BUDAPEST, Hungary — Ten minutes before a scheduled interview with eJewishPhilanthropy, a missile fell near the home of Inessa Nosenko, director of the JCC Mazal Tov in the southern Ukraine city of Zaporizhzhia, near the border with Russia. 

Until she was able to hear from her father, who uses a wheelchair, Nosenko was not able to relax.

“This is our reality,” said the veteran JCC director who made the almost 21-hour drive from her city with her husband because no flights are available from Ukraine, stopping along the way to meet with some members of her community who have taken refuge abroad. “We are very, very near the front line. It is very dark; it is very black. It is really war.”

Nosenko is in the Hungarian capital as part of a Ukrainian delegation from 11 different JCCs for the inauguration of JCC Global’s flagship partnership project “From Good to Great,” which has brought together 31 JCCs worldwide to begin work on the cooperative program designed to enhance the capacity and sustainability of JCCs in Ukraine.

Later in the evening she was informed by a member of her JCC staff that the Jewish school in Zaporizhzhia, the ORT “Aleph” Jewish Gymnasium, had been damaged in the attack. No one was seriously injured in the school as the building was mostly empty, though one pregnant teacher who was inside at the time “suffered shock and will require ongoing psychological support,” the school said.

“The structural damage was significant. The roof and heating system were penetrated by shrapnel, most of the windows were blown out by the blast wave and the perimeter fence was also badly damaged,” ORT said. According to a social media post by the governor of the Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ivan Fedorov, three people were killed in the attack and 11 injured.

In Budapest, the Ukrainian JCC delegation members said meeting with 20 other JCC representatives from Israel, North America and Europe is a way to not only bring them hope and a sense of community but it also brings practical help in terms of experience, vision and exchanges of ideas.

“It’s a happy time because I understand that I am in the right place in the right time, because I still can do something important. And if we can communicate, if we can do something together around the world, this means that our community is still alive. This means that we can save our positive thinking, and we still have a future, a future with the light,” said Marina London, head of Jewish programs of the Beit Grand JCC in Odesa, who a few minutes into the interview received a bombing warning for her home area on her smartwatch.

Nosenko said that even in wartime it is vital for her to maintain the Jewish presence of the JCC in Zaporizhzhia and its numerous social services, which have become a lifeline for many of the Jewish residents of the city; their numbers fluctuate between 15,000-17,000 in the city whose pre-war population was some 700,000 people.

“We continue our life, we have programs for the children, for teenagers, for mothers, for [families]. We [observe] all Jewish holidays online, offline, we try to work with our community, to be inside our community. We think the main task of the Jewish Community Center is to show that we are not alone, all people are not alone and our community is an island of life and stability,” she said.

One program supported by JCC Global, which has specifically reached out to men in the community, is a men’s retreat that has helped them open up for mental health support, she said, noting that women and children were more open to the idea of psychological help. But the men, who were resisting the assistance, needed it as well. Their volunteer center’s humanitarian hub, which has become a crucial part of the JCC since Russia invaded Ukraine, also provides assistance to people with special needs, the elderly and people in crisis; the humanitarian hub helps in repairing homes damaged by Russian bombings and also takes care of the many abandoned pets who have been left on the streets, Nosenko said.

“I think I have two main tasks: to save the body of the people in this war and to save their mental health in this war,” she said.

The work would not be possible without the charitable help of Jewish partners including JCC Global, the Dutch Jewish Humanitarian Fund and individual American Jewish donors, she said. Every month nearly 200 people come to the JCC in Zaporizhzhia needing help, sometimes on a one-time basis, while others need regular help.

“They are in a dangerous situation, and I have a very serious program to help. It is not only welfare; it is not only food. Just now with [JCC Global] we established a job creation program for people who have lost their jobs and for refugees,” she said.

In Odesa, Ukraine’s third largest city along the Black Sea, the situation remains dire and there are very few hours of electricity, said London.

“We are always wondering why [the war] happened to us but we don’t have the answer. We just must be happy right now because we don’t know if we will have a tomorrow,” said London.

At the start of the war she took her elderly parents to safety in Romania but returned to Odesa, she said.

“The situation is very difficult because we are under bombing every day and every night. When you go out on the streets, you are listening only to the noises because generators are working everywhere,” London said. The Beit Grand JCC, which is supported by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, works with some 5,000 people a year on a regular basis through their programs, she said, including Sunday family activities, children programs, monthly performances and assistance to refugees and the elderly. “One day you have to understand that if you want to live, you have to have another vision of the situation. You have to [maintain] your sense of humor, you have to [maintain] your positive thinking and you have to understand that [you need this] if you are to do something important for yourself, for your community, for your country.”

The community has absorbed many refugees, she said, who have many needs, and the services they receive from the JCC is like a “warm hug.”

“When I am walking around the building and a child comes running my way and he says to me: ‘Marina, I’m so happy to be here,’ you see these happy eyes and for these happy eyes, you should do everything that you can,” she said.

Unlike Israel, which is better prepared for war with public bomb shelters and safe rooms in many homes, the people of Ukraine can only improvise. A safe place in the JCC, she noted, is the concert hall, which does not have windows but otherwise is just as exposed to the bombing as the rest of the building. When they hold their day camp they need to rent a space with a bomb shelter to keep the children safe, London said.

“That is why we are very sensitive… we are not safe. Every night we are scared and we must find a safe place in our apartment. It can be a very small place. If you have a little child in Israel, you can be in a shelter sitting there for around 10 or 15 minutes and go away. In our situation it can be around 10 hours and you never know when it’s finished,” she said.

In the farther western city of Khmelnitsky, JCC and Hesed Beshet director Igor Ratuchny covers a huge territory that spans roughly one-third of Ukraine, and has received some 5,000 refugees in total, with some 300 displaced Jewish people remaining in Khmelnitsky. People hear about their services through social media and they have been providing temporary housing for the refugees, he said through an interpreter, including all the necessary linens and kitchen supplies that they take with them when they continue on their way so they must be replaced. They helped evacuate over 150 home-bound people to safety in Germany, and some to Israel, he said.

“The needs of people are so different, some people need help to get a passport to travel abroad, some people need clothes, some people need food. There are so many stories I see every day. It is hard,” he said. “We started working twice as much as we used to.”

Recently he helped two Jewish businessmen with the evacuation of two Torah scrolls from their city of Chernigiv, some 225 miles away and close to the Russian border, to Romania, said Ratuchny.

The JCC Global “From Good to Great” program is important for them as they see the entire Jewish community as a whole and the resulting projects helps their communities grow, Ratuchny said. He has already begun to speak to JCC representatives from Krakow, Poland, about a musical cultural exchange, he added.

“It is important to continue these cultural activities because life continues,” Ratuchny said. “It’s not only religion that helps us to survive and supports us , but it’s also Jewish songs and music. We promote Jewish lifestyle. And Baal Shem Tov said that we have to rejoice, and we do even when the person is dying. Now we just got new partners both from the United States and from Israel and we’re thinking together what we can do to help our community members.”

JCC Global provided eJewishPhilanthropy with transportation and accommodation for the conference. Judith Sudilovsky will be reporting from Budapest in the coming days.