Originally published in J. The Jewish News of Northern California on August 18, 2026.

As I stood outside listening to the birds, it was cloudy and hot, and I could sense it was about to rain. The streets were abuzz, and the restaurants were full of outdoor diners, drinking and, to my surprise, laughing. There were blue-and-yellow flags on every building and corner.

Of all the places I could have visited this summer, I was somewhere that has always been very special to me.

I was back in Ukraine in July, visiting local Jews, learning about their needs and seeing the impact of the Bay Area’s support there firsthand.

Due to the four and a half years of Russia’s war in Ukraine, there are no flights in or out of the country. The journey from Poland was arduous. After several hours by bus from Warsaw, overnight in Rzeszów and another hour and a half to Medyka, I went through customs and then across the border into Ukraine on foot.

From there, I was picked up by another bus for a two-hour drive to Lviv. When I finally entered the Hesed, the Jewish welfare center that serves the city’s most vulnerable Jews, children and the elderly alike, I was welcomed with a lunch of beet salad and mushroom pancakes.

That is where I later met 82-year-old Elena. Since 1801, her family had lived in Kherson in the eastern part of Ukraine, parts of which are now under Russian control. Because it is close to farmland, she was able to survive the beginning of the war with plentiful vegetables and fruits but had to leave after eight months due to a lack of running water.

She and her adult daughter Anya, who is severely disabled, were forced to drink boiled water fetched with a bucket from the Dnipro River, already toxic due to long-term industrial and agricultural pollution.

By the time they left Kherson, there were shootings every day, and schools and hospitals were closed. She was evacuated to Lviv by ambulance because a back injury made it too difficult to travel otherwise.

“The world should know what is going on here and cry about it,” she said in Russian. “You cannot imagine the cruelty inflicted on us.” She doesn’t know who to be angry with, she said, and has accepted her fate as a refugee in her own country.

Earlier in the day, Inna, a local colleague of mine, acknowledged that after 1,600 days and nights of war, there is no longer resilience; in fact, she resents the term. All that is left is hope. She just wants to be human again.

I also met 21-year-old Katya, who works in the Jewish community in Kyiv and was visiting Lviv. Originally from the Donetsk region, she was forced to flee with her family when she was 10 after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. That was when she first learned she was Jewish; it was the Jewish community that offered her family support, including basic needs and housing assistance, when they fled with nothing.

Katya now gives back by leading the Active Jewish Teen volunteer network. She also told the story about one morning before work when there was a direct hit by a drone to her apartment building. It left a gaping hole just a few flights below and shattered her windows. Someone asked, “What did you do?” She responded, “I got dressed and went to work. Who else was going to answer the phone and open the door?”

Hearing these stories firsthand this summer and seeing what life is like now for the Ukrainian Jewish community of more than 200,000 was an incredible opportunity and responsibility. Jews are faring (or not) in all the same ways as the general Ukrainian population except for the fact that they have us for support.

As President and CEO of Jewish Federation Bay Area, people ask me all the time, “What does the Federation do?” “Why should I give to the Annual Campaign?” “What do you do with all that money?”

As the Bay Area’s center for Jewish philanthropy and the state’s largest funder of Jewish causes, we connect donors, change makers and community partners to drive meaningful impact and build thriving Jewish communities in the Bay Area, Israel and around the world.

Since Russia’s war against Ukraine began in 2022, our Federation has raised and disbursed more than $5.5 million for Ukraine. But as I witnessed this summer, the urgent needs of Jews in Ukraine continue to grow.

When you make a gift to the Federation’s Annual Campaign, you are providing rent assistance to Elena and Anya. You are helping them with medical bills, as well as relief during some of the coldest winters on record. Your gift provides Katya with the chance to engage Ukrainian Jewish teens in community building through acts of volunteerism and the opportunity to explore what it means to be Jewish today. You are funding summer camps for displaced children and trauma therapy for their parents. Your gift provides lunch to thousands of impoverished elderly Jews, ensuring they don’t have to choose between food and medicine on their meager monthly pensions.

If the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and its aftermath has taught me anything, it’s that the Jewish community is one people, inextricably entwined. As Pirke Avot 1:2 says, the world is built on three things: Torah, avodah (service) and chesed (compassion).

At the end of a long day, I returned to Poland via the same route I arrived. On my return trip, though, the line to cross the border by foot was several hours long. In the other direction, I saw miles of trucks waiting to transport everything from basic supplies to much-needed fuel.

While I waited, I closed my eyes and remembered the people I’d seen when I first arrived, walking outside, eating at restaurants and laughing with friends despite the war around them.

Less than a week later, I learned that an apartment building about a mile from where I’d had dinner in Lviv sustained a direct hit from a Russian ballistic missile, killing a family of four and injuring dozens of others.

We must remember that even in our darkest times, hope for better days keeps us full of life.