The change is not necessarily permanent, and will be revisited in the coming months. There will be a kiddush following services, and a full lunch when there are sponsors.

Beth Israel in Jackson is planning a Shabbat in Memphis, at Temple Israel. There will be a visit to the mikvah at Beth Shalom with Intro to Judaism instructor Sally Rosenberg on Aug. 25, followed by Kabbalat Shabbat at Temple Israel. On Aug. 26, the group will tour the Temple Israel museum. Registration information will be announced.

LJCC highlights “Only at the J” for the J’la

Birmingham’s Levite Jewish Community Center will hold its second annual J’la Gala on Aug. 6 at 5 p.m., with silent and live auctions, a “fund a need” table, signature cocktails, a threecourse kosher dinner prepared by Chef Maureen Holt, and live music.

This year’s theme is “Only at the J,” celebrating the unique role the LJCC plays in the community and in individual lives.

“I hear only-at-The-J stories all the time,” said Executive Director Brooke Bowles. “People have such great memories about learning to swim with Coach John and growing up in our youth lounge and starring in a theater production in Pizitz Auditorium. Fundraising efforts like this gala will help us extend these experiences to everyone regardless of their financial situation.”

Many memories begin at the Cohn Early Childhood Learning Center, where Shabbat is observed each Friday, but with a diverse student body, a multicultural atmosphere prevails, with Juneteenth and Diwali experiences, among others.

Many teens participate in sports offerings, from soccer to the aquatics teams, while there is a wide range of interest groups for adults. There are also community-wide events, such as the Jewish Food and Culture Festival, which this year drew about 2,000 to the “neighborhood picnic.”

Bowles said that over the past year she’s had a chance to visit a number of JCCs across the region. “They each have their signature offerings like a water park or author series or overnight camps,” she says. “But our signature offering is that we look at what we have to offer only at The J and then seek out community members who don’t have access to these programs.”

Funds raised at the J’la help open the doors wider to the community, she added. Last year;s J’la raised over $111,000, as the LJCC emerged from the challenges of the pandemic years.

Tickets for the event, which sold out last year, are $125, and sponsorships are available.