Federation Impact

The Makings of an Ambassador

Growing up, Masha Shumatskaya was eager to become a leader in the Jewish community in her hometown of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. A proud alumna of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC)’s Metsuda leadership program for young Jews, she also graduated from her town’s Jewis…

A Journey to Justice in Ukraine

In late 2014, Nikita Didenko was living a dream. In his small hometown of Alchevsk, in eastern Ukraine, he was a counselor at the local Jewish youth club and a proud graduate of Metsuda, a program of Federation partner agency the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) that develo…

Sparking a Future for an Orphan in Uzbekistan

Angelina had lived through more by age 8 than most people will experience during their entire lives. Growing up in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, she lost both of her parents, then lost her 23-year-old brother shortly afterward in a construction accident.

 

Orphaned and alone, the young girl moved…

Exodus to a New Life

When he left the Soviet Union with his family at age 7, Michael owned nothing but the shirt he was wearing—complete with grease stain on the front pocket.

 

He had safely tucked the butter served on his flight to Israel there because he couldn’t imagine a life different than the one h…

Helping French Jews Build New Lives in Israel

Though he’s been in Israel for less than a year and is far from his family, Thibault already feels more at home there than he ever did in his native France.

 

In Paris, he felt like an outcast. Though his grandparents are Holocaust survivors, Thibault grew up in an assimilated household…