Though the news from Ukraine remains grim, and the work of our overseas partners continues to grow, I thought you would like to see this picture of Ukrainian refugees/new olim arriving at Ben Gurion airport, and being greeted by the Prime Minister of Israel, by the Director General of our Jewish Federations of North America Israel Office, Becky Caspi, and by the Interim Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel and Chair of the WZO, Yaakov Hagoel. This is the happy result that all of your hard work makes possible, and we should not miss the chance to be joyful in our success in saving our brothers and sisters from harm and bringing them to Eretz Yisrael.

Of course, this work was made possible because of the core funding our Federation system provides year in and year out to the Jewish Agency to support the infrastructure that was ready on the ground and able to mobilize immediately to bring Ukrainians Jews to safety and enable this new wave of aliyah. And, as of Friday, our Federation system had raised over $16M of our first goal of $20M for the extraordinary crisis in Ukraine, and had allocated and already sent over $8m to those doing the work on the ground. We will share complete details with you in the coming days. But for now, please join me in thanking all those who made this particular shechiyanu moment possible.

Mark Wilf is Chair of the Board of Trustess of The Jewish Federations of North America