These days, Ukraine runs on two currencies — hryvnia and metaphor.
Among the most powerful is the notion of “light in the darkness,” especially urgent amidst rolling blackouts and the billowing black smoke that arises from recently destroyed buildings.
This flourishing trade in allegory is particularly vibrant among the country’s Jews. In November, during my third trip to Ukraine this year, I experienced it at a communal bar and bat mitzvah in Truskavets interrupted by an unexpected electricity cut, though the hotel’s generator eventually kicked in; an art program for preteens in Chernihiv illuminated by a ring light plugged into a power bank; and a bustling Kyiv Jewish community center coming to life just an hour after one of the city’s worst-ever aerial bombardments.
As Chanukah begins, these Jews reminded me anew that light actually matters. When they kindle a flame, they’re literally deploying hope and healing, especially critical as the devastating conflict enters its fourth winter.
These days, everyone in Ukraine is, in the words of a friend from beleaguered Kharkiv, “mixed up in the same mess,” with any prior distinctions between the needy and the professionals serving them flattened against the unbearable daily march of sirens and shelling. And yet the country’s next Jewish generation — young people whose ancestors survived two world wars, the Soviets, and a history of noxious antisemitism — offers lessons in perseverance for a world embroiled in chaos, fear, and uncertainty.
The master class I got from Natalia Havyrliuk, 25, is just one example. She is unflinching and gritty, despite her grief and the multiple sclerosis that she’s developed since the start of the conflict.
The leader of a Jewish teen club in battered Sumy, just 18 miles from the border, Natalia and her friends are among more than 3,100 local Jewish community volunteers across Ukraine trained and mobilized by my organization, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), which has worked for three decades to aid needy Jews and build Jewish life in the region. They also carry on the tradition of battle-tested children and young adults who’ve had to face the impossible, somehow adapting to sustain themselves and their communities — and even thrive.
Natalia told me she recently woke up to the sound of a powerful explosion, grabbed her phone, and learned that a missile had hit the apartment of her colleague Irina, a homecare worker at our Hesed social service center, a humanitarian nexus in the city that also serves as a warm hub during extended power cuts in sub-zero temperatures when people go 48 hours or more without electricity or hot water at home.
Irina, her sister-in-law, and her daughter Aniechka — one of Natalia’s teens from the club and the second to die since the beginning of this conflict — were all killed instantly. Only her husband survived, saved by a split-second decision to bring in the dog from the bitter Ukrainian cold.
“It was so painful to see all those coffins at the funerals. You realize they were just there, you had just seen them — and now they’re gone,” Natalia told me. “We have to do everything we can so our children can smile at least a little. They are my family, and for their sake, I’m ready to be strong. There’s work to do.”
This has never been a country of wallowers, and indeed, everywhere you turn, there’s some new project happening and some initiative launched to better care for the most vulnerable. Their numbers have only increased as a result of relentless bombardment, skyrocketing inflation, widespread displacement and constant, roiling uncertainty.
So the young Jews I met carry out life-saving efforts on their behalf — operating through the robust network of Heseds, JCCs, volunteer centers, and other Jewish institutions established by my organization. Today — with the support of an interreligious coalition comprising the Jewish Federations, Claims Conference, International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, individuals, families, foundations and corporations — they serve as one united supply chain for humanitarian relief reaching tens of thousands of people with more than 800 tons of aid to date.
These Jews — some as young as tweens — are now on the front lines of their communities’ efforts to keep going, even when all seems lost.
They don’t just deliver food packages and winter survival aid. They run vibrant Shabbat celebrations and dynamic teen clubs. They’ve been central to innovative education, employment and trauma support initiatives we have launched to address emerging needs. Above all, they’re dedicated to self-development, looking ahead to a brighter, peaceful future and a time when their communities will continue to need strong and proud Jewish leaders like Natalia.
Referencing the sticky antisemitism that has haunted the Jewish people for millennia — again rearing its ugly head from Amsterdam to Melbourne — she joked that “for some people, we Jews are always up to something.”
Then Natalia flashed me an impish smile.
“And it’s true — we are,” she said with a throaty laugh. “We do a lot. We take care of each other.”
Shortly after the bombs started falling in February 2022, Natalia got a call from a driver who said he’d be there the following afternoon with a delivery of JDC humanitarian aid. It was difficult to find even basic supplies in Sumy then, and she expected a compact car filled with a few boxes — helpful assistance, but a relatively minor intervention, the kind of thing she could unload by herself.
What arrived was a 20-ton truck.
Natalia put out a call for volunteers, and a crowd of people arrived “like a big anthill, working at breakneck speed” to unload the boxes. At the end of the day, the team was asked if they needed anything — after all, everyone in Sumy was short on food and water and medicine — but no one took a thing.
“They all said no — ‘We’re strong. We’ll make it through.’ — and that selflessness has inspired me to keep going,” she told me. “We’ve always believed we’d hold on somehow, that things would be OK, and now it’s been more than 1,000 days of this mess, and we’re still here. We’ll show through our actions what resilience really is.”
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Jews like me around the world are about to celebrate an ancient story of tenacity in the face of persecution — a narrative hinging on oil that lasted longer than expected, facilitating a miracle of faith, fortitude and the promise of a better tomorrow. We’ll do this in the face of rising hate against us, an ongoing war in Israel and a sense that a stable Jewish future is perhaps out of reach.
As we do, we should take a page from Ukraine’s Jews, who have shown the world that they will miraculously keep going. If we continue to support them, they will outlast this moment and with that same spirit of mutual responsibility and courage, we will, too.
Alex Weisler, a former journalist, is JDC’s senior video and digital content producer.
