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When Aron was 11, his mother Raisa, a prostitute, would send him down to the
docks of Odessa to find clients for her. For each sailor the boy brought
back, he got one Ukrainian hryvnia - a tenth of a penny. That was 10 years
ago. These days, Raisa lives in a cellar in the centre of the Ukrainian port
city, down rickety stairs through a door that will not close, and behind a
dirty, ragged curtain. Inside, a strong smell of urine rises from a room
plastered with ancient wallpaper and peeling pictures cut from magazines.
There is no toilet. "I manage somehow," says Raisa, an apologetic smile on
her face.
But there is one small area of the cramped room that is an obvious source of
pride. There, on a small low table, stand framed photographs of Aron and his
sister Xenia, now thousands of miles away from this squalid basement.
One day, when he was touting for customers as usual at the docks, outreach
workers from the Tikva Jewish orphanage found Aron and brought him and
Xenia - who, then aged five, had not yet learned to walk - to live in one of
the charity's homes. Both eventually made aliyah. Xenia - despite her
special needs - is now studying in a girls' seminary. Aron battled
alcoholism, spending a year in a residential rehab unit, before finding work
on a building site.
Compared to the fate of other disadvantaged Ukrainian youngsters, these
modest achievements amount to an almost fairytale ending. Even 17 years
after the country gaining independence, poverty, drug addiction and
alcoholism are endemic. A generation of children is suffering the
consequences.
"Ten per cent of the children who go through Ukrainian state orphanages
commit suicide before they are 18," says Refael Kruskal, the director of
Tikva's schools and homes. "Sixty per cent of the girls turn to prostitution
and 70 per cent of the boys turn to crime." And while minority rights are
generally respected in Ukraine, the Jewish community - estimated at almost
80,000, although numbers are assumed to be much higher - are not immune from
the social ills plaguing the country.
Eighty per cent of the children in the Tikva homes have been abandoned,
abused, or - like Aron and Xenia - come from homes damaged by drink, drugs
or extreme poverty. The rest are orphans.
At the infants' building, home to 35 children aged up to five years, the
children, demonstrably affectionate, climb over every visitor. Yura, four,
leaps into every available lap. He wants to be a policeman when he grows
up - or Batman. Big-eyed Angelina has very short, cropped hair, a legacy of
the lice she had when she arrived. Sveta, a blonde 18-month-old girl with a
scarlet corduroy pinafore and pink tights printed with ducklings, stomps
about wearing a crown made out of Lego. She has been here since she was two
days old. Her mother is a former resident of the children's home who one
weekend, aged 15, went to visit her own mother. She was raped by the
neighbour, and came back pregnant.
Shlomo has also been at Tikva since he was two days old. Now aged two, with
a cone-shaped head and unnaturally bulging eyes, he has had to undergo a
series of cranial operations. He smiles hugely but still cannot speak,
despite intensive speech therapy. His one-year-old sister Olya plays nearby.
She has been here since she was five days old. "Their mother keeps on having
children and dropping them off here," sighs a carer.
The roots of the charity lie with the American Orthodox outreach
organisation Ohr Somayach. Its emissary, Rabbi Shlomo Baksht, arrived in
Odessa in 1993 as part of the effort to revitalise the local community.
Rabbi Baksht, an Israeli-born educator, set up the first children's home in
1996. When financial difficulties ended Ohr Somayach's operations in 2000,
the rabbi founded Tikva as an independent organisation. It now runs four
children's homes, six schools, a fully accredited university and a soup
kitchen. Unusually, Odessa is one of the few cities in the former Soviet
Union where Chabad is not the dominant Jewish force.
Although not a Zionist organisation, Tikva guides most of its graduates
towards aliyah, although in recent years it has recognised that the
challenges of life as an immigrant to Israel is not the best option for many
of their troubled charges.
Very few of the children had any experience of Judaism before coming to
Tikva. But Refael Kruskal, the director, insists that, although the homes
are run as fully Orthodox operations, there is no element of coercion.
