When Rima Abramovna spotted us from the hotel entrance in Tiberias, Israel, she burst into tears and hugged us tightly, one on each side. "I was so worried that you had come all this way and now you couldn't find me!"
I am in Israel with my Ukrainian colleague Alina to check on the well-being of the Jewish new immigrants whom our team has evacuated from war-torn Ukraine in recent months.
Rima is one of those rescued from the completely destroyed Ukrainian port city of Mariupol. For weeks, she had endured almost no supplies in a cellar, without any contact with the outside world. Rabbi Mendel of Mariupol managed to fly Rima and 90 other Jews out of the devastated city via Russia, Kazakhstan, and Georgia, following a perilous route. Her daughter remained behind, as neither her husband nor her son are currently permitted to leave the country.
Alina shows me a photo of Rima. It looks like it was just taken. In fact, it's a year old, from Alina's last visit to Rima in Mariupol. She's wearing the same dress. What she's taken with her now fits into a tote bag. But she's alive, and her family is alive and can join her one day.
I look around. On the table lie two handwritten pages with Hebrew vocabulary and Russian translations. Rima was born in 1944. Despite this, she is doing her best to familiarize herself with a new language – out of gratitude to the country that, for the first few weeks in her new home, has accommodated her not in a cheap, abandoned apartment block, but in a popular holiday hotel overlooking the Sea of Galilee. That is Israel: Whoever saves one life saves the whole world.
Rima has chosen Ma'alot in Galilee as her place of residence. Her nephew lives there, and she will try to find affordable social housing there.
Help through the CSI sponsorship program
Since the war in Ukraine has forced many of the needy people from our sponsorship program out of the country, our staff have increasingly been visiting survivors who made Aliyah under these dramatic circumstances and found a new home in Israel.
The Jews whom we were able to evacuate from Ukraine in recent months thanks to your support now face the monumental task of integrating into a completely different society with a different climate and an unfamiliar language. The horrors of war are still deeply ingrained in many. Each has had to leave behind loved ones and almost all their possessions. With your help, and in accordance with God's promise to His people, we, as Christians, wish to continue being friends and supporters of these people , standing alongside Israel
