Jewish New Yorkers Unite to Raise Millions for Ukraine

Rabbi Labish Becker, the executive director of Agudath Israel of America, an umbrella organization of ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups, has raised more than $2 million for Ukraine since the Russian invasion. He said the emergence of President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, as “a Ukrainian national hero,” has been “a source of pride for people” amid the grim news of war.

“Everyone is sort of pinching themselves,” he said. “We just sit there and look at each other like: ‘Wow this is amazing. It is like what J.F.K. said when he was in Berlin.’ We feel like, ‘We are all Ukrainians.’”

New York City is home to an estimated 300,000 Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and the largest single group of them are from Ukraine, according to Jewish leaders in the area. Many more Jewish Americans have ancestral ties to Ukraine, or a spiritual connection to the country as the birthplace of Hasidic Judaism.

Those ties, and the leadership of Mr. Zelensky, have produced in some American Jews a feeling of solidarity with Ukraine, a country that many of their ancestors fled. Many have become part of a robust fund-raising effort, rapidly assembled by Jewish groups in New York, which has produced millions of dollars in humanitarian aid.

Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, a Republican who was born in Ukraine, represents Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach and parts of Midwood and Sheepshead Bay. She has been inundated with calls and emails from people across her Brooklyn district who want to help.

Many, like her, were Jews experiencing “complicated feelings,” she said. “There are a lot of mixed feelings about Ukraine in the Jewish community because of antisemitism in its history,” Ms. Vernikov said. This was painfully highlighted on Tuesday when a Russian strike hit the area of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, where tens of thousands of Jews were killed during the Nazi occupation of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

“And right now it doesn’t matter because Russia is an aggressor that is killing innocent men, women and children,” Ms. Vernikov continued. “We can acknowledge our complicated feelings about what happened in the past, but right now we have to do what is right.”

(Most Jews from the former Soviet Union oppose the Russian invasion, no matter their national origin, said Samuel Kliger, the director of Russian and Eurasian affairs for the American Jewish Committee.)

Donations have come in many forms: money sent via online platforms, prayers offered in synagogues and on WhatsApp groups, and boxes of clothes and medical supplies delivered to community centers and even New York Police Department precincts.

There were roughly 350,000 Jews in Ukraine before the war began, according to data collected by Chabad, one of the largest Jewish organizations in the world. Its spokesman, Rabbi Motti Seligson, said Chabad had spent $12 million on Ukraine relief since the war began, almost all of it from funds raised in the last week.

The money was being used to provide aid through Chabad’s extensive network of synagogues, yeshivas and community centers, he said. “A lot of this effort is being coordinated from New York, the funds are being raised here, and people from all over the world are contributing,” he said.

Large Jewish organizations, including the World Union for Progressive Judaism, Agudath Israel of America and the Orthodox Union, have raised roughly $3 million in the week since the war began. Other appeals spread via online platforms like the Chesed Fund, a Jewish website, have drawn in millions more.

These groups have assembled an aid pipeline from the New York area to a network of local Jewish organizations in Poland, Moldova, Ukraine and elsewhere. That money has been used to pay for things like food, clothing, diapers, medical supplies and buses to transport people fleeing the country, Jewish leaders said.

Rabbi Becker said “thousands and thousands” of people had donated to Agudath Israel of America’s fund-raising campaign from its 200 affiliated synagogues across the country, 80 percent of which are in the New York area, he said.

The Union for Reform Judaism, an umbrella group of Reform congregations, has been directing donors to the World Union for Progressive Judaism, which said on Friday that it had collected $600,000 since the war began.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer, the executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, said the organization had so far collected “many hundreds of thousands of dollars” in donations, most of which went toward helping people flee Ukraine.

“Renting a bus, which would have been $700 a month ago, is running north of $15,000 now,” he said. “The bus rides are taking many, many times the normal amount of time to get from Point A to Point B because they have to find roads that are passable and bridges that aren’t blown up.”

Orthodox Jewish leaders said that many in their community were especially concerned about the war because of Ukraine’s place in the history of Hasidic Judaism.

The Hasidic movement, an ultra-Orthodox branch of Judaism, was founded in Western Ukraine in the 18th century and today has tens of thousands of adherents in New York City.

Hasidic religious sites in Ukraine, like the grave of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov in the town of Uman, draw tens of thousands of pilgrims every year, making it a place that many find both familiar and holy, Rabbi Becker said. “People who don’t have any family ties to Ukraine at all still go to visit these Hasidic sites,” he said.

Mr. Kliger, of the American Jewish Committee, estimates that 40 percent of the immigrant community in New York City is originally from Ukraine, 35 percent is from Russia, and the remainder are from smaller countries like Belarus or Moldova.

Russian is a commonly spoken first language in the community, and it is the mother tongue of President Zelensky, he said. In years past, many Jewish New Yorkers who spoke Russian did not object to being described as “Russian Jews,” even if they were from Ukraine, Mr. Kliger said.

But since Russia’s conflict with Ukraine first began in 2014, there had been a shift in the way many Jewish immigrants thought about themselves.

“People started to feel that they have a special Ukrainian identity in addition to their Jewish identity, so they started saying they were Ukrainian Jews,” Mr. Kliger said. “They didn’t want anyone to call them Russian Jews anymore. In the past, people didn’t care as much.”