Furthermore, children are always taken into the home - and sent to Israel,
for those who make aliyah - with the co-operation of their parents.
However, Judaism, he says, provides a ready-made structure - "and such
children need a framework", he explains. Within the home, the children are
supposed to keep Shabbat - "but we know that some go behind the building to
smoke," he says with a wry grin. "Once, two girls got up late on Saturday -
so they took a taxi to shul."
Some, like Odessa-born Sharon Tuyansky, now 23, who spent three years living
in the girls' home before finishing school in Israel, both return to
Orthodox Judaism and to Tikva. After marrying, aged 19, she is back as a
teacher at the Tikva girls' school. Her seven brothers and sisters also
passed through the Tikva system, and "all of us are now chozer b'tshuva
[newly religious]", she says proudly.
However, as much as the homes introduce the children to Judaism, they take
in only those who are halachically Jewish, even though under the Soviets
children automatically took their father's ethnic identity. Sasha Zhechev,
Tikva's chief administrator, has a team of 30 people working to locate
Jewish children throughout the whole former Soviet Union, a task aided by
the meticulous Soviet-era records detailing each citizen's nationality and
background.
"I would help any kid if I had the resources," says UK-born Kruskal, who
came to Odessa nine years ago. "I wish we could save 1,000 non-Jewish kids.
Donors see that, if we take non-halachically Jewish kids, then it impacts on
the continuity of this community. But every kid pulls at your heart."
There is no possibility of any child being adopted, even though the charity
is inundated with requests. If not in their parents' custody, they would
legally belong to the state, which would then have responsibility for
placing them. And in any case, the children in the homes, even those who
have suffered terrible mistreatment, seem still to love their parents.
Artur, who lives in the boys' home - one of 16 children from his extended
family being cared for by Tikva - is on a five-day visit to his mother in
Belgorod, a town an hour's drive from Odessa. At first glance, his mother's
place does not seem like much of a home. The building looms over a pot-holed
courtyard piled with junk. Inside, half a dozen grizzled men lounge around a
wood-fired stove crawling with cockroaches. Laughing with them is Artur's
aunt Anya, a young woman with dyed black hair, a chipped tooth and the swell
of her latest pregnancy pressing up against her jumper. She is not quite
sure, she says, who the father is.
Around them totters a sweet-faced 14-month-old girl in a red snowsuit, a
long knitted grey cap and a sore on one lip. If encouraged, Olla will do her
party tick - chirruping "My mother's a bitch!" in Russian.
The smell of alcohol and something with a sharp chemical tang hangs in the
air. It seems like dozens of people live here, crammed three or four within
the filthy walls of each crumbling room, some too strung out to leave their
beds or acknowledge the presence of visitors, others watching gaudy game
shows on television.
In comparison, the newly renovated Tikva girls' home is close to a brightly
coloured paradise, with pretty murals painted by a Tikva alumni. Each floor
houses a different age group, with a soft-play area, computer suites and art
rooms nearly disappearing in a riot of sequins, satin and tinsel.
In the younger girls' play area, a group of friends list their favourite
things. Natasha, orphaned at the age of three, is a blonde seven-year-old
with a sparkly pink top and gold earrings. She loves painting. "And Katya is
my best friend, and I want to be a hairdresser when I grow up," she declares
in her squeaky voice.
Larissa, 10, a sharp-featured girl with Biro-smudged hands, wants to be a
kindergarten teacher when she grows up. "I don't like it when the older
girls tell us what to do and when to go to sleep." One of six children, she
and three of her siblings were left behind in Odessa when her parents, both
alcoholic, split up and her mother took two of the boys to Israel.
On the floor above, 16-year-old Larissa and her friend Anya, 13, are
lounging watching a DVD of Spider-Man 2. "In general I like it here," says
Larissa, from the town of Nikolayev, two hours from Odessa. "But it's a
little oppressive with the counsellors telling us what to do. And they take
our phones away every night and only give them back after school."
Dark-haired, her skinny face nearly overbalanced by silver hoop earrings,
Larissa cuddles a toy reindeer she won at the amusement park last week and
complains with good-natured teenage angst. "We are so busy at school, and
after that I have singing and extra tuition. I'm really tired."
The boys' home, housing 50 children from the ages of six to 16, has yet to
be renovated, and a dreary institutional smell of mince hangs in the air.
The teenage boys, all wearing standard-issue black velvet kippot, have a
raw, rangy look about them. But the walls are painted cheery shades of
orange and yellow, and there is a clubhouse with a dozen computers, a pool
table, and a small gym - not to mention Asia the cat and Gadia the dog.
"Some boys come here from a very hard family," says Yeshua Kanevskiy, the
director of the orphanage, "and for some of these boys the dog is their
first friend." Sitting in his office, decorated with Van Gogh and Monet
prints alongside religious pictures, Kanevskiy, a returnee to Orthodox
Judaism - explains his philosophy. "We are a traditional place, but I am
very afraid of stigmas. In Israel if you have a black kippah you are already
in a box. We are not a factory for religion."
He pulls out a photo of Vlad, 12, whose mother is a sex worker and father a
professional thief. While he still lived at home, his mother's way of
punishing him was to put him in a dog kennel. "He steals everything he
sees," recounts Yeshua. "He is very clever, but he can't act like a
student. He is very violent, very manipulative. For four or five years he
has been having psychiatric treatment twice a week."
Next door in the art room is Slava, 17, a blond, diffident youth from
Belarus. He and his youngest brother Viktor have been at the home for one
month. "We are the new ones," he says shyly. One of eight children, his
father died when he was four and the siblings are spread over the world
between Israel, Russia and Ireland. His ambition is to study art in Britain.
He pulls out a pastoral scene, of Belarus, he says. "I drew it with the
colours I feel, the green, the sky. I love my country and I miss all my
friends. But my mother said we should go." And he likes it here. "It's a
beautiful place, and I'm not saying that because I don't want trouble. I
really feel it. "
http://www.tikvaodessa.org/
But is care always best for such children?
Taking children from their parents may be proving effective in Odessa, but
it is something social workers in the UK regard as very much a last resort.
Gillian Kirsch, head of domestic adoption and fostering at children's
charity Norwood, says that studies show it is far better for children to
remain in the family home if at all possible.
"There has been a lot of research carried out in this country and abroad
about the long-term effects of institutional care on the social, emotional
and educational wellbeing of the children. Obviously removing children from
risk and chronic neglect is important, but this should be balanced with the
importance for children to know about their birth families and origins as
they grow up.
"It is important for young children to have positive experiences with their
primary carer and to receive appropriate levels of care and attention in
their formative years. This can be lacking in some institutional
establishments, but often if these children move on to long-term fostering
or adoptive families who have been through an assessment and approval
process they often make incredible progress."
She adds that where children are moved away from their parents - for
instance, from Ukraine to Israel - it is vital that contact is maintained.
Removals of children from the family home do, of course, take place in
Britain, but generally only when compelling evidence has been gathered after
concern expressed for the child over a period of time.
Checks and balances are built into the process, and social workers will
consult with other agencies, such as the police or health services, before
applying for an interim court order from a magistrates' court.
"Even then, the aim is to return the child where possible - the parenting
situation is monitored to assess when and if this can happen."
Gillian Kirsch also points out that in the UK the majority of children are
placed in a family setting, either with suitable relatives or a foster
parent, and not a residential home.
She adds that "due to research carried out in the UK on outcomes for
children, it is now no longer the practice for children under five to be
placed in residential care".
Authorities work wherever possible in partnership with parents, operating
voluntary-care agreements where parents agree to allow the removal of their
children without affecting their parental responsibility.
But children will be removed without the co-operation of parents when there
is a history of child abuse - physical, sexual or emotional - or if there is
a situation of serious domestic violence in which the child is at risk of
being emotional or physically harmed.
Children are also removed when parents are unable to care adequately for
them because of chronic neglect, which results in the child's needs not
being met.
Source: http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m14&SecId=14&AId=57508&ATypeId=1
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