New York City is home to some 300,000 Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
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Jewish New Yorkers Unite to Raise Millions for Ukraine
New York City is home to some 300,000 Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
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.