rostov-on-don, russia | Until the fall of communism, Larisa Bermanson had only a cursory understanding of volunteering.
Like many in the former Soviet Union, she says, “I’d read about the volunteers during World War II, and I knew about volunteers with foreign armies.”
Now, the 73-year-old retired economist handles 35-40 elderly clients for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which operates Hesed programs, a social services network that provides food and psychological aid to a quarter of a million Jews, primarily elderly, every year.
Even with an annual budget of $70 million, Hesed wouldn’t be able to help anywhere near that number of clients if not for 14,000 local volunteers.
These are the people who deliver food, make home visits, answer phones, provide free medical care and run social and cultural programs paid for by federation donors in North America. They are the unsung heroes of the JDC’s welfare efforts in the former Soviet Union.
It would be more correct to say heroines, since the overwhelming majority of these volunteers are middle-aged and elderly Jewish women, many of whom, like Bermanson, are themselves Hesed clients or just marginally better off than those they help.
They are people like the two dozen women and one elderly man gathered one recent morning in the Hesed office in Rostov-on-Don, a southern Russian city of 1.5 million.
The city’s Jewish community organized its own quasi-Hesed in 1998 to take care of the needy elderly, but welfare services were piecemeal until the JDC opened its Rostov office in January 2001 and began funding Hesed operations.
“Most of us are women,” acknowledges 68-year-old Rolana Glauberman, who coordinates the 130 volunteers that help Rostov’s Hesed reach its 8,800 clients scattered across south Russia and the northern Caucasus, an enormous territory home to 21 million people.
It is women who have the time — they are the first laid off when the economy worsens and often outlive their husbands: Glauberman’s own husband died suddenly last year while she was on a trip to Israel.
And, these volunteers insist, women are natural nurturers, used to taking care of their own families.
“We are all retired,” Glauberman says. “I came here because I wanted to feel needed. That’s the reason we’re all here, right?” She looks around the room for confirmation from the others, who all nod their heads.
Perhaps the most remarkable achievement of the JDC in the former Soviet Union is this creation of a dedicated network of Jewish volunteers in a region with no history of volunteerism — countries where for 70 years the very word was suspect, implying a currying of favor with the communist authorities.
In little more than a decade, the Hesed system has not only fed and clothed hundreds of thousands of needy Jews, but has changed the social culture in a region that is still learning how to flex its democratic muscles.
Volunteers, most of whom are retired, are often able to use skills from their previous professions. Glauberman runs a women’s club, which last year knit 300 pairs of wool socks for elderly clients.
Another woman in the room repairs watches for free. “The old people bring in piles of their broken watches for her,” Glauberman says. “Cockroaches are sometimes living in them.”
Yosif Hirschberg, the lone man in the room, is head of Hesed-on-Wheels for Azov, a port city half an hour southwest of Rostov. That may seem close enough, but a car is still a luxury in Russia, and with monthly pensions of $15 or $20, even a weekly bus ride to the capital is beyond the reach of most elderly people.
Hirschberg says he showed up at the Hesed a year ago to learn more about his Jewish roots. He was handed a list of the five known Jews in Azov along with a suitcase full of Jewish books, and was told to distribute them.
“When I talked to those five people, they all knew someone else, and today we serve 48 clients,” he says proudly.
The Rostov Hesed takes good care of its volunteers, Minjoraya says.
“We celebrate their birthdays, and at the end of each summer we rent a guesthouse near the Azov Sea for a weekend seminar. We invite musicians, we have cultural activities, we give them caviar and other special foods they can’t get at home.”