Last week, I met Manana — a 76-year-old Jewish woman from Tbilisi, Georgia, who hasn’t been able to leave her apartment in 11 years. I sat with her for an hour while she described the hardship and loneliness she feels. But when it came to talking about what our visit meant to her, her eyes lit up.
“To know you are cared for,” she said, “is a reason to live.”
Credited to Indigo Fleur/JDC
I met Manana while traveling through Georgia and Poland with the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), alongside Jewish Federation CEOs from across North America. She is one of thousands of elderly Jews cared for by local Heseds, a network of more than 60 local Jewish welfare agencies JDC built across the former Soviet Union. Many of these vulnerable Jews are Holocaust survivors, and many live on the edge of poverty with no other safety net. Hesed — in every sense of that word — is what stands between them and being forgotten.
The JDC is one of CJP’s historic partners, enabling our Greater Boston community to support Jews around the world. I have known about this work for a long time, but being in Manana’s home, hearing her story, gave me an entirely new understanding. To see the lifesaving work of JDC in action, and to witness the rebuilding of Jewish communities in places where we once never dreamed possible, is to witness the meaning of Am Yisrael Chai.
When we were in Georgia, we also visited a community center where we saw children at play, older adults spending time together, and a Hebrew class. We heard a musical performance, which culminated in a nine-year-old’s singing Oseh Shalom and all of us dancing in a circle.
Credited to Mikołaj Starzyński/JDC
To quote one of my JDC colleagues, “I find it miraculous that a nine-year-old Jewish girl is singing Oseh Shalom in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2026.” I couldn’t agree more.
And I can’t stop thinking about our meeting with the courageous women who run Heseds across Ukraine, whom we had the privilege of meeting during our trip. They have been living through a horrific war for an interminable five years. They are living examples not of vulnerability, but of resilience and resistance, insisting — with unimaginable agency and hope — that they will come through this and build a better future for their communities.
These are not different stories. For JDC, just like for our ecosystem of Jewish organizations here in Greater Boston the work of saving Jewish lives and building Jewish communities are inseparable and mutually reinforcing. Passionate Jewish leaders and strong, thriving local Jewish communities — wherever they exist, whatever they’re living through — have been the keys to Jewish survival for thousands of years. And they will be key to building a vibrant Jewish future as well, whether in Georgia, Ukraine, Poland, or right here in Greater Boston.
Speaking of Jewish survival, the timing of this trip carried its own weight. We were there on Rosh Chodesh Av — the start of the Nine Days leading up to Tisha B'Av, which we commemorated yesterday. This is a time of the Jewish year most associated with destruction, expulsion, persecution, and grief. Sitting with elderly survivors of both Stalin and Hitler, in a region that has known more than its share of loss, that history didn't feel like the distant past.
Tisha B’Av and Jewish tradition invite us to grieve while also demanding introspection and recommitment: to each other, to telling our story honestly, and to our ethical responsibilities for the Jewish People and for all vulnerable people everywhere. From Tisha B’Av we learn that we cannot let love and collective responsibility devolve into enmity and disunity, we can never abandon our Biblical obligations to pursue Tzedek and Mishpat — justice and righteousness — especially for the most vulnerable among us. Seeing JDC in action is seeing what it means to live out these values.
My trip was not just about visiting some of the most vulnerable Jews in the world. I saw one generation being cared for, and another generation building something new. I saw leaders, volunteers, and entire communities bound together not only by shared fate and shared suffering, but also by shared purpose, by what they, we, choose to build going forward.
I came home inspired and clear about the work of JDC and CJP, and about why community matters now more than ever.
Thank you, as always, for all the ways you make this work possible